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Konstantin Voskoboinik
Константи́н Па́влович Воскобо́йник
Governor	Lokot Autonomy
Leader	People's Socialist Party of Russia "Viking" ("Vityaz")
Personal details
Born	1895 Smela, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	8 January 1942 Lokot, Lokot Autonomy
Alma mater	Moscow State University

Konstantin Pavlovich Voskoboinik (1895— January 8, 1942) was a politician of Ukrainian origin. Known as the burgomaster and anti-partisan commander of Lokot Autonomy, a territory of the Soviet Union occupied by German Nazi troops, more specifically the Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army during WW2. Close friend and associate of Bronislav Kaminski — after Voskoboinik's death — main commander of Kaminski Brigade (Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA), later referred to as Russian People's Liberation Army.

At the beginning of the Russian Civil War he was a volunteer of the Red Army, after his demobilization due to a wound — a participant and fighter of the Green Movement. Participated in anti-Soviet peasant uprisings.

Being a convinced anti-communist, later, in World War II on the Eastern Front — a German Nazi collaborator. Organizer and first burgomaster of the Lokot autonomy (territory in the area of Bryansk, Oryol and Kursk regions) under German administration, which was the most striking episode of the Russian Liberation Movement during World War II. ^[1] Founder and first leader of the People's Socialist Party of Russia "Viking" ("Vityaz"), later known as the National Socialist Labor Party of Russia (NSLPR). In the interwar period, Lokot became a stronghold for the repressed intelligentsia, thus giving ground to anti-Soviet sentiment; creation of the party and political propaganda activities contributed to the growth of anti-communist sentiment, which channeled the aspirations of the population with formed views in the right political direction. ^[2] German Nazis and Lokot's population were brought together by only one common goal — the anti-Bolshevik struggle. Ideology and political propaganda activities of the Lokot Autonomy were not inspired by Germany, but on the contrary, were in spite of it. Program of the National Socialist Labor Party of Russia was at odds with the Third Reich's policies regarding " Slavic subhumans". ^[2]

Life path

Konstantin Voskoboinik was born in 1895 in the town of Smela, Kiev Governorate (now Cherkassy Oblast, Ukraine), Russian Empire into the family of a railroad worker. ^[3] In 1915 he entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, in 1916 he volunteered at the front and graduated from the Warrant Office School. In 1919, when Russian Civil War was going on, he betrayed his oath and joined the Red Army, and in 1920 he was wounded and demobilized from the Red Army as unfit for military service. ^[4] He was sent to work as a secretary of the Khvalynsky military commissariat. ^[3]

In the 1920–1921, he betrayed the Reds, took part in a peasant uprising against exorbitant extortion of peasants. In 1921 he joined the SR's detachments of Vakulin-Popov and fought against Red Army units in the Volga region. He was selected as the first man to be assigned to a machine gun and received another injury to his arm. The uprising was suppressed by Red troops under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky.

After the defeat of the uprising, he hid under false documents in the name of Ivan Yakovlevich Loshakov. He fled to Astrakhan, where he remarried his wife, giving her a "new" surname. From Astrakhan the Loshakovs moved to Syzran, then to Nizhny Novgorod, until in 1924 they moved to Moscow. Here Voskoboinik graduated from the electromechanical faculty of the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy and worked as the head of electrical workshop at the All-Union Chamber of Weights and Measures.

In 1931, believing that 10 years had already passed the statute of limitations since his participation in the peasant uprising, he came to the OGPU and confessed. He was not convicted, but was administratively exiled for 3 years to Novosibirsk Oblast. After the end of his exile he lived with his family and worked in construction organisation in Kriviy Rih and Orsk. Since 1938 he has been a physics teacher at the Brasov Hydromelioration College in Lokot, Bryansk Oblast where he met and became friends with Bronislav Kaminski. Voskoboinik settled in Lokot, most likely because he was forbidden to live in large cities. The Lokotsk NKVD office had an impression of him as a person "loyal to the Soviet government, an intellectual with an inflated self-esteem".

Political activity

Even before the advanced units of the German army came to Lokot, Voskoboinik created a local self-government and a small self-defense detachment in the conditions of fleeing of the local representatives of the Soviet power. After the arrival of the Germans in September–October 1941, he offered them cooperation and was appointed headman and commander of the self-defense detachment in the village of Lokot, where he recruited a detachment of 20 people from among the victims of the Bolsheviks, as well as from the "encircled". Taking into account Voskoboinik's organizational skills, a month later, on October 16, 1941, the German authorities significantly expanded his powers: the police detachment was increased to 200 men, Voskoboinik was subordinated to the settlements adjacent to Lokot, and the Lokot parish was formed, in which rural self-defense units were created.

Voskoboinik founded the People's Socialist Party of Russia (PSPR) and wrote a manifesto for it under the pseudonym Engineer of the Earth (KPV). ^[5]

On the night of January 8, 1942, Soviet partisans under the command of Alexander Saburov, having made a winter rush on 120 sledges, carried out an attack on the barracks of the local police and the house of the burgomaster. Despite the surprise, the police organized a response to the partisans. After reporting what was happening, Voskoboinik, who had gone to the porch of his house, was wounded by the partisans. Immediately afterwards, realizing that Voskoboinik was killed and the mission was completed, Saburov ordered the guerrillas to withdraw. The total losses of the collaborators amounted to about 50 people.

German doctors, who arrived urgently from Oryol, were unable to save Voskoboinik, and he died the same day. Bronislaw Kaminski took over the duties of burgomaster and head of the PSPR.

Manifesto

The manifesto contains 12 provisions and consists of an economic and a political part.

Ideology of the National Socialist Party of Russia stated in the manifesto has a socialist character in its economic part: destruction of the kolkhoz system, free transfer of all arable land to peasantry, the deployment of private initiative with the state retaining the main means of production and limiting the size of private capital.

In the political part the national idea — the revival of the Russian state — is in the foreground.

It is likely that in the combination of these two parts of the program, the leaders of the Lokot Autonomy, fascinated by German Nazism, saw nothing less than their own, Russian National Socialism. ^[6]

Selected points of the manifesto:

1) Complete destruction of the communist and collective farm system in Russia.

2) Free transfer of all arable land to the peasantry for perpetual, hereditary use, with the right to rent and exchange plots, but without the right to sell them. (Only one plot can be in the hands of one citizen). The size of a plot is about 10 hectares in the Central Russia.

12) Ruthless extermination of Jews who were commissars.

Versions of Voskoboinikov's death

• Was fatally shot on the porch of his home;
• Was fatally wounded in the theater building ("the main group of attackers of several dozen people who broke into the theater was blocked, they were shooting back desperately, and from time to time they threw grenades through the broken doors and windows, they had nowhere to go — they were blocked, and they were doomed. They could have easily been pelted with grenades. But the entire theater building would have burned to the ground. That is why Voskoboinik forbade his men to use grenades. He suggested that those surrounded in the theater stop the useless bloodshed and surrender. He promised to leave everyone alive on his personal word of honor — the word of the commander. In response, Voskoboinik was asked to come out to a lighted place to make sure that it was really him, "Governor of Lokot." And when Voskoboinik came out, he was immediately killed by a long line of "Degtyar"). ^[7]

Legacy

On June 6, 2005, Konstantin Voskoboinik and Bronislav Kaminski were canonized by the extremist, recognized pseudo-Orthodox religious organization Russian Catacomb Church of True Orthodox Christians. ^[8]

Bibliography

In Russian

• Ермолов И.Г. История Локотского округа и Русской Освободительной Народной Армии — Орёл, 2008. — 168 p., ISBN  978-5-9708-0130-7
• Ермолов И.Г. Русское государство в немецком тылу. История Локотского самоуправления 1941–1943, Москва, ЗАО Центрполиграф, 2009. — 252 p., ISBN  978-5-9524-4487-4

See also

• Lokot Autonomy
• Kaminski Brigade
• Bronislav Kaminski
• Collaboration in the German-occupied Soviet Union

References