While producing a photo of Grand Duke Andrei (Andrew) Vladimirovich,
referring to a book by Alex Butterworth, the author of "Russian
Portraits" Mark Shernick points to an online history
of an alleged Order of St. John and that; ”In the Struggle Against
International Anarchists The SOSJ [Added] An American Grand Priory." The
online history referred to is here.
Mark Shernick here is trying to make a
connection with what Alex Butterworth referred to as the Brotherhood, and as
Butterworth wrote; “the nascent extreme nationalist movement the Black Hundreds,
a recrudescence of the worse aspects of the Holy Brotherhood of the early
1880s.” (Butterworth, The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers,
Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents, 2010, kindle loc. 7532.)
But while the person on the picture is indeed Grand Duke Andrew the
imagery has nothing to do with the Order of St. John. Instead the photo is
borrowed from the famous bilingual publication: Album du bal
costume' au Palais d'hiver, Fevrier
1903. 21 photogravures et 174 phototypies. SPb, 1904.
And Andrew is here simple sporting the gala attire of the falconer to His
Tsarist Majesty from the times of Alexis Mikhailovich. Other members of the
imperial family dressed up as well... Nicholas and Alexandra were dressed like
a Tsar and a Tsarina from the 17th century in famous images. Andrew’s brother,
Grand Duke Boris, wore the costume of an officer of the Tsarist lancers.
The above article link appears to be
an internal history of the Charles Pichel
(Shickshinny) order. And while as we have seen above some of it is clearly made
up, if there is some truth to this history, then we also have here an example
of some of the pro-German Monarchist’s the British representative in Russia
Bruce Lockhart reported about in 1918.
And while Mark Shernick trying to make a
direct connection might be unwarranted, Thourot-Pichel
himself was known for his fascist leanings. According to an in depth book by
Russ Bellant, Pichel was an
adviser (via correspondence from the U.S.) to Hitler aide Ernst Hanfstaengl. Bellant also details
that Pichel's Order was being led by anti-Semites who
have worked with the quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby, and with neofascist Lyndon
LaRoche groups." (Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the
New Right, and the Republican Party: Domestic fascist networks and their effect
on U.S. cold war politics, 1991, p. 45)
As seen elsewhere, it is indeed in context of the Black Hundreds related
organizations that we also have the “pro-German” faction of the Monarchists.
But when the February Revolution commenced, the Black Hundred proved
incapable of offering any resistance to the revolutionaries. The revolution
exposed the movement for what it was—an empty shell propped up by an
undemocratic electoral process and a government slush fund. However by 1918 the
Bolshevik “Reds” provided an insidious political foe for “Whites” that fit
earlier apocalyptic Black Hundred warnings. That year German forces advanced
deep into former Imperial Russian territory in 1918, most notably into the
Ukraine, where right-wing German officers interacted with their monarchical
Russian or Ukrainian counterparts on a large scale for the first time.
German–White cooperation in the Ukraine set a precedent for further
international right-wing alliances after Imperial Germany lost World War I.
Before the revolution in Russia, right wing groups in Imperial Germany
and the Russian Empire established detailed anti-Western, anti-socialist, and
anti-Semitic ideologies in the period leading up to the 1917 Russian
Revolution. Largely internally orientated völkisch
German thought drew on the idealistic views of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard
Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Whereby Russian radical right beliefs
were associated with the Slavophiles, and expressed apocalyptic visions of
Jewish world conspirators who threatened to ruin Imperial Russia and eventually
the world.
As explained in an earlier 2003 seminar,
this led to the transfer of extremist anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic White
views to postwar völkisch German circles in Berlin
and Munich.
As a result pretender to the Russian throne Grand Duke Kirill (Cyril)
Vladimirovich of Russia moved from the French Riviera to Bavaria.
Grand Duke Kirill and his wife Viktoria channeled approximately 500,000
gold marks to support nationalist German–Russian undertakings. Also the right
wing, anti-Semitic American industrialist and politician Henry Ford gave
considerable sums of money to Kirill’s representative in America, the Aufbau
member Boris Brazol. Brazol
then transferred funds to Kirill and Viktoria for use in financing far right
organizations in Germany, notably the National Socialist Party and Aufbau. (James and Suzanne Pool, Hitlers Wegbereiter zur Macht, trans. Hans Thomas,1978, p.107.)
While in Germany, Russian monarchist émigrés tried to reprise their old
organizational tactics—and met with the same result. They loosely divided into
two camps: one comprising the extreme right wing Nazi affiliated Aufbau group,
and the other gathered around the Soiuz vernykh (Union of the Faithful), which Nikolai Yevgenyevich Markov (known as Markov II) led after his
emigration to Berlin in 1920. Markov was
a Russian political figure who before the revolution was a leading figure in
the Union of the Russian People (URP). Despite the Union’s use of illegal Black
Hundred squads to terrorize and assassinate Jewish and socialist opponents,
Imperial authorities supported the Union.
Markov II Hoping to gather both camps under his own leadership,
organized a monarchist congress in Berlin from May 29 to June 5, 1921. With 105
delegates, a majority of whom had been URP or Russian National Union of the
Archangel Michael (UAM) members, the congress called for the restoration of the
monarchy in Russia and voted to create a Supreme Monarchical Council to unify
the movement under Markov’s leadership. Shortly thereafter, however, the two
camps grew antagonistic. Suspicious of German attempts at a rapprochement with
the Soviet government, Markov adopted a pro French orientation, while Aufbau
maintained its insistence on German-Russian unity. Markov, who insisted that
Russia’s future monarchy regain the Imperial borders, also took offense at
Aufbau’s inclusion of nationalist Ukrainians and Balts, for whom Aufbau
envisioned autonomous states. Finally, the two camps had divergent candidates
for the throne, with Aufbau supporting Grand Prince Kirill Romanov, grandson of
Tsar Alexander II, while Markov’s group advocated Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov, grandson of Tsar Nicholas I.
Aside from holding congresses, the monarchists reprised another of their
former tactics—political assassination. On March 28, 1922, Russian monarchists
attempted to kill Pavel Miliukov as he left the stage
after an address to émigrés at Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall. Although the
assassins missed their target, they accidentally shot and killed Vladimir
Nabokov, father of the acclaimed Russian novelist.
Although the botched assassination of Miliukov
seems to have been a collaborative effort between the Aufbau and Markov camps,
the bitter schism among the groups remained. With the monarchists divided into
two bitterly feuding camps, their effectiveness was severely compromised.
When Aufbau next acted as a key organizer of Hitler’s infamous failed
coup, German soldiers killed the Aufbau leader, Max von Scheubner-Richter.
Markov continued to publish anti Semitic
tracts well into the 1930s. As for the URP’s legacy, Markov bragged that the
URP represented the “exact prototype” of fascist movements and that he
considered the URP druzhina to be a forerunner of the
Nazis’ SA paramilitary formation. (N. E. Markov, Istoriia
Evreiskogo shturma Rossii, 1937, p. 22, see also J. Langer, Corruption and the
Counterrevolution, 2007.)
Finally, if there is some truth in the history as presented in the
quoted link (www.osjknights.com/History-After-Malta.htm) then we have here a
virtual who is who of the pro-German right wing Monarchist. Not only is there
is a direct reference to ”The American Grand Priory also had a history of
cooperation with members of the monarchist and anti-Semitic Russian Black
Hundred’s Movement”, similarly counts for a number of the individuals listed as
having played a leading role in the Russian inspired Order of St.John.
For one example see “Awaloff-Bermondt OSJ” who
is listed as the Order’s Grandmaster in 1933.
The adventurer who became known as the dashing Caucasian noble Colonel
Pavel Bermondt-Avalov (Paul Mikhailovitch
Bermondt) initially belonged to the above mentioned Black
Hundred movement. (Letter to the editorial staff of Volia
Rossii from February 28,1921, Administrative Center
of the Non-Party Association, a Russian emigre organization in Prague, Russian
State Archives of Socio- Political History, Moscow, fond 5893, opis I, delo 201, 87.)
Bermondt-Avalov ‘s further involvement with the Latvian Intervention, of
a combined anti-Bolshevik German/ White force, built upon the international
right-wing collaboration that had been established during the German occupation
of the Ukraine in 1918.
Thus committed to the idea of a nationalist German–Russian alliance Bermondt-Avalov wrote from Latvia to Wolfgang Kapp (known
for his later Kapp Putsch):
“I would like to emphasize my unshakeable intention to collaborate with
those German circles that support our efforts ...I willingly commit myself to
do everything that serves the common interests of Russia and Germany, which
were friends for centuries and should have remained so.” (Secret State Archives
of Prussian Cultural Property, Berlin, Repositur 92,
number 815, 88.)
After his arrival in Germany he arranged for Russian Monarchist
alliances with German right-wing groups such as "Steel Helmet, League of
Front Soldiers." It was part of the "Black Reichswehr" and its
goals were a German dictatorship, the preparation of a revanchist program, and
the direction of local anti-parliamentarian action.
The above Pichel article also proceeds with
”Grand Master Prince Awaloff became head of the
Russian Fascist Party in Germany, called the Russian National Liberation
Movement (ROND).”
ROND, was a militaristic organization, patterned on the (Nazi Party) NSDAP's
Sturmabteilung (hence SA). ROND used the SA's Horst Wessel Song as its hymn and
members also attacked political opponents and Jews along the lines of the SA.
The official uniform of ROND dress included a black shirt with a green and
white swastika. (Report from January 23, 1938, Center for the Preservation of
Historical-Documentary Collections, Moscow, fond 284, opis
I, delo 69,8.)
In the end, Bermondt-Avalov damaged his cause
when he was arrested for embezzling 50,000 marks in August 1934, imprisoned for
three months, and then expelled from Germany. He resurfaced in Rome, where he
sought to lead a group of White émigré fascists under Benito Mussolini's
Fascist regime, but with little success. (French National Security, Surete
Nationale, report from June 1935, Center for the
Preservation of Historical-Documentary
Collections, Moscow, fond 7, opis I, delo 922, reel 3, 238.)
What is somewhat puzzling is that where the Pichel
Order article lists Bermondt-Avalov as the
Grandmaster of the American OSJ in 1933. Bermondt-Avalov
(unless evidence can be found for important earlier visits) is listed as having
moved to the US at the beginning of WWII, see
also here.
A previous co-worker of Pichel in fact accused
the later of creating an invented history of the order (for details see here).
A 2006 dissertation by Hendrik Johannes Hoegen Dijkhof however rejects
this idea.
The dissertation by Hoegen Dijkhof,
strange as it might be, also states as fact that the above mentioned “Grand
Duke Cyrill, Head of the Imperial House of Romanov in
France, formally conferred Hereditary Commander titles to Thourot-Pichel’s
Order of St. John of Jerusalem in the name of the Russian Grand Priory.” (Hoegen Dijkhof, 2006, p.238.)
The supposed refoundation of this “grand priory” in 1910 that Hoegen Dijkhof refers to was in
fact invented with forged documents – Grand Duke Alexander was never involved
in any such organization before 1928 as one can easily see from his own
memoirs. In 1928 the organization he gave “protection” to was a society of
descendants and in any case he had no more authority to legitimize any such
body than you or me. As a junior member of the Imperial family he had no more
authority than any other Russian citizen – or for that matter in the UK any
junior member of the British royal family – to found, refound
or give his (worthless) protection to an Order of Knighthood.
And as we shall see in the following link, none of the various bodies
claiming a Russian origin with which various descendants of the imperial family
had long or short involvements with have any legitimacy whatsoever as Order of
Knighthood, and their use of the name St John has no justification.
Discussion: The alleged Russian
Orders of St. John