Samara: Difference between revisions

''The West Russian War in the fitiesfifties changed all of this. Expanded by the desparate Germans and deployed to delay the resurgent Red Army, the ROA thrived against all odds and soon found itself pushing east. By the war's end, Vlasov and his men controlled a power base beyond the Reich's grasp. Written off as mutinious rabble, the ROA has spend the intervening years waiting. Some hope for redemption; the others merely await the opportunity to carve an empire in Western Russia and beyond.''

Reality was much less flattering to the ROA. Its leader, [[Andrey Vlasov]], was nothing more than a puppet of the Wehrmacht's high command. His officers were a disjointed bunch. many were also captured Red Army officers, preferring to join the ROA than die in a German POW camp. Others were fascist émigres, joining the ROA on a great crusade to defeat Bolshevism. The common soldiers were desparatedesperate cannon fodder, drafted at gunpoint by the germansGermans and sent to rienforcereinforce the most desparatedesperate sectors of the front. Far from being welcomed as liberators, Russian people caught in the conflict area welcomed ROA soliderssoldiers with rockrocks and insults.

==== Energy of DesparationDesperation ====

Despite all this, the ROA pushed on. The soldiers fought with the energy of desparationdesperation, and managed to help turn the tide in the sector around Samara. Soon the ROA found itself beyonfbeyond the German lines, freed from their former taskmasters. With the war winding down and the WRRF in retreat, the Germans wrote off their cannon fodder as mutinous Slav Untermensch. The new headquarters of the ROA in Samara were not spared any of the Luftwaffe terror bombing campaigns that followed. Since then the ROA has huddled in Samara, having traded one prison for another. Unable to expand their area of control by the terror bombings, and forbidden to go back home in the west, the common soldiers of the army have languished for the better part of a decade in their garrisons.

The ROA's officers, meanwhile, have grown weary of Vlasov's indecisiveness. they argue for a more decentralized leadership, and for the abandonment of KONR's orgiinaloriginal mission in favor of a continuation of the KONR's junta. using General [[Sergei Bunyachenko]] as their mouthpiece, the men of the Officers' Committee scheme to take advantage of Vlasov's apathy and old age. However the officers are not all united in ideology. Quite a few have formed a pro-democracy faction, and argue that Vlasov's heir as chairman of KONR should be [[Miletiy Zykov]], a former journalist that has maneuvered his way into being the chief propagandist of the ROA's regime in Samara. Zykov argues for the continued struggle to liberate Russia from Bolshevism as well as German oppression. In between all this, many common soldiers and lower ranking officers have grown tired of the high command's bickering and seek to follow General Oktan's goal to use the ROA to build a strong, fascist state... and to enrich the soliderssoldiers in the process.

==== CrossroasCrossroads ====

The ROA is at a crossroad. Loathed by all their neighbors as German collaborators, yet feared for their veteran army and iron discipline, the men of the ROA await the end of the terror bombing. Some seek to redeem their honor by rebuilding Russia. Others seek vengeance on the communists and on the Germans who have ruined their life. Finally, a growing minoirtyminority simply want to lash out at the uncaring world that has forced them to spend a decade holed in Samara.

|''Our army claims to fight to liberate the people of Russia. Alas, our current civilian morale is low. People living within areas we administer find their lives nasty, brutish and short. Food shortages, predatory taxation rackets ran by local soldiers and a general breakdown of law and order make the life of the population hellish. All curse the day the German dogs of the ROA slipped their leash.''