Victor M. Baydalakoff collection
Collection
Identifier: GTM-720920
The Victor M. Baydalakoff Collection consists of correspondence, documents, reports, and photographs, as well as some interesting examples of anti-Communist agitational literature. It contains various organizational materials, documents, reports, and publications generated by various administrative, information, and operational sectors of the NTS (Natsionalno-Trudovoi Soiuz, trans: The National Worker's Alliance), an organization Baydalakoff founded in 1930. Mr. Baydalakoff's personal correspondence (1952, 1954 - 1965) and papers are also present in the collection.
Although a small amount of pre-war material is found in the collection, the bulk of the material spans from approximately 1948 through 1956. It reflects the organization's past achievements, present challenges, and future goals, as well as providing a graphic illustration of the various internal power struggles among the leadership, which ultimately resulted in Victor Baydalakoff's split with the organization in 1956.
Consisting of ten boxes and one oversized container of approximately 6.5 linear feet in length, this collection offers researchers an opportunity to trace the historical, political, organizational, and ideological development of an important anti-Communist emigre organization (which is still in existence today), as well as the personal philosophy of its founder.
Researchers are solely responsible for determining the copyright status of the materials being used, establishing who the copyright owner is, locating the copyright owner, and obtaining permission for intended use.
Victor Mikhailovich Baydalakoff was born in Russia in 1900. After the October Revolution of 1917, he served with the anti-Bolshevik Don Cossack Army until its defeat and evacuation in 1920. He then spent the next ten to fifteen years in East European countries, founded the NTS, and began a thirty-five year career as its chief executive and ideologue. Relocating to Germany before the start of World War Two, he was arrested and jailed intermittently by the Nazis, but, with the war's end, he and his colleagues re-established and re-strengthened the NTS, gaining international support.
The NTS (Natsionalno Trudovoi Soiuz, trans: The National Worker's Alliance) was an anti-Communist Russian emigre organization. Founded in 1930 (with its main headquarters located in Germany), the NTS was dedicated to the liberation of Russia from the yoke of Communism, seeking to replace it with a society formulated upon the precepts of Russian Christian brotherhood, and solidarity between all classes. Its methods of achieving this goal appear to include agitation through propaganda (radio broadcasts to the USSR, newspapers, leaflets, and other materials), some direct internal agitation by agents, as well as a post-war operation, which urged the defection of Soviet Army soldiers stationed in Soviet-occupied Germany to the Western zones. With Stalin's death, the group became convinced that the Soviet Union would soon be riddled with weaknesses and divisiveness, that its downfal was imminent; this did not materialize. In addition, internal struggles over ideological and operational issues arose in the mid-fifties, mostly from younger members of the leadership. Their insistence upon recognition of the Soviet Union as a legitimate power, endorsement of a policy of sharing classified information with American organizations, and impatience with the older style of leadership, drove Baydalakoff and a splinter section of the NTS to split irrevocably from the organization.
Baydalakoff left Germany and settled in the United States. He eventually started another organization (RNTS) composed primarily of the membership that had stayed loyal to him. However, the organization could not build up the support that the NTS had, and appears not to have flourished.
Both Mr. Baydalakoff and his wife, Alexandra Nikolaevna, were employed by Georgetown University.
4.2 Linear Feet (10 Hollinger Document Cases + 1 oversized folder)
English
Gift of Mrs. Alexandra Baydalakoff, 1972.
Part of the Georgetown University Manuscripts Repository