BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 136
A TIME TO REMEMBER
ranks who had been involved, the overwhelming majority
of whom expressed, both at the time and since, their
detestation and shame at being compelled to participate
in operations all too comparable to those practised by the
defeated Nazi enemy.
On his return to Russia, he became close to President
Yeltsin, whom he urged to come to my aid. Yeltsin shared
his view and instructed his chief-of-staff to contact me. In
the course of a week, he telephoned me twice, enquiring
what the President could do to help.
After Macmillan and Keightley had died, the sole surviving
author of these deliberate infractions of the Christian code
and international law alike was Lord Aldington, who had
deliberately altered orders to con昀椀rm the inclusion of
identi昀椀ed non-Soviet citizens among those particularly
wanted by Stalin. Precisely similar conduct perpetrated by
German chiefs of staff had been punished at the Nuremberg
Tribunal with lengthy terms of imprisonment.
Although grati昀椀ed by this offer, I could not see what even
he might achieve. However, at the close of the same week
I received a further call, in which I was politely asked
whether it would assist were the President to grant me
access to the relevant secret Soviet 昀椀les!
However, in consequence of events too complex to be
recapitulated here, the only person punished for these
mass war crimes was the writer of the present article. In
1989 I was 昀椀ned £1,500,000 in the High Court, together
with £500,000 to cover Aldington’s costs. In fact, it turned
out that Aldington had perjured himself when claiming
costs, since it subsequently emerged that they had been
secretly paid by Sun Alliance, of which Aldington had been
Chairman.
“I should think so!” was my gleeful response, and within
a couple of weeks I was received in the dreaded Lubyanka
building, where the deputy head of the FSB (formerly
KGB) General Kondaurov presented me with a bulky 昀椀le of
photocopied SMERSH documents from 1945.
There is insuf昀椀cient room here to explain the extraordinary
extent to which the new evidence upheld my accusations,
but that it does to an unanticipated extent is set out in my
recent book Stalin’s Vengeance. (British publishers proving
afraid to publish it, it came out in the United States).
I had from time-to-time entertained nightmares about
entering the dreaded building but was now received
with courtesy and total co-operation by the courteous
Kondaurov. As General Volkogonov, head of the Russian
archives, genially declared to me beforehand: “I hope you
can see that your name still carries weight in our country.”
A curious postscript to this dramatic visit occurred in the
following year. Finding myself again in Moscow (I bear a
Russian passport as well as a British one), I received from
General Kondaurov an invitation to lunch at the Hotel
Metropole, former headquarters of the Comintern.
After some pleasant discussion about this and that, he
startled me with an invitation to head the international
operations of Bank Menatep, in which he now occupied a
senior position. I felt obliged to decline: not least because
I am so innumerate that my wonderful wife Georgina (a
loyal partner in all our adventures) long ago took over
management of our household accounts.
Count Nikolai Tolstoy
However, legal judgments on historical events may prove
delusory. Within a year, Aldington’s alibi in 1945 was
blown apart by unique contemporary evidence of his
departure date discovered in the Public Record Of昀椀ce.
More astonishing still for me was the volte face in my
position brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union
in the early 1990s. While in exile, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
had been an outspoken defender of my cause, arranging for
a Russian translation of Victims of Yalta to be published in
Russian.
Meanwhile, in the eyes of the English judiciary only one
person remains guilty with regard to postwar British war
crimes – and that is not Lord Aldington! Although his
perjury is now public knowledge, the judiciary has needless
to say made no move to throw out his claim for expenses;
furthermore, the law has always held that the dead cannot
be libelled. Although Aldington died at the turn of the
century, my legal adviser’s submission that the court
injunction should accordingly be lifted has been met with
an evasive refusal.
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