anti-Stalinist military commander who, captured by the Germans early in World War II, became a turncoat and fought with the Germans against the Soviet Union.

The son of a kulak, Vlasov was drafted into the Red Army in 1919 and fought in the Russian Civil War. He joined the Communist Party in 1930 and, in 1938, went to China to serve as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. He returned to Russia in 1939 and, after playing major roles in the defense of Kiev and Moscow against the Germans in 1941, was captured with his army in July 1942.

In 1944 Nazi leaders allowed Vlasov to form the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia with the aim of overthrowing the regime of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The Russian Liberation Army, which he also headed, was composed of former Russian soldiers captured by the Germans. Near the end of the war, Vlasov's 50,000 troops were allowed by their distrustful German sponsors to go into battle against the advancing Red Army. Most of them soon afterward surrendered to American forces advancing on Czechoslovakia and were forcibly repatriated to Soviet authorities. Vlasov was handed over to the Soviets in May 1945 and was tried and hanged.