Vonsiatsky, Anastase Andreivich, 1898-1965

Anastase Vonsiatsky and Marion Ream are associated with a branch of the White Russian Fascist movement, which developed in response to the Communist takeover of Russia in 1917. A political émigré, Vonsiatsky sought to advance the fascist cause, and found the means to do so through his marriage to Marion Buckingham Ream, a wealthy American. Ream's fortune allowed for Vonsiatsky's schemes to manifest itself into the All Russian National Revolutionary Party (VNRP). Based in Putnam, Connecticut, the group had broad international ambitions. However, due to the unrealistic manner in which Vonsiatsky conducted this organization, his dreams of dismantling the Communist regime in Russia were never realized.

Anastase Andreivich Vonsiatsky was born in the Citadel of Warsaw, Poland on June 12, 1898, to Andrei Nicolaevich, a commander of Warsaw's gendarmerie, and Nina Anastasevna. Vonsiatsky attended a military preparatory school in Moscow, as well as the Emperor Nicholas II Cavalry Academy in St. Petersburg, and also served with the anti-Bolshevik forces after the October Revolution in 1917.

In January of 1920, Vonsiatsky who was recoperating from typhus at Yalta, in the southern Ukraine, met and married Lyuba Murmosky. The spread of the revolution, however, caused Vonsiatsky to seek work abroad effectively abandoning his new wife.

The following year, in 1921, Vonsiatsky met Mrs. Marion Stephens (Marion Buckingham Ream) in Paris. Ream was the daughter of Norman Bruce Ream, an affluent livestock and grain businessman of Chicago. Ream had married a Chicago attorney, Redmond Stephens, in 1903, but the couple divorced in 1918. After World War I Ream joined the YMCA as a relief worker in France. It was here that she met Vonsiatsky. Using her connections she was able to obtain employment for him in the United States, and even appealed to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to grant Vonsiatsky citizenship.

Once Vonsiatsky and Ream returned to the United States, they married on February 4, 1922. The union was almost immediately called into question when Lyuba, whom Vonsiatsky had never divorced, appeared seeking compensation from the Reams. This scandal was squelched when the Russian Orthodox Church and the U. S. Federal Government both declared Vonsiatsky's first marriage void. Vonsiatsky and Ream then relocated to Quinnatisset Farm in Putnam, Connecticut in 1925, which they later on would refer to as the "Nineteenth Hole."

On March 10, 1933, Vonsiatsky founded the All-Russian National Revolution Toilers and Worker Peasants Fascist Party (VRO), in which he assumed the leadership position as vohzd. The sole purpose of this new organization was the overthrow of the Soviet government in Russia. To help create the illusion that fascists forces were actively working to dismantle the USSR Vonsiatsky edited and self-published the "Fashist" newspaper, from his home in Putnam.

In the spring of 1934, Vonsiatsky merged with the Tokyo based Russian Fascist Party (RFP), led by Konstantin Vladimirovich Rodzaevsky, and formed the All Russian Fascist Party (VFP). Opposing views quickly terminated this alliance, although Rodzaevesky continued to use the name VFP. Vonsiatsky returned to the United States and reorganized his group under the name of All Russian National Revolutionary Party (VNRP).

The VNRP did not share many of the core ideologies espoused by the Nazis, specifically in regards to anti-Semitism, and after the Nazis-Soviet Pact in 1939 Vonsiatsky began showing real signs of disenchantment. By 1940, he asked the VFP in the Far East to assume control of the VNRP, and stopped publication of the Fashist. Nevertheless, when the Germans invaded the USSR in June of 1941, Vonsiatsky resumed his ambitious plans of overtaking the Soviet Union.

In 1941, Vonsiatsky met with the German-American bundführer, Wilhelm Kunze. Unknown to either of the men their meeting was infiltrated by undercover FBI agent, Alexius Pelypenko. Vonsiatsky's fabrications of the VNRP's activities in Russia had come under FBI scrutiny during the 1930s. FBI investigations, however, had produced no substantial evidence that Vonsiatsky's claims were true. But with the United States entry into World War II, the Justice Department took Pelypenko's report that Vonsiatsky was a threat to national security seriously and indicted Vonsiatsky in April of 1942 for espionage.

The prosecution against Vonsiatsky, led by Thomas J. Dodd, was able to "prove" its case. And Vonsiatsky was found guilty under the 1917 Espionage Act for conspiring to transmit national defense secrets to Germany and Japan. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment, which he served at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. When the war was over Vonsiatsky was granted early release in 1946.

In 1948, Vonsiatsky began a relationship with Edith Priscilla Royster and in July of 1950, Royster gave birth to Vonsiatsky's child, Andre Anastase Vonsiatsky. Ream sought a legal separation from Vonsiatsky, although it remains unclear whether they ever officially divorced. It is also indeterminable whether Vonsiatsky and Royster ever married. Vonsiatsky and Ream, however, remained friends, and there is evidence Ream doted on Andre and continued to give Vonsiatsky financial assistance until her death on November 11, 1963.

Vonsiatsky lived in Florida after the birth of Andre, and opened up the Tsar Nicholas II Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. There he wrote articles for several Russian émigré newspapers and journals, and published his book, Rasplatat (Retribution), in which he accused the Japanese government, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his personal nemesis, Thomas J. Dodd, of hampering the anti-Soviet cause. On February 5, 1965 Vonsiatsky died from coronary thrombosis at the age of sixty-six.

• 1877 Jan 9: Marion Buckingham Ream born in Woodlawn Park, Illinois to Norman Bruce Ream and Caroline Putnam
• 1898 Jun 12: Anastase Andreivich Vonsiatsky born in the Citadel of Warsaw, Poland to Andrei Nicolaevich and Nina Anastasevna
• 1903: Ream marries Redmond Stephens
• 1908: Vonsiatsky attends the Moscow Military Preparatory School
• 1916: Vonsiatsky enrolls in the Emperor Nicholas II Cavalry Academy in St. Petersburg
• 1917 - 1919 : Vonsiatsky joins the anti-Bolshevik forces and fights for two years in the eastern Ukraine
• 1918 Apr 6: Ream and Stephens divorce
• 1920 Jan 31: Vonsiatsky marries Lyuba Muromsky
• 1921: Vonsiatsky meets Ream in Paris
• 1922 Feb 4: Vonsiatsky and Ream marry at the Russian Cathedral of St. Nicholas, New York
• 1922 Apr 6: Lyuba Muromsky formally files a complaint against Vonsiatsky for bigamy
• 1922 Nov 22: New York ecclesiastical courts decreed the Vonsiatsky-Muromsky marriage void and the Vonsiatsky-Ream union valid
• 1925 Jun 12: Ream buys "Quinnatisset Farm," later known as the "Nineteenth Hole"
• 1927 Sep 30: Vonsiatsky becomes a naturalized American citizen
• 1927 - 1928 : Vonsiatsky joins the Brotherhood of Russian Truth
• 1932: Vonsiatsky resigns from the Brotherhood of Russian Truth
• 1933 Feb: Vonsiatsky befriends fellow Russian émigré and future fascist supporter, Donat Yosifovich Kunle
• 1933 May 10: Vonsiatsky and Kunle formally establish the All-Russian National Revolutionary Toilers and Worker-Peasant Fascist Party, also known as the All-Russian Fascist Organization (VFO)
• 1933 Aug: First issue of the Fashist is published
• 1933 Sep: Vonsiatsky and Ream travel to Germany in an attempt to legitimize the VRO with the Nazi party
• 1934 - 1935 : Vonsiatsky begins renovations on the Nineteenth Hole to turn it into a fortress against military and political enemies
• 1934 Mar - 1934 May : Vonsiatsky meets with Vladimir Rodzaevsky for summit meetings in Tokyo, Japan and Harbin, Manchuria
• 1934 Apr 3: Vonsiatsky and Rodzaevsky merge the Russian Fascist Party (RFP) and VFO via "Protokoll Number 1" into the All-Russian Fascist Party (VFP)
• 1935 Jun - 1935 Jul : The Third Congress of Russian Fascists in Harbin formally dissolves the VFP in favor of Rodzaevsky, leading Vonsiatsky to regroup under the All-Russian National Revolutionary Party (VNRP)
• 1935 - 1939 : Vonsiatsky works towards turning the VNRP into a legitimate fascist party
• 1936 Jun: Vonsiatsky opens the "Young Avantgarde Camp" for New York's Russian youth
• 1937 - 1939 : The FBI begins investigate Vonsiatsky's activities in order to determine if he has violated the Roosevelt-Litvinov agreement
• 1940 - 1941 : Vonsiatsky begins to distance himself from VNRP activity
• 1941 Jul: Vonsiatsky issues his last publication of the Fashist. Vonsiatsky gives Bundführer, Wilhelm Kunze $2800 in exchange for Kunze's promises to further Vonsiatsky's prestige in Berlin
• 1941 Jul - 1941 Aug : Vonsiatsky unknowingly meets with undercover FBI agent, Alexius Pelypenko, who alerts FBI to Vonsiatsky as a possible threat
• 1942 Apr: Vonsiatsky is indicted for having violated section 32 of the Espionage Act of 1917
• 1942 May 14: Formal judicial proceedings commence with Thomas J. Dodd as the prosecution
• 1942 Jun 22: Vonsiatsky pleads guilty and is sentenced to five years imprisonment
• 1942 Jul - 1946 Feb : Vonsiatsky is released after serving three years and seven months at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri
• 1948: Vonsiatsky begins an affair with Edith Priscilla Royster
• 1950 Jul 2: Royster gives birth to Vonsiatsky's son, Andre Anastase Vonsiatsky
• 1952 May 22: Vonsiatsky and Ream legally separate
• 1953: Vonsiatsky opens The Tsar Nicholas II Museum of St. Petersburg, Florida
• 1958: Ream establishes a $12,000 trust fund for Andre Anastase Vonsiatsky
• 1963: Ream adds to her will a provision which leaves Vonsiatsky $25,000
• 1963 Nov 11: Marion Buckingham Ream passes away at age eighty-six
• 1965 Feb 5: Anastase Andreivich Vonsiatsky dies from coronary thrombosis

From the guide to the Anastase Vonsiatsky and Marion Ream papers, Vonsiatsky (Anastase) and Ream (Marion) papers, 1861-1970, (Phillips Memorial Library, Special and Archival Collections)