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.

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The correspondence, books, newspapers, photographs, audio recordings and printing blocks, which encompass this collection, pertain to either the personal lives of Anastase Andreivich Vonsiatsky and Marion Buckingham Ream, or to the All Russian National Revolutionary Party (VNRP), founded and led by Vonsiatsky.

Many of the documents relate directly to Ream's first marriage to Redmond Stephen, including private correspondence and documents from their divorce. Pamphlets linked to Ream's service in the YMCA, novels which held a personal interest to her, and a scrapbook about the life of Chicago entrepreneur Marshall Field, are also included.

The remaining materials in the collection focus on Anastase Vonsiatsky and his activities as the vozhd of the VNRP. These include pamphlets written in Russian, the complete set of the newspaper Fashist published by Vonsiatsky, maps of the USSR, copies of the periodical the “Gentiles Review,” photographs featuring Vonsiatsky, the VNRP, and the Vonsiatsky-Ream home in Putnam, Connecticut, and printing blocks utilized for party propaganda.

In addition, there are audio recordings of Vonsiatsky and members of the VNRP singing Horst Wessel’s song, “Raise the Banner,” and recorded speeches made by Herbert Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt, on 78 rpm phonograph albums.

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This collection is arranged into five series.

Series list

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Researchers wishing to find materials related to this collection should search the HELIN catalog with these index terms -- View the catalog record for this collection.

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Prior its donation to the College the collection, which was discovered on the former Ream estate was presumably kept by Anastase A. Vonsiatsky and Marion B. Ream in their personal possession.

Anastase A. Vonsiatsky and Marion B. Ream papers, Providence College, Phillips Memorial Library, Special and Archival Collections

Mr. Richard E. Snow, who purchased the Ream estate in 1970, discovered the collection in one of the buildings on the property grounds and subsequently donated the collection in May of that year to Providence College.

The collection was originally processed in 1970

Finding aid prepared by Shannon McNamara.

Finding aid encoded by Shannon McNamara, 2008

Open for research.

Terms governing use and reproduction: Photocopying and scanning of materials is a fee based service available in the repository and is allowed at the discretion of the Librarian of Special and Archival Collections when in compliance to the College's policy on copyright and publication.

No materials were separated from this collection

For more information on Anastase A. Vonsiatsky, Marion B. Ream and the White Russian Movement, see:

Stephan, John J. The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945 Harper & Row, 1978.

Additional information on Anastase A. Vonsiatsky and the White Russian Movement can be found on the Online Archive of California in the Stephan (John J.) Collection held by the Hoover Institution.

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