In post-war Soviet historiography the question of collaboration with the German occupation forces was not posed as such. In the official memoirs of Soviet partisans and commanders, and in some works published in the West, there were oblique mentions of ‘turncoats’, of ‘these renegades and scum’, of ‘people with their roots in the former exploiting classes’, and of the creation of anti-Soviet formations from among local populations. The participants in these formations were almost always presented as former criminals and nationalists.