Before 1945, the Army was known as Sonderdivision Russland (German: Special Division Russia), an organisation composed of White emigrants, who trained prisoners of war and defectors from the Red Army to obtain information about the partisan movement, like the names of the main leaders and their locations.

[1] Initially part of the Nazi German Wehrmacht, Smyslovsky's forces were elevated to the 1st Russian National Army on 10 March 1945.

Liechtenstein was the only state which denied Soviet demands for the extradition of Russians who fought on the side of the Axis powers.

By April 1945, Smyslovsky had moved his remaining fighters to Feldkirch where he met Grand Duke Vladimir Cyrillovich, the Romanov claimant to the Russian Imperial Crown.

Liechtenstein was the only country that rejected this demand and informed the Soviet government that only those Russians who wanted to go home would be sent back.