VARIOUS SOURCES
March 11, 2019
Last month, historians of the Vanguard phenomenon were taken by surprise when By The Victors: In Pursuit of Kazimir Volken, published by unknown author Filip Mikhailov, quietly made its appearance. Touted as a historical biography, Mikhaelov details the account of Francois Allegre, a French soldier of the Second World War whose SLC-Expressive nature singled him out among many prisoners of war and drew the attention of one Kazimir Volken. The book describes Allegre's own journalistic accounts of his time as Volken's prisoner of experimentation, and a decades' long search for revenge that maps Europe throughout the 1940s and onwards.
Since its release, By The Victors has generated both controversy and positive reception. Dr James Deroy of the University of California, Berkeley, praised the book as "a profound entry into pre-Bomb SLC-Expressive history" and "a fascinating and elegant narrative that marries astounding historical revelation with the melancholic, unjust times of those early years".
Much of its historical legitimacy rests on the proposition of personal journals kept and maintained by Allegre over a period of decades which Mikhailov claims personal access to, but has yet to release save for the entries quoted within the biography. Professor Sheryl Chartier of Cardiff University, whose early criticisms of By The Victors drew academic attention to its publishing, stated in her blog that "unless Filip is willing to release these journals and have them verified by any number of legitimate institutions, this is the stuff of fiction — and is as unbelievable as fiction, at that".
Mikhailov, through his publisher, released a statement that in response, stating that "if the events of this account are unbelievable, it is because it is prologue to a time on unbelievable happenings." He went on to describe By The Victors as "not the story of a hero, but a story of a witness to events that have shaped modern human history, and moreover, a story of failure".
Mikhailov has been unavailable for further comment.