The Identity Problem of Internees During the Collapse of the Russian Empire

The article deals with the self-identification of civilian prisoners, former subjects of the Russian Empire. On March 3, 1918, the Brest–Litovsk Peace Treaty between the Soviet Russia and the Central Powers was signed. By that time, about 1.5 million prisoners of war and 50 thousand internees were on the territory of the German Empire, who had to be returned to their homeland. This issue was dealt with by the Bureau of Prisoners of War and Internees. The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GA RF) contains materials from the Consulate of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) in Berlin, which describe the peculiarities of the interaction between ethnic and civil identification of internees and refugees. Among the refugees there were persons with German passports, which indicated that their owners were Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, but they all «want to return to Russia». It was perfectly acceptable for internees from the occupied regions to declare their desire to return to Russia, which was not applied to prisoners of war. Another aspect of the problem is the process of separation, which began in April 1918, which divided the internees into the category of persons from the soviet territories and another category from the occupied territories. This process was driven not systematically, but rather chaotically. The main criterion for separation was the place of birth, but the striving to extract themselves from the gripe of captivity forced the denying the internees’ ethnicity, because then they could leave the camp faster. It seems that it is quite correct to speak about situational citizenship in the context of the collapse of the empire and the post–war settlement. Political reality was the factor that forced certain groups of internees, for example, students, to be apathetic. Therefore, representatives of the Russian consulate were seriously concerned about the delivery of propaganda literature to the camps in an attempt not to lose the former subjects of the Russian Empire and to make from them the Soviet citizens.

Keywords

internment, repatriation, citizenship, ethnicity, situational identity.

Received

02.10.2023

Publication date

10.04.2024

Number of characters

17572

Cite

GOST	Rostislavleva N. The Identity Problem of Internees During the Collapse of the Russian Empire // Slavianovedenie – 2023. – Issue 5 C. 20-28 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://slav.jes.su/S0869544X0027862-1-1 (circulation date: 06.07.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S0869544X0027862-1
MLA	Rostislavleva, Natalia "The Identity Problem of Internees During the Collapse of the Russian Empire." Slavianovedenie 5 (2023):20-28. DOI: 10.31857/S0869544X0027862-1
APA	Rostislavleva N. (2023). The Identity Problem of Internees During the Collapse of the Russian Empire. Slavianovedenie (5), pp.20-28 DOI: 10.31857/S0869544X0027862-1

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