Some

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...

who survived German captivity during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

were accused by the Soviet authorities of

collaboration with the Nazis In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborationism, collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion." Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops, believing they ...

Forced labor: Soviet POWs January 1942 through May 1945
''

Holocaust Encyclopedia The ''Holocaust Encyclopedia'' is an online encyclopedia, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, offering detailed information about The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of Europe ...

'',

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust h ...

. or branded as

traitor Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

s under Order No. 270, which prohibited any soldier from surrendering.

Overview

During and after World War II freed POWs went to special " filtration camps" run by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

. Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in

penal battalions Penal military units, including penal battalions, penal companies, etc., are military formations consisting of convicts mobilized for military service. Such formations may contain soldiers convicted of offenses under military law, persons enrolled ...

. In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated ''

Ostarbeiter : ' (, "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Germans started deporting civilians at the beginnin ...

'', POWs, and other

displaced persons Forced displacement (also forced migration) is an involuntary or coerced movement of a person or people away from their home or home region. The UNHCR defines 'forced displacement' as follows: displaced "as a result of persecution, conflict, g ...

, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...

. Russian historian G.F. Krivosheev gives slightly different numbers based on documents provided by the KGB: 233,400 were found guilty of collaborating with the enemy and sent to Gulag camps out of 1,836,562 Soviet soldiers who returned from captivity. Latter data do not include millions of civilians who have been repatriated (often involuntarily) to the Soviet Union, and a significant number of whom were also sent to the Gulag or executed (e.g.

Betrayal of the Cossacks The Repatriation of Cossacks or "Betrayal of the Cossacks" occurred when Cossacks, ethnic Russians and Ukrainians who were opposed to the Soviet Union (such as by fighting for Germany) were handed over by British and US forces to the Soviet Union ...

). The survivors were released during the general amnesty for all POWs and accused collaborators in 1955 on the wave of

De-Stalinization De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension ...

following Stalin's death in 1953. While many scholars agree that de-classified Soviet archive data is a reliable source,S. G. Wheatcroft, ''The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and Its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest.'' Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 6 (Sep., 2000), pp. 1143–1159 Rolf-Dieter Müller and

Gerd R. Ueberschär Gerd R. Ueberschär (born 18 August 1943) is a German military historian who specialises in the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. He is one of the leading contributors to the series ''Germany and the Second World War'' and, together with ...

claimed "Soviet historians engaged for the most part in a disinformation campaign about the extent of the prisoner-of-war problem." and claimed that almost all returning POWs were convicted of collaboration and

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

hence sentenced to the various forms of forced labour, while admitting that it would be unlikely to study the full extent of the history of the Soviet prisoners of war. Thousands of Soviet POWs indeed survived through collaboration, many of them joining German forces, including the SS formations.

References

{{reflist Aftermath of World War II in the Soviet Union Political repression in the Soviet Union Soviet prisoners of war

Overview

See also

References