POWs of World War I in the Kazan Province

The relevance of the topic is due to the need to generalize the available material on the history of the First World War from the point of view of the involvement of Kazan province in it. The goal is to study this war as a historical event, accompanied along with death, physical and moral mutilation of people, and the emergence of new social strata in the deep Russian rear: internally displaced persons (refugees) and persons caught in the power of enemy (prisoners of war). The purpose of this paper is dictated by the desire to explore this inevitable consequence of the First World War. We will try to consider the nature and peculiarities of using the labor potential of prisoners of war from the countries participating in the Triple Alliance, in the Kazan province in 1914-1917. The leading method to investigate this problem was the system approach and system analysis, which allowed considering people captured in the deep Russian rear as the prisoners, as part of the complex phenomenon of the world war, that was the captivity. By means of general scientific and special-historical methods, the numerical and national composition, peculiarities of accommodation, conditions of detention and the organization of labor of prisoners of war who arrived in Kazan are analyzed. Based on the newly introduced archival materials, the reasons for the difficulties encountered with the placement of prisoners of war, the number and the employment of prisoners were clarified. It is concluded that there is a noticeable difference between the order and working conditions of prisoners of war in different counties of the province, in the countryside and in cities; and also on the absence of intentional violation of the rights of prisoners of war.