The First World War: Life of Scientists Prisoners-of-War in Russian Captivity: 1915–1917
| 23 January 2025
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Rafikova G.E., Kazan, Russian Federation
The First World War: Life of Scientists Prisoners-of-War in Russian Captivity: 1915–1917
Abstract
Researchers are paying more attention to the issue of prisoners-of-war and to the conditions of captivity during World War I. World War I was unmatched in number of countries, peoples, forces, new weapons and methods of warfare involved, and also in losses in killed, wounded and captured. Captivity, as a part of the social history of war, is increasingly becoming an object of study. In studying captivity we cannot ignore the activities of the Red Cross. The first Stockholm conference of the Red Cross on 22 November 1915 laid the foundations for settlement of captivity issues. Convention adopted on the conference alleviated the conditions of detention, facilitated food and medical care supply, prisoners-of-war were allowed to receive remittances, correspondence, books. Review of captured officers of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies quartered in Kazan identified ex–university professors, then prisoners-of-war, who at the request of the Red Cross came to work in the Kazan University library. Drawing on archival sources, particularly personal correspondence from the collections of the Kazan Federal University library, and on memoirs of Roman Dybosky, professor of the Jagiellonian University and a prisoner-of-war during World War I, the author establishes reasons for transfer of captured professors to Kazan and studies conditions of their life and work in the Kazan University.
Keywords
Archive, source, World War I, 1st Stockholm conference of the Red Cross, Kazan University, Roman Dybosky, Walter Anderson
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About the authors
Rafikova Gulnara Ernstovna, Phd in History, deputy editor-in-chief of the scientific and documentary magazine “Echo of Centuries”, Kazan, Russian Federation, +7-843-523-54-15, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it