Based on an extensive body of Russian and German sources, this book reconstructs the fate of the approximately 1.5 million soldiers and officers of the Russian army held in German prisoner of war camps during the First World War. Moving beyond institutional histories, it offers the first comprehensive account of captivity as a lived experience of the Great War. The study foregrounds the everyday worlds of the camps while at the same time tracing the forms of agency, cultural practices, religious life, and emotional regimes through which prisoners sought to endure and make sense of their confinement. The narrative does not end at the barbed wire but follows former prisoners into the upheavals of postwar return, where liberation often gave way to new tests of resilience amid revolution and the rise of a totalitarian dictatorship.

The initial translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent revision and proofread was carried out by Marianne Noble.

Oksana Nagornaia is a Researcher in the Department of Eastern European History at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.