The First World War

August 1, 1914 The Russian Empire was embroiled in the First World War. The causes of the war were the struggle for the redistribution of the world and the policies of the leading world powers. The reason for the war was the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand. By the beginning of 1915, the country had lost more than 1.5 people killed, wounded, maimed and captured. The result of the war was a deep economic and political crisis. At the beginning of 1917, one day of the war cost 1 million gold rubles. In February 1917 A bourgeois revolution took place in Russia, and in October of the same year the Bolsheviks came to power. The Bolsheviks signed a separate peace with the Germans.

German and Austrian prisoners of war in Siberia (1914−1917)

During the First World War, 2 104 146 soldiers and officers of Austria-Hungary and 167 082 soldiers of the German army were captured in Russian captivity. Already in the first months of the war, prisoners of war began to arrive in the cities of Western Siberia. By the summer of 1915, 64,631 prisoners were stationed. In the winter of 1915−1916, the authorities intended to distribute 15,000 people only in the cities of the Tobolsk province. If this was tolerable for big Tyumen and Kurgan, then for Tobolsk with a population of about 25 thousand people, it was difficult to accommodate 5 thousand prisoners.

The main problem was the lack of warm housing. The construction of barracks for prisoners of war had not been mentioned before, but in wartime conditions the problem had to be solved quickly. The military found a very simple way out of the situation: they simply obliged the city authorities to find housing for the arriving prisoners by any means. All issues were resolved in an extreme hurry. The cities had to provide heating and lighting for these premises, while the military undertook to pay a meager "apartment salary" - 10 rubles 50 kopecks per prisoner of war per year. In Tobolsk, the prisoners were placed in city barns, in the buildings of the merchant Syromyatnikov. Private houses were rented for prisoners in Kurgan and Ishim.

Since the cities could not accommodate all the prisoners, it was decided to use the labor of prisoners of war in agriculture and industrial enterprises. The labor of prisoners was also used in the farms of individual peasants. However, not all peasants took prisoners for agricultural work. Some peasants refused to help the prisoners, arguing that there were not enough funds for their maintenance. Such peasants agreed to accept prisoners of war only if all expenses for the maintenance of prisoners were paid from the treasury. And yet there was also a category of peasants in the province who did not want to take prisoners of war under any circumstances. To supervise the prisoners of war, soldiers of the people’s militia were appointed to each village: one non-commissioned officer for 250−300 prisoners of war and one private as a platoon leader for every 50 people. The village head was obliged to keep records of householders who have prisoners of war.