Russian Treatment Of Liberated Pow's

Discussion in 'Soviet' started by Thomas McCall, Sep 22, 2004.

  1. Thomas McCall

    Thomas McCall Senior Member

    I was just curious why the Soviet government spent so much time interviewing liberated Russian prisoners and why were they so suspicious of any that managed to escape such as in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel 'One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich' where escape Russias were not trated as heroes but as spies and either shot, sent to penal battalions or to the Gulag.

    This not nature of suspision cannot all be blamed on paranoia can it?
     
  2. laufer

    laufer Senior Member

  3. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    Stalin was wrapped up in his paranoia, and was convinced that Soviets taken POW had turned against him. He had some reason for that, because of the Vlasov Army, the Hilfswilliger, and the Ost Battalions, but he took it to an extreme, like everything else.
     
  4. morse1001

    morse1001 Very Senior Member

    The Soviet view was that anyone who surrendered did not their patriotic duty to the Motherland.

    In the Book, "Victims of Yalta" it gives examples of trainloads of former Soviet POWS being handed over, driven away and the british Squaddies hearing Gun Fire coming from the Soviet lines.

    Many of those who died because they had been POWS were counted in the causality figures issued at the end of the war.
     

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