Authors

Discussion

This paper examines the Bolshevik Party’s efforts to radicalise the tens of thousands of Polish POWs held in makeshift prison camps across Soviet Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-20. The end goal was to create a new cadre of Polish revolutionaries who could agitate for revolutionary change on repatriation. These propaganda efforts, however, were almost entirely undermined by a series of everyday problems from rudimentary camp living conditions and violence against prisoners, to disease and ineffective leadership of Soviet institutions. The revolutionary project ultimately failed. But this paper will also show how, as part these efforts, the Bolsheviks committed to safeguarding POW welfare, echoing international standards set by the Hague Conventions, even if this was primarily designed to better cultivate revolutionaries and rarely met in practice. In a comparative sense, therefore, the everyday lives of Polish POWs’ and their management by Soviet authorities did not markedly differ from the POW elsewhere, where other governments likewise made claims about safeguarding welfare and often failed to deliver. Contrary to some interpretations of early Soviet POWs camps, which present these as unique stepping-stones to the future Stalinist GULAG, this paper shows how there were in fact stronger continuities with past practices.