In Russian captivity

The First World War produced such a massive number of prisoners of war and civilians (estimates range from 7 to 10 million) that it significantly changed the existing concept of "captivity". For a long time in the history of global military conflicts, this had been a common but secondary matter. The book, drawing on thousands of pages of surviving archival material, charts the lives of captured Czechs and Slovaks in Russia and the unique phenomenon of the creation of prisoner-of-war organisations. These gradually became the sole source for replenishing volunteers for the growing Czechoslovak army in Russia. The book presents the development of the institutional solution to the issue of captured Czechs in Russia, but also brings a number of stories from specific POW camps.