Abstract
Abstract This article explores how Soviet soldiers were impacted by captivity in German-run POW camps within the USSR during World War II, focusing specifically on how the camps stripped POW s of their ability to act out their masculinity. Using the Slavuta POW camp as a case study, it argues camp life prevented prisoners from embodying two dominant versions of masculinity from the 1940s: the heroic Red Army soldier, and Lilya Kaganovsky’s concept of the masculinity of lack. This was true according to the Soviet state, but also reflects the narratives of POW-survivors, who made no attempts to claim that their struggle to survive in the notoriously deadly German POW camps was heroic. It draws on written accounts from POW survivors, sketches created by two POW-artists who spent time in the camp, and documentary photographs taken by Soviet state investigators after the camp’s liberation, all of which can be found within the files of the Soviet investigative body the Extraordinary State Commission.
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