Slavic reciprocity of the Skopinsky district: Prisoners of war and migrants of the First World War in the Russian outback

Abstract

The specifics of the situation with the prisoners of war and the migrants of the First World War in regions of Russia far from the front has become an important research problem in the recent decades. Based on the materials of local archives, important aspects of the topic are gradually being developed, and first of all, those that relate to the peculiarities of the daily life of numerous people who had never been to those provinces and counties in which they had to settle against their will. Such documents, which have not yet been introduced into scientific circulation, are also stored in the State Archives of the Ryazan Region. Among them, materials relating to the situation of prisoners of war and settlers in Skopinsky district stand out for their completeness and originality. Archival evidence, in particular, makes it possible to correct the interpretation that has developed in historiography of the peculiarities of the marital relations of local residents with prisoners of war. Of great interest is the information about inter-Slavic contacts, which were first forced, and then voluntarily established in Skopin and the county, where until 1914 visitors from other regions of the Russian Empire, and even more so foreign nationals, made up a very small percentage of the population.