Use of Prisoners of War Labor in Karelia During the First World War

Abstract

The article describes the study of using prisoners' labor in Karelia during the First World War. The scientific novelty of the study is that for the first time the angle of approach to this problem was beyond the traditional context of the issue, that usually covers the details of the Murmansk railway construction and prisoners labor service. The author analyzed the proposals which were put forward by the Zemstvos and by the governing bodies of the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces. They proposed to use the labor of prisoners in the implementation of several infrastructure projects, which were aimed at achieving major strategic defense objectives, as well as at solving local economic problems. The text has a special focus on the problem of using prisoners of war in the field work in Karelia. The study concluded that the labor of war prisoners was hardly used in Karelia. The only major construction project, which included prisoners labor, was the construction of the Murmansk railway. Several reasons for that were defined and presented in the article. Firstly, it was due to the reluctance of the Central authorities to spend money on major projects duplicating the railway to Murmansk, which was under construction. Secondly, it was caused by the position of the Olonets provincial administration, which resisted the additional inflow of prisoners of war to Karelia. Thirdly, it was dependent on the specificities of local peasant population and its regional economic structure.