We consider the activities of the Soviet press in 1918 to inform society about the problems of Russian war prisoners in the camps of the states of the Quadruple Alliance, re-evacuation home and providing them with comprehensive state assistance. The relevance of the study is to compare the printed publications of the First World War, which operated during the reign of Nicholas II, the Provisional Government and the Soviet government, and to consider how the pol-icy and ideology regarding Russian prisoners of war affected the media. The purpose of the article is based on the analysis of newspaper clippings from 1918 of the State Archive of the Russian Federation. During the study of works by Russian historians, printed publications of the Great War, it was concluded that the attitude towards Russian war prisoners by the tsarist leadership and the Soviet authorities were different. In the Russian press for 1914–1917, problems related to Rus-sian war prisoners were rarely mentioned, mass surrenders and statistics on the number of prison-ers of war languishing in foreign camps were kept silent. Due to the lack of information in printed publications in 1914–1915 borrowed articles from foreign newspapers. It seems that tsarism has forgotten about its compatriots in captivity. But local newspapers constantly talked about the situation of foreign prisoners of war in various regions and cities of Russia. Clippings from Soviet newspapers provided important information that was difficult to find in other historical sources, showing the social policy and ideology towards Russian war prisoners on the part of the Bolshe-viks. The government headed by V.I. Lenin tried in every possible way to help war prisoners who found themselves in a difficult situation, covering their activities and the fate of prisoners of war in newspapers, thereby gaining the confidence of the population of the country in order to enlist support for the young Soviet state.