Archival Documents on the European Prisoners of World War I in the Semirechye Oblast of the Turkestan General Governorship: A Case Study
The article uses the method of case study and draws on documents discovered by the authors in the fonds of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (TsSA RK) to reconstruct the captivity in Semirechye of a party of prisoners of war from German and Austro-Hungarian armies. The purpose of this work is to study microhistory and history of the everyday life of the European prisoners of World War I in Kazakhstan: their welfare and economic conditions, social and ethno-confessional relations within their world, their interactions with local population, material evidence of their activity, which is still partially preserved in present-day Almaty. The authors have drawn on the following types of sources: archival documents and photographs from the fonds of the TsSA RK (some of them are being introduced into scientific use for the first time); materials of periodicals of the studied period; statistical data, etc. Analysis of these sources allows to reconstruct the full picture of captivity of a group of European POWs in the Semirechye Oblast of the Turkestan General Governorship. The POWs participated in road laying and road repair in Verny and in the Pishpek uezd. Their living conditions, although comfortless, little differed from those of the local population. When at work, the POWs were provided with hot meals, which were even modified according to their national tastes. Medical services were elementary and fell almost completely to the POWs themselves. Their treatment by locals was ambiguous, but not hostile. There seemed to be no ideological tinting to their interactions with building authorities or locals. In the authors’ opinion, to reconstruct a more complete and detailed picture of interactions and mutual influences of different races, every one which had their own influence on the course of the Kazakhstan history, further research is necessary.