27.10.2019 /

Prisoners of War in Kharkiv in 1916–1917

Despite the unprecedented interest in the history of our beloved city, the topic of the presence of prisoners of war in Kharkiv and the province during World War I has been studied rather little. However, I think it’s worth talking and writing about. To begin with, I’d like to note the following:

  1. In October 1914, Emperor Nicholas II approved the “Regulations on Prisoners of War,” which were based on the principles of the 1907 Hague Convention.
  2. Due to mass mobilization and enormous human losses, the country faced an acute labor shortage. Consequently, a series of documents were drafted and adopted to regulate the procedures for utilizing the labor of prisoners of war in various sectors of the economy.
  3. Broadly speaking, the process went like this: all enemy soldiers taken prisoner were first sent to a collection point and interrogated. Afterward, they were routed through frontline distribution and transit stations to the interior of the country and housed in temporary and permanent camps.
  4. Those who wished to obtain prisoners of war as laborers submitted applications to the district council, from where they were forwarded to the governor. After the governor’s approval, the requests were sent to a special commission attached to the General Staff Headquarters, which was responsible for the distribution of prisoners of war.
  5. In 1914–1915, prisoners of war from the German and Austro-Hungarian armies were held only in the Russian provinces of the European part of the empire.
  6. Prisoners of war did not appear in the Ukrainian provinces (and thus in Kharkiv) until 1916–1917.

To put it simply, there were several tens of thousands of prisoners of war in our region during those years. To begin with, we were indeed experiencing a labor shortage. In the collections of the Kharkiv Regional State Archives, one can find, if one looks, quite a few petitions to the governor of Kharkiv similar to the one submitted in 1916 by Philip Leontyevich Blagoy, a peasant from the village of Shevchenkove:

Since I have been called up for military service at this time—and given that I have a sizeable farm, while leaving behind my wife and elderly mother—in order to prevent the farm from falling into ruin, I have the honor to humbly request that Your Excellency grant permission, through the District Zemstvo Administration, to assign one or two prisoners of war to work on my farm; since at present it is impossible to find a Russian man (author’s note: meaning residents of the Russian Empire) for any amount of money. Their supervisor will be Grigory Andreevich Fedorchenko, a 60-year-old peasant from the Kharkiv volost, who is exempt from military service and is a close neighbor.

Based on numerous “Lists of the Number and Location of Prisoners of War Engaged in Agricultural Work,” it can be concluded that soldiers from Germany and Austria-Hungary were working for a great many residents of our region.

A document submitted to the governor of Kharkiv by the chairman of the district zemstvo council in late August 1916 also speaks volumes about the labor shortage:

Prisoners of war have been assigned to the Kharkiv District Zemstvo Administration for public works; among them are barbers, waiters, jewelers, engravers, and workers from a cloth factory—all of whom are completely unsuitable for agricultural work. Meanwhile, there is a high demand in the city of Kharkiv for jewelers, engravers, and barbers. Would it be possible, Your Excellency, to authorize the transfer of the aforementioned prisoners of war from the barracks located in Zhuravlevka to jobs corresponding to their specialties?

It is true that the governor of Kharkiv gave a negative response on September 10. However, even before the end of summer—and into early fall—life for German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in our city was, in some respects, not all that difficult. For example, military personnel and law enforcement officers of that time noted in their reports that the prisoners wandered the streets unescorted, sometimes dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, did not have the required identification markings on their caps bearing the word “prisoner of war,” presented leave slips issued by their employers when their documents were checked, smoked on the street, and did not salute passing officers. Moreover, at that time, angry dispatches began arriving in Kharkiv from the capital, pointing out that, due to extremely lax supervision, more than 20 escapes by prisoners of war had taken place on our territory between May 8 and June 7 alone. It is difficult to say why this was happening, but the fact remains. In early September, the Kharkiv authorities took fairly strict measures, namely:

  1. All prisoners who violated the provisions described above were to be immediately arrested and transferred to the temporary detention center for prisoners of war in Kharkiv.
  2. The names of the individuals who employed the offenders are to be reported in person to the Kharkiv district magistrate.
  3. Who, in turn, will petition the governor to hold negligent employers legally accountable for failing to comply with the rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war, as well as to revoke their right to use them for labor in the future.

All of this was carried out. Let me give you the following example. On September 25, an Austrian prisoner of war named Ivan Klesh was detained in our city; he had been working in the village of Vasyshcheve for the blacksmith Akim Shelestov and had recently been allowed to go to Kharkiv unescorted to do some shopping. By October 3, Shelestov had already been stripped of his right to employ labor.
But this was not the only problem with prisoners of war. Far more pressing and relevant was the issue of their living conditions. All incidents related to this were subject to detailed monitoring and investigation. For example, in February 1917, nine prisoners of war working at one of Kharkiv’s sugar factories pointedly refused to work and began inciting their comrades to strike, citing poor food and excessive labor as their reasons. However, the Kharkiv district police chief, who immediately traveled to the site, was able to ascertain the following:

  1. Work at the factory, as a defense industry facility, truly goes on around the clock.
  2. It is divided into three shifts.
  3. Consequently, each prisoner’s workday is 8 hours.
  4. Depending on the difficulty of the work, prisoners of war receive financial compensation ranging from 25 to 75 kopecks per shift.
  5. Meals consist of lunch and dinner, with 3 pounds of bread and 2 sugar cubes provided each day. Tea is available all day. For lunch, they receive borscht and porridge (barley or millet), seasoned with vegetable oil; they are also given meat four days a week. For dinner, the prisoners eat whatever is left over from lunch.
  6. The remaining 200 people, who are citizens of the Russian Empire, work under the same conditions.

As a result, the nine prisoners of war who went on strike were arrested for 14 days after receiving a stern reprimand.

Of course, as the saying goes, “there’s no smoke without fire.” There were also instances of cruel and inhumane treatment. In early January 1917, Senior Adjutant Chepanis, an ensign in the office of the commander of the Kharkiv Brigade, made a surprise inspection of a farm owned by a certain Nikolai Vladimirovich Berezovsky, located near the Rogan station. The details regarding the conditions under which prisoners of war were held there—as revealed in the report he compiled—are simply shocking. So, I advise those of a sensitive disposition not to read any further. So, at the aforementioned farm, there were 26 people working, housed in two rooms. Eighteen prisoners lived in the so-called “barracks,” and eight in a shed next to the barn. Upon inspecting the “barracks,” it turned out that the straw on the makeshift bunks was wet and rotten; it was impossible to sleep on it without risking one’s health. The floor in the room was earthen and very wet; at the entrance there was a porch with a water pipe running through it, completely flooded with water. At the time of the inspection, Chepanis found two sick prisoners in the “barracks,” lying on the wet bunks. One of them had frostbite on his feet, with the wounds wrapped in dirty rags. Although the frostbite had occurred about two weeks earlier, the patient had seen a doctor only once. The other prisoner of war had been suffering from a fever for three days, yet he had never seen a doctor.
The room for eight people turned out to be drier and more suitable for living. Despite this, both buildings were in a state of appalling filth. All 26 prisoners of war unanimously stated the following during the interview:

  1. They aren’t given anything to eat from morning until noon; they’re constantly hungry. They’re only given tea on Sundays.
  2. They work from morning until late at night, seven days a week, even on Sundays and religious holidays.
  3. Ivan Ryabukha, Berezovsky’s overseer, and Kirill Gerasemchuk, his foreman, beat them severely with whips and sticks; sometimes they also invite the local police officer to participate in the beatings. Moreover, even sick prisoners of war are subjected to such beatings. The marks from the beatings, discovered during the examination, confirmed all of this.
  4. Since all 26 people hadn’t bathed in seven months, they were literally swarming with lice; the people literally begged Chepanis, who had come to visit, to give them some underwear “in the name of humanity.”
  5. At Berezovsky’s labor camp, clothes were not washed centrally; many prisoners of war did not even have undershirts or long johns, so after washing their outer clothing, they literally walked around naked in the damp quarters during the winter.

During questioning, the owner’s mother confirmed that one prisoner of war had indeed been beaten so severely by the manager and two of his friends that he was bedridden for three days afterward. However, Chepanis was unable to interview the victim, since “he was out working somewhere.” Ivan Ryabukha himself confirmed during questioning that the prisoners of war’s workday lasted 12 hours, that they were poorly fed, and that they had no days off. However, according to him, “the prisoners are disobedient and generally too lazy to work.” Ryabukha also did not deny beating the prisoner. But he justified it by claiming that the prisoner had been planning to escape. Based on all this, on January 20, a decision was made to remove all 26 people from work at Berezovsky’s site due to the unacceptable conditions of their detention. Subsequently, this incident was apparently “hushed up”—and at the very highest level—since in March, the vice governor of Kharkiv wrote to the deputy commander of the Moscow Military District:

I took no further action against the landowner Berezovsky, given the absence of government orders to impose penalties…

I agree, it’s a truly horrifying story. But let’s be honest: our city’s past isn’t just about famous people and great achievements. It also includes such egregious human rights violations, which are equally worth knowing about and remembering.

Anton Bondarev
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CategoriesHistory Kharkiv in WWI