Masiukovshchina, Slavuta, Lamsdorf: case study of Soviet prisoners of war from Udmurtia (1941-1945)

The research deals with the investigation of insufficiently studied aspects of the problem of captive Soviet soldiers and officers conscripted to the fronts of the Great Patriotic War in Udmurtia. Certain aspects concerning the number of conscripts from the republic, who died in German concentration camps, are analyzed by means of archival materials, which were brought into scientific circulation for the first time, as well as of published documents. The work attempts to summarize and analyze the well-known facts and new evidence related to the issue. The research provides specific data on the German detention centers for the prisoners of war, where the soldiers and officers from Udmurtia were among the prisoners, namely three German concentration camps in Belorussia, Ukraine and Poland. The study touches upon the conditions in these detention centers and reveals the reasons for the high number of lethal outcomes of the citizens who were there. The given data evidently shows that the Nazis carried out the systematic extermination of the Soviet prisoners of war via different methods. The analysis of published sources and archive materials for the first time in Russian historiography provides preliminary data on the number of soldiers from Udmurtia, who died in concentration camps in the districts of Masiukovshchina, Slavuta and Lamsdorf. The study makes a certain contribution to the elimination of another «white spot» in the history of World War II.