Periodicals about the fate of Russian prisoners of war during the First World War

The materials of periodicals are an important source for the study of public opinion and policy of the government regarding the fate of Russian prisoners of War. The analysis of print proved that despite the Patriotic fervor that swept the press during the First World War, the plight of Russian prisoners of war was not well represented. The article analyzed the nature of the publications about the Russian prisoners and identified the reasons for the neglect of the press to their problems. Among these reasons, the author calls an unprecedented scale of captivity - the millions of War prisoners from each warring sides. The government and their controlled press, instead of analyze the causes of mass captivity and to understand and to correct the generals errors, they tried to forget the prisoners. The theme of captivity was not a separate issue in the national press, and it was used only as illustrative material for the formation of the "enemy image", to illustrate violations by the Germans of the international humanistic principles. This was largely due to the position of the government and the military for their own prisoners - they were seen as traitors, they were blamed for the failures that have dogged the Russian army in the first years of the War.