Historia provinciae: журнал региональной истории (Dec 2023)
“I Had a Document in the Form of a Pass in German…”: An Incident from the Life of Soviet Prisoners of War in 1941
Abstract
On the basis of published and archival ego-documents, the article reconstructs the stories of military medical assistant Timofei M. Malygin and junior lieutenant of the Red Army Vladimir S. Nyrkin who were held captive by the Germans for a short period of time in 1941–42. These stories are of interest because in addition to the event-related aspect associated with the captivity of the Red Army commanders and their subsequent escape, there are hidden mental structures of the narrative: fatalism, high level of adaptability to circumstances, willpower, enterprise, ability to find non-standard solutions, and rejection of any kind of racial superiority and humiliation. The article consists of 5 main sections and brief conclusions. In the first section, the authors characterize the explanatory concept adopted by them within the framework of the anthropological perspective of historical knowledge. We were interested in particular instances that allow us to see what cannot be descried in a universal historical perspective: characteristic features of time and place, people’s actions and relationships described by those people. The article focuses on the participation of both main characters in helping the wounded Soviet prisoners of war. The second section contains a brief historiographical overview of the subject of and presents methods for working with sources, among which are the records of interrogations of Vladimir S. Nyrkin and Timofei M. Malygin in the investigative bodies of the NKVD. Three subsequent sections reveal the stages of being in captivity: the act of being taken captive, being held in captivity, and escape. The conclusion summarizes the results of the study. Despite their privileged position, the Red Army commanders fled from the camp at the first opportunity: V. Nyrkin established contact with the partisans, and T. Malygin used available material resources and exchanged valuables and money for the local residents’ services necessary for the escape. Authentic German documents related to the topic are presented in the article in the form of illustrations: a “passport” handwritten by a German military doctor and a typewritten “Ausweis” signed by the commandant of the transit camp for prisoners of war in the city of Smolensk.
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