“Escape Impossible to Stay”: Prisoners of War and the Practice of Escape in Russia during the First World War, 1914–1917

The article reinterprets the escapes of prisoners of war in Russia during the First World War (1914–1917), challenging the conventional explanation that attributes them solely to weak supervision. It argues that this administrative perspective denies prisoners’ subjectivity and overlooks escape as an expression of agency. Drawing on official documents and contemporary reports, the study examines how the adaptation of prisoners to captivity created new social dynamics that made escape both imaginable and practicable. As prisoners developed inclusive forms of socialisation, communication networks, and mutual support, escape attempts became increasingly systematic. The persistence and recurrence of escape patterns, despite the authorities’ countermeasures, demonstrate that preventing such acts was effectively impossible. Choosing between “to escape, it is impossible to stay” and “to stay, it is impossible to escape,” prisoners asserted their autonomy and forced the Russian authorities to treat them as active participants in the wartime experience. The study also considers the response of the Russian administration and counterintelligence, which redefined escapes as deliberate subversive acts rather than minor breaches of discipline. This shift reveals how the phenomenon of captivity extended the reach of war far beyond the battlefield, drawing diverse social groups into its orbit and reshaping the boundaries between coercion, adaptation, and resistance.