Soviet repressions against former prisoners of war

From the beginning of the Second World War, the Soviet policy—intended to discourage defection—advertised that any soldier who had fallen into enemy hands, or simply encircled without capture, was guilty of high treason and subject to execution, confiscation of property, and reprisal against their families. Issued in August 1941, Order No. 270 classified all commanders and political officers who surrendered as culpable deserters to be summarily executed and their families arrested. Sometimes Red Army soldiers were told that the families of defectors would be shot; although thousands were arrested, it is unknown if any such executions were carried out. As the war continued, Soviet leaders realized that most Soviet citizens had not voluntarily collaborated. In November 1944, the State Defense Committee decided that freed prisoners of war would be returned to the army while those who served in German military units or police would be handed over to the NKVD. At the Yalta Conference, the Western Allies agreed to repatriate Soviet citizens regardless of their wishes. The Soviet regime set up many NKVD filtration camps, hospitals, and recuperation centers for freed prisoners of war, where most stayed for an average of one or two months. These filtration camps were intended to separate out the minority of voluntary collaborators, but were not very effective.

The majority of defectors and collaborators escaped prosecution. Trawniki men were typically sentenced to between 10 and 25 years in a Gulag labor camp and military collaborators often received six-year sentences to special settlements. According to official statistics, "57.8 per cent were sent home, 19.1 per cent were remobilized into the army, 14.5 per cent were transferred to labor battalions of the People's Commissariat for Defence, 6.5 per cent were transferred to the NKVD ‘for disposal’, and 2.1 per cent were deployed in Soviet military offices abroad". Different figures are presented in the book ''Dimensions of a Crime. Soviet Prisoners of War in World War II'', which reports that of 1.5 million returnees by March 1946, 43 percent continued their military service, 22 percent were drafted into labor battalions for two years, 18 percent were sent home, 15 percent were sent to a forced labor camp, and 2 percent worked for repatriation commissions. Death sentences were rare. On 7 July 1945, a Supreme Soviet decree formally pardoned all former prisoners of war who had not collaborated. Another amnesty in 1955 released all remaining collaborators except those sentenced for torture or murder.

Former prisoners of war were not recognized as veterans and denied veterans' benefits; they often faced discrimination due to perception that they were traitors or deserters. In 1995, Russia equalized the status of former prisoners of war with that of other veterans.

During and after World War II freed POWs went to special "filtration camps" run by the NKVD. Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions. In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated Ostarbeiter, POWs, and other displaced persons, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the Gulag.

According to Russian historian G.F. Krivosheev, 233,400 former Soviet POWs were found guilty of collaborating with the enemy and sent to Gulag camps out of 1,836,562 Soviet soldiers who returned from captivity. According to other historians, 19.1% of ex-POWs were sent to penal battalions of the Red Army, 14.5% were sent to forced labour "reconstruction battalions" (usually for two years), and 360,000 people (about 8%) were sentenced to ten to twenty years in the Gulag. These data do not include millions of civilians who have been repatriated (often involuntarily) to the Soviet Union, and a significant number of whom were also sent to the Gulag or executed (e.g. Betrayal of the Cossacks). The survivors were released during the general amnesty for all POWs and accused collaborators in 1955 on the wave of De-Stalinization following Stalin's death in 1953.

However, some other historians, such as Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär claimed that almost all returning Soviet POWs were convicted of collaboration and treason and sentenced to the various forms of forced labour, while admitting that it would be unlikely to study the full extent of the history of the Soviet prisoners of war.