reason for a soldier to be captured by the enemy, and there were strict
punishments for the families of those who voluntarily went over to
the German side. Those who escaped from German captivity and
made their way back to Soviet lines were often treated with suspi-
cion, and some were executedfor desertion. Aleksandr Yakovlev, a
decorated war hero, noted: “A serviceman taken prisoner was re-
garded as having committed a premeditated crime. Soviet soldiers
and commanding officers who had broken out of encirclements were
treated as potential traitors and spies.” The end of the war thus pre-
sented a major challenge to the regime: what to do with those who
had been imprisoned by the Nazi enemy, and—however, unwilling—
had seen the West.
More than 1.8 million former prisoners of war and 3.5 million
civilians drafted as slave laborers returned to Russian hands in
1945–1947. (Almost 500,000 Soviet citizens remained in the West,
including 160,000 former prisoners of war.) All former prisoners and
forced laborers were put through “filtration” camps run by Smersh
and the NKVD. Of those in the military, 339,000 were sentenced to
death or 25 years hard labor in the gulag. Another 145,000 received
six-year sentences in special regime camps. Other soldiers were sen-
tenced to internal exile, to work in eastern Siberia or the Far North.
Civilians were not completely forgiven: many had their passports
stamped with the note that they were forbidden to live in major Eu-
ropean cities.
A harsh fate awaited those who had joined the Vlasov Army, a
force comprising several divisions of Russian soldiers armed by Ger-
many to fight against the Red Army. The group had been organized
by General Andrei Vlasov, the hero of the Battle of Moscow, who
had been captured in 1942. Vlasov and several of his chief subordi-
nates were hanged in the Lubyankain 1946. A picture of the exe-
cuted men hanging from gallows was found in Joseph Stalin’s desk
after his death.PROCURACY. In the Soviet Union, the prosecutor’s office was
known as the procuracy. During the years of Joseph Stalin, the
procuracy’s powers were severely limited in favor of the security
services. The Chekaduring the civil warand the NKVDin the late
1930s had the right to arrest, try, and execute political prisoners.PROCURACY• 20906-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 209