Italian POWs in Russia during the First World War: an Outline of Research Perspectives

Italian POWs in Russia during the First World War: an Outline of Research Perspectives. This article begins with a thorough analysis of the international historiography on the POWs during WWI and, in particular, of the studies dedicated to the Italian soldiers of the Habsburg army, who fell into captivity on the Eastern Front. Since the Czarist empire was trying to exploit the nationality factor to weaken the Austro-Hungarian army, Russian authorities offered the Italian POWs to go fighting against Austria in the Italian army, and these soldiers were faced with the uncanny plight of choosing between two nations. The war radically transformed the perception of national belonging of these men, who, after the October revolution, were also exposed to the propaganda of the Bolshevik regime. The author demonstrates that past historiography has not paid enough attention to the WWI as an event, which forced the soldiers to reflect on their own identity, and argues that a more attentive look at both Russian and Italian documents would allow a better understanding of the dynamics of national and social self-identification during WWI. In particular, the prison camp emerges as place of national education of a small élite, which woul