[marsyao]

Josh Osborne, we are sure of out of topic here, but here is something you may found interesting, that was from "Axis history forum":

During the war most pows went straight back into the ranks. The vast majority of liberated Soviet pows after the war were reassigned to the Red Army, after screening. And I think people have tended to get confused between the screening camps and the gulags. Screening was intended initially to take 10 days. It later took around 2 months to process an individual (statements, story of captivity, cross-checking against other accounts and, if suspicious, interrogation). There's been quite a lot of research about this recently, most of it being done by Zemskov, Polian and Sevjakov. I've taken this from Polian (Deportiert nach Hause).

Of 4,400,901 citizens of the Soviet Union repatriated by 1 March 1946, 1,569,572 were former prisoners of war.

Of the total repatriated 4,199,488 had been filtered by 1 March (1,539,475 of them pows) and 57.8% had been released to go home, 19.1% had been reassigned to army units, 14.5% were working in reconstruction units, 6.5% (272,867 people) had been detained in NKVD camps and 2.1% were working in special teams dismantling industrial sites in Poland and germany for transport to the USSR.

Of the former pows 281,780 (18,3%) were sent home, 659,190 (42,8%) were placed in reserve units of the Red Army, 344,448 (22,3%) were placed in labour battalions and 226,127 (14,6%) were handed over to the NKVD. The other 27,930 (1,81%) were used in the dismantling units.


The released pows were mostly assigned to the Red Army. Thus 268,794 repatriated indiduals (some pows, some civilian workers) were assigned to reserve units in 1944, 779,406 in 1945 and 7,725 in 1946 (a total of 1,055,925). Most of the other pows went to construction battalions. Soviet documents show that construction battalions accounted for 344,448 released pows. Most of these batallions, which were run on military lines, were disbanded in September 1946.


Polian gives figures to show that the NKVD received 272,867 individuals by 1 March 1946. Sevjakov puts the figure at 338,107 of which 55,015 were civilians. The military special prisoners were classified by an order of Golikov and Chrulev on 18 January 1945 and were mainly pows who had been in German military or police units (the term Vlasovites covered most German military units composed of Soviet citizens for the Soviet authorities). A further 148,079 prisoners arrived in these camps up to 1947, most of them repatriated by agreement with the Americans or British.

So you can see that the idea that all pows returned to the Soviet Union were handed over to the NKVD for imprisonment or execution is an absolute myth. Of the prisoners of war retaken by the Soviets just over 14% were sentenced for punishment. Considering the number of Soviet citizens in German uniform that's not an especially huge amount (and I think it'd do you good to see how any European country dealt with collaborators - none of them were welcomed home).

And of course pows were asked questions during filtration. Numbers of camp polizei, collaborators and others were attempting to pass themselves off as pows. And, of course, Soviet authorities wanted to find those responsible and asked questions to find out. You can read Temkin's memoirs - he gives a complete account of his NKVD debriefing. And he was no friend of the SU - he emigrated in the 1960s. Many of the questions were designed to check which units guarded which prisoners so the guilty officers could be found - just as the Americans wanted to find