During the First World War, a large number of Imperial Russian POWs that were captured by the Austro-Hungarian army in successful battles on the eastern battlefield came on Slovenian territory. Through collective camps, they were transported to the hinterland where they were assigned to the military administration or individual municipalities for work in the civil sphere.
Military prisoners under military administration were mostly involved in the construction of infrastructure and the consolidation of the defensive line on the Isonzo front. They lived in captive camps in poor living conditions. Those who were employed in the civil sphere worked in craft workshops and factories or helped on larger farms. Russian prisoners represented a much-needed labour force during the war.
The locals who were in contact with them in any way remembered them after their singing and deep devotion to religion. The presence of Russian military prisoners in Slovenia is still witnessed today by large infrastructure projects, which are still in use in some places, various products made by prisoners in their free time which they have exchanged for food, and last but not least by some of the cemeteries, monuments and individual graves that remind us about the horrors of the Great War.
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