Diplomatic activity of the soviet delegation exchange of prisoners of war and payment of expenses for their maintenance in the summer of 1918.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the diplomatic activity of the Soviet delegation in the summer of 1918. The author pays particular attention to the activities of the mixed Soviet-German Commission in Berlin and Moscow for the advancement of Russian prisoners of war and changes in additional agreements to the Brest peace Treaty, concerning exchange of prisoners and terms of payment costs for their content. The relevance of the research is to study the work of the Interdepartmental meeting and the Main liquidation Commission, which contributed to the signing of the German-Russian Protocol on the basis of the exchange of serviceable prisoners of war on both sides and the introduction of the concepts of "equivalent of work" and "plenodni" for calculating the costs of maintaining prisoners of war. The article is based on previously unexplored documents of the State archive of the Russian Federation, memoirs and memoirs of attache Semkov in Berlin. Referring to archival documents, the author of the article concluded that the exchange of "head to head" and the payment of costs of one and a half billion marks, which the Germans demanded for the maintenance of Russian prisoners of war, led the Soviet delegation to a dead end. The situation was saved by the beginning of the revolution in Germany, as a result of which the difficult conditions for prisoners of war of the Brest peace Treaty were canceled.