KAZAKH PRISONERS OF WAR OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR: PROBLEMS OF REHABILITATION, G. KOKEBAEVA, B. DZHAPAROV, E.BYATOV, N. ASILOV

Abstract

The authors investigated the history of prisoners of war during World War II, a topic that was considered one of the most important state secrets during the Soviet period. Attempts by scholars and experts to understand the causes and consequences of the repression of prisoners of war faced fierce resistance from the totalitarian, party-state system, which prohibited the publication of archival documents related to prisoners of war until 1991. The first attempts to lift the restrictions on access to certain archival do cuments from World War II, including those concerning Kazakhstani prisoners of war, were made in the late 1980s at the Institute of Party History under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. However, the work conducted at that time was insufficient to provide a comprehensive understanding of the prisoners of war. It was only after Kazakhstan gained independence that the Government Commission declassified thematic complexes of documents in the state archives of our country. 109