Toward the publication in Omsk of a handbook on prisoners of war of the First World War, 1914-1918

The article is a review of the scientific reference edition “Prisoners of War of the First World War: Interfund Name Index to the metric books of churches of the Omsk region (1914-1920)”, prepared by a team of eight employees of the Historical Archive of the Omsk region. The book was published in December 2023, and its presentation to the general scientific community took place on February 1, 2024 in the Center for the Study of the History of the Civil War of the Historical Archive of the Omsk Region. The basis for the preparation of the scientific and reference edition is a continuous study of act records of metric books of churches of four world confessions, operating in the Omsk region at that time. The argument in favor of this choice was the fact that the records of dozens of Orthodox churches, churches, kirchas and synagogues have been preserved in the Historical Archive of the Omsk Region. The name index is a brief biographical information with search data on prisoners of war who appeared in 1914-1920 on the territory of the modern Omsk region. The preface to the publication by the authoritative historian D. I. Petin contains the historiography of the study of prisoners of war of the early twentieth century in Siberia, an analytical review of published materials with generalized statistical data, a description of the methodology of compiling the index and actually represents an independent study on the problem of prisoners of war of the First World War in the Omsk region. Military-historical anthropology with elements of imagology and local history became the theoretical basis for the analytical comprehension of the book novelty. The principles of historicism, scientific approach in depicting historical phenomena and rationalization of archival business gave grounds to refer this publication not only to the sphere of professional historical interest, but also to the demanded reference publications of search character in the field of historical biography and practical genealogy. The review presents the significance of the interfond index for historical research on the problems of prisoners of war during the First World War, descendants of foreigners searching for their ancestors, and in general for the preservation of historical memory of the tragic pages of world history. The merits of this publication as a research project aimed at publishing a representative set of sources on the history of prisoners of war in the Omsk region during the period of social cataclysms are highlighted.