Social and demographic structure of the Talerhof internment camp (1914–1917)

The Talerhof internment camp became the place of imprisonment of many thousands of representatives of the Ruthenian people of Austria-Hungary in 1914–1917, however, there is still no historical portrait of the prisoner of the camp. The creation of a database containing information about the prisoners of Talerhof made it possible to recreate the socio-demographic structure of the camp. As a result of the study, it was found that only every tenth prisoner of the camp was a Russophile. The research made it possible to compile a portrait of an average prisoner and, in some cases, to recreate their path to Talerhof, and to identify the key causes of deaths in the camp. The assumptions of V.R. Vavrik about the violent death of over 3,000 prisoners in the Talerhof camp were called into question. The study fills a number of significant gaps in the historiography of the Russophile movement during the First World War. For instance, in Russian and foreign historiography there is still no consensus on the institutional status of the Talerhof camp. The restoration of its social and demographic structure, as well as the historical portrait of the camp’s prisoner, allows us to make a reasonable conclusion that the camp was not a concentration camp, and Thalerhof’s victims were people who were not involved in Russophile political crimes against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy during the First World War. The results make it possible to intensify scientific discussions about the historical status of the Russophile issue in the structure of Russian-Ukrainian relations and its significance for current political events.