HUMANISTIC TRENDS IN THE STATUS OF PRISONERS OF WAR (HISTORICAL AND LEGAL ANALYSIS)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to identify trends in the development of humanitarian law and national laws regarding prisoners of war, using a historical and legal approach to understand the history of foreign prisoners of war in the Kazakh SSR. The research methodology is based on historical and legal methods to analyze the formation and development of the humanistic foundations of prisoner of war status. Historical-comparative and historical-genetic methods, along with the principle of historicism, allow us to identify attitudes toward prisoners in various historical periods. The deductive method reveals the transition from the specific (the status of a prisoner of war) to the general (legal norms). The historiographical method of updating facilitates the interpretation of the basic theoretical premises of the emergence and development of the humanistic tradition in international relations regarding victims of military conflicts in scholarly discourse. The use of source analysis and synthesis demonstrates the representativeness of historical sources and archival documents.

The scientific novelty lies in the assessment of the influence of cultural, historical, and political factors on the humanization of the problems of prisoners of war. The research findings, based on international legislative and other sources, archival documents from the Archives of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (AP RK), Collection 5H, and a collection of documents, reveal the humanization of prisoner-of-war status across a number of aspects: from the rights of prisoners of war and the conditions of their captivity to the formation of branches of international law on military conflicts. The study assesses the political factors that predispose prisoners of war rights to violations, as well as the ideological components that influenced the development of Soviet legislation and its ambiguities in various areas, and the management of the camp system through NKVD-MVD acts (approximately 289 decrees, decrees, directives, instructions, orders, circulars, regulations, and orders) to determine the mechanisms for the functioning of the camp structure.