The most affected by the hostilities categories of the population, except for the actual dead and wounded in the war (the so-called "bloody losses"), were prisoners of war, for many years divorced from the Motherland, and refugees of the front-line zone, forced to leave their native places. Deserters and returnees complemented the overall picture of disasters. For Russia, these categories totaled millions of people, and therefore it is impossible to ignore their tragic fate in 1914-1918, which anticipated the tragedies of World War II.