Scientific publication of the most complete corpus of archival documents and materials is presented, covering the stay of captured servicemen of foreign armies on the territory of the USSR in the period 1939-1956. On the basis of the declassified funds of the State Archives of the Russian Federation and the Center for the Storage of Historical and Archival Collections, the policy of the country's leadership in relation to prisoners of war was recreated, conditions of their detention and labor use, the practice of identifying and punishing war criminals, the organization of repatriation of prisoners of war to their homeland.