This article deals with the problem of the presence of Soviet prisoners of war during World War II in the memory and politics of memory of the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia. It describes the most important stages of the attitude towards prisoners of war in different historical periods, including in: the Stalinist regime, when they were condemned; the Khrushchev Thaw, when they were rehabilitated; after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the prisoner-of-war issues appeared in historical debate and culture; and in modern times, when prisoners of war have been pushed to the margins of the politics of memory and memory as an inconvenient problem from the point of view of the current glorification of Stalin and his era.