The article analyzes the individual survival strategies of Soviet prisoners of war in France during World War II through the biography of Red Army Major Stepan Evgenievich Sapozhnikov (1901–1944). Drawing on correspondence, memoirs, and administrative records, it reconstructs a sequential transition “from captivity to resistance”: escape from a labor camp in Pas-de-Calais; the forging of trust-based contacts with local residents; integration into the French Resistance network Organisation civile et militaire (OCM-138) in the Soissons district; and participation in clandestine operations and armed actions in 1943–1944. The study combines microhistorical and biographical approaches, juxtaposing the macro-level constraints of the occupation regime with the prisoner’s microlevel choices. It shows that four interlinked strategies – material, organizational, sociocommunicative, and armed – form a single trajectory contingent on the availability of local clandestine infrastructure and civilian mediation. Sapozhnikov’s death in August 1944 and subsequent commemorative practices consolidated the integration of a Soviet officer into the local memory of the French Resistance. The findings refine the place of Soviet POWs in the history of the French underground and identify the conditions under which individual survival practices were transformed into participation in the Resistance movement – that is, how escape from a camp was converted into armed struggle.
World War II; European Resistance movement; French Resistance; POW survival strategies; Soviet prisoners of war; Soviet prisoners in France; S.E. Sapozhnikov; Organisation civile et militaire.