“State”, “public” and “private” in the practice of financial support of migrants during the First World War

We address one of the episodes of the First World War revealing the problem of financial support of the residents of frontline territories who found themselves in the inner governorates of the Russian Empire due to their voluntary flight. The refugee wave was heterogeneous, it included different categories of migrants, which led to the fact that the government aid was often distributed in an uneven manner. It caused the desire on the part of some refugees to derive maximum value from the grants provided under equal conditions established by law. Additional opportunities for such actions were created by a large number of organizations that provided assistance to people who had left their homes and an overlap of their functions. It resulted in the emergence of numerous conflicts and the search for compromises in the context of uneven state support, which in its turn generated discontent and disbelief in the justice of the existing measures.