Which peoples of the USSR suffered the heaviest losses in the Great Patriotic War. How many people died in World War II

Estimates of the losses of Soviet citizens in the Great Patriotic War have a huge spread: from 19 to 36 million. The first detailed calculations were made by a Russian emigrant, demographer Timashev in 1948 - he got 19 million. B. Sokolov called the maximum figure - 46 million. The latest calculations show that only the military of the USSR lost 13.5 million people, while the total losses were over 27 million.

At the end of the war, long before any historical and demographic studies, Stalin gave a figure: 5.3 million people were killed in the war. He included in it the missing persons (obviously, in most cases - prisoners). In March 1946, in an interview with a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper, the casualties were estimated by the Generalissimo at 7 million. The increase was due to civilians who died in the occupied territory or were deported to Germany.

In the West, this figure was perceived with skepticism. Already in the late 1940s, the first calculations of the demographic balance of the USSR for the war years, contradicting Soviet data, appeared. Case in point- estimates of the Russian emigrant, demographer N.S. Timashev, published in the New York "New Journal" in 1948. Here is his methodology:

The all-Union census of the population of the USSR in 1939 determined its number at 170.5 million. The increase in 1937-1940 reached, according to his assumption, almost 2% per year. Consequently, the population of the USSR by the middle of 1941 should have reached 178.7 million. But in 1939-1940, Western Ukraine and Belarus, the three Baltic states, the Karelian lands of Finland, and Romania returned Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Therefore, after subtracting the Karelian population who went to Finland, the Poles who fled to the west, and the Germans repatriated to Germany, these territorial acquisitions gave a population increase of 20.5 million. Considering that the birth rate in the annexed territories was no more than 1% per year, that is, lower than in the USSR, and also taking into account the short time interval between their entry into the USSR and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the author determined the population growth for these territories by the middle of 1941 at 300 thousand. Sequentially adding the above figures, he received 200.7 million living in the USSR on the eve of June 22, 1941.

Next, Timashev divided 200 million into three age groups, again relying on the data of the All-Union Census of 1939: adults (over 18 years old) -117.2 million, adolescents (from 8 to 18 years old) - 44.5 million, children (under 8 years old) - 38.8 million In doing so, he took into account two important circumstances. First: in 1939-1940 from childhood two very weak annual flows, born in 1931-1932, during the famine, which covered large areas of the USSR and negatively affected the size of the adolescent group, passed into the group of adolescents. Second, there were more people over 20 in the former Polish lands and the Baltic states than in the USSR.

Timashev supplemented these three age groups with the number Soviet prisoners. He did it in the following way. By the time of the elections of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in December 1937, the population of the USSR reached 167 million, of which voters accounted for 56.36% of total figure, and the population over 18, according to the All-Union census of 1939, reached 58.3%. The resulting difference of 2%, or 3.3 million, in his opinion, was the population of the Gulag (including the number of those executed). This turned out to be close to the truth.

Next, Timashev moved on to post-war figures. The number of voters included in the voting lists for the elections of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the spring of 1946 amounted to 101.7 million. Adding to this figure 4 million prisoners of the Gulag calculated by him, he received 106 million of the adult population in the USSR at the beginning of 1946. Calculating the teenage group, he took as a basis 31.3 million students in primary and high school in 1947/48 academic year, compared with the data of 1939 (31.4 million schoolchildren within the borders of the USSR until September 17, 1939) and received a figure of 39 million. Calculating the children's group, he proceeded from the fact that by the beginning of the war the birth rate in the USSR was approximately the second quarter of 1942, it fell by 37.5%, and in 1943-1945 - by half.

Subtracting from each annual group the percentage due according to the normal mortality table for the USSR, he received at the beginning of 1946 36 million children. Thus, according to his statistical calculations, in the USSR at the beginning of 1946 there were 106 million adults, 39 million adolescents and 36 million children, and a total of 181 million. Timashev’s conclusion is as follows: the population of the USSR in 1946 was 19 million less than in 1941.

Approximately the same results came and other Western researchers. In 1946, under the auspices of the League of Nations, F. Lorimer's book "The Population of the USSR" was published. According to one of his hypotheses, during the war the population of the USSR decreased by 20 million people.

In an article published in 1953, "Loss of life in World War II," the German researcher G. Arntz came to the conclusion that "20 million people is the closest figure to the truth. total losses Soviet Union in World War II. The collection, which includes this article, was translated and published in the USSR in 1957 under the title "Results of the Second World War". Thus, four years after Stalin's death, Soviet censorship let the figure of 20 million into the open press, thereby indirectly recognizing it as true and making it the property of at least specialists - historians, international affairs specialists, etc.

Only in 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Swedish Prime Minister Erlander, admitted that the war against fascism "claimed two tens of millions of lives Soviet people". Thus, in comparison with Stalin, Khrushchev increased the Soviet casualties by almost 3 times.

In 1965, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, Brezhnev spoke of "more than 20 million" human lives, lost Soviet people in the war. In the 6th and final volume of the fundamental “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union” published at the same time, it was stated that out of 20 million dead, almost half “are military and civilians killed and tortured by the Nazis in the occupied Soviet territory". In fact, 20 years after the end of the war, the USSR Ministry of Defense recognized the death of 10 million Soviet servicemen.

Four decades later, the head of the Center military history Russian Institute Russian history Professor G. Kumanev of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in a footnote, told the truth about the calculations that military historians carried out in the early 1960s when preparing the “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union”: “Our losses in the war were then determined at 26 million. But it turned out to be high authorities the accepted figure is "over 20 million".

As a result, "20 million" not only took root for decades in historical literature but also became part of the national identity.

In 1990, M. Gorbachev published a new figure of losses, obtained as a result of research by demographic scientists, - "almost 27 million people."

In 1991, B. Sokolov's book “The Price of Victory. The Great Patriotic War: the unknown about the known. In it, direct military losses of the USSR were estimated at about 30 million, including 14.7 million military personnel, and "actual and potential losses" - at 46 million, including 16 million unborn children.

A little later, Sokolov clarified these figures (brought new losses). He received the loss figure as follows. From the size of the Soviet population at the end of June 1941, which he determined at 209.3 million, he subtracted 166 million who, in his opinion, lived in the USSR on January 1, 1946 and received 43.3 million dead. Then subtract from the resulting number irretrievable losses armed forces (26.4 million) and received irretrievable losses of the civilian population - 16.9 million.

“It is possible to name the number of killed Red Army soldiers during the entire war close to reality, if we determine that month of 1942, when the losses of the Red Army by the dead were taken into account most fully and when it had almost no losses as prisoners. For a number of reasons, we chose November 1942 as such a month and extended the ratio of the number of dead and wounded obtained for it to the entire period of the war. As a result, we came to a figure of 22.4 million killed in battle and died from wounds, illnesses, accidents and shot by the tribunals of Soviet military personnel.

To the 22.4 million received in this way, he added 4 million fighters and commanders of the Red Army who died in enemy captivity. And so it turned out 26.4 million irretrievable losses suffered by the armed forces.

In addition to B. Sokolov, similar calculations were made by L. Polyakov, A. Kvasha, V. Kozlov, and others. which is almost impossible to determine exactly. It was this difference that they considered the total loss of life.

In 1993 it was published statistical study“Secrecy removed: losses armed forces USSR in wars, combat actions and military conflicts”, prepared by a team of authors headed by General G. Krivosheev. Previously secret archival documents, primarily reporting materials, became the main source of statistical data. General Staff. However, the losses of entire fronts and armies in the first months, and the authors specifically stipulated this, were obtained by them by calculation. In addition, the reports of the General Staff did not include the losses of units that were organizationally not part of the Soviet armed forces (army, navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR), but accepted direct participation in battles - civil uprising, partisan detachments, underground groups.

Finally, the number of prisoners of war and missing persons is clearly underestimated: this category of losses, according to the reports of the General Staff, totals 4.5 million, of which 2.8 million remained alive (were repatriated after the end of the war or re-conscripted into the ranks of the Red Army on the territory liberated from the invaders), and, accordingly, the total number of those who did not return from captivity, including those who did not want to return to the USSR, amounted to 1.7 million people.

As a result, the statistical data of the handbook “The Classification Removed” were immediately perceived as requiring clarifications and additions. And in 1998, thanks to the publication of V. Litovkin “During the war, our army lost 11 million 944 thousand 100 people”, these data were replenished by 500 thousand reserve reservists drafted into the army, but not yet enrolled in the lists military units and died on the way to the front.

V. Litovkin's study states that from 1946 to 1968, a special commission of the General Staff, headed by General S. Shtemenko, prepared a statistical reference book on the losses of 1941-1945. At the end of the work of the commission, Shtemenko reported to the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal A. Grechko: “Taking into account that the statistical collection contains information of national importance, the publication of which in the press (including closed) or in any other way is currently not necessary and undesirable, the collection is supposed to be stored in the General Staff as a special document, to which a strictly limited circle of persons will be allowed to familiarize themselves. And the prepared collection was under seven seals until the team led by General G. Krivosheev made public his information.

V. Litovkin's research sowed even greater doubts about the completeness of the information published in the collection “Secret Classification Removed”, because a natural question arose: were all the data contained in the “Statistical Collection of the Shtemenko Commission” declassified?

For example, according to the data given in the article, during the war years, military justice authorities convicted 994 thousand people, of which 422 thousand were sent to penal units, 436 thousand to places of detention. The remaining 136 thousand were apparently shot.

And yet, the handbook "Secrecy Removed" significantly expanded and supplemented the ideas not only of historians, but of all Russian society about the cost of Victory in 1945. It is enough to refer to the statistical calculation: from June to November 1941, the Armed Forces of the USSR lost 24 thousand people daily, of which 17 thousand were killed and up to 7 thousand were wounded, and from January 1944 to May 1945 -20 thousand people, of which 5.2 thousand killed and 14.8 thousand wounded.

In 2001, a significantly expanded statistical publication appeared - “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the armed forces. The authors supplemented the materials of the General Staff with reports from military headquarters about losses and notices from the military registration and enlistment offices about the dead and missing, which were sent to relatives at the place of residence. And the figure of losses received by him increased to 9 million 168 thousand 400 people. These data were reproduced in the 2nd volume of the collective work of the staff of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Population of Russia in the 20th century. Historical essays”, published under the editorship of academician Yu. Polyakov.

In 2004, the second, corrected and supplemented, edition of the book by the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, "Feat and forgery: Pages of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", was published. It provides data on losses: about 27 million Soviet citizens. And in the footnotes to them, the same addition mentioned above appeared, explaining that the calculations of military historians back in the early 1960s gave a figure of 26 million, but the "high authorities" preferred to take for " historical truth» other: «over 20 million»

Meanwhile, historians and demographers continued to look for new approaches to ascertaining the magnitude of the losses of the USSR in the war.

The historian Ilyenkov, who served in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, followed an interesting path. He tried to calculate the deadweight loss personnel Red Army on the basis of card files of irretrievable losses of privates, sergeants and officers. These file cabinets began to be created when, on July 9, 1941, a department for recording personal losses was organized as part of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Manning of the Red Army (GUFKKA). The duties of the department included personal accounting of losses and the compilation of an alphabetical file of losses.

Accounting was carried out according to the following categories: 1) dead - according to reports from military units, 2) dead - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 3) missing - according to reports from military units, 4) missing - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 5) those who died in German captivity, 6) those who died from diseases, 7) those who died from wounds - according to reports from military units, those who died from wounds - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices. At the same time, the following were taken into account: deserters; military personnel sentenced to imprisonment in forced labor camps; sentenced to highest measure punishment - execution; removed from the register of irretrievable losses as survivors; those who are suspected of having served with the Germans (the so-called "signals") and those who were captured, but survived. These soldiers were not included in the list of irretrievable losses.

After the war, the file cabinets were deposited in the Archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense (now the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). Since the early 1990s, the archives have begun counting index cards by alphabetical letters and loss categories. As of November 1, 2000, 20 letters of the alphabet were processed, for the remaining 6 letters that were not counted, a preliminary calculation was carried out, which fluctuates to a large or the smaller side for 30-40 thousand personalities.

Calculated 20 letters in 8 categories of losses of privates and sergeants of the Red Army gave the following figures: 9 million 524 thousand 398 people. At the same time, 116 thousand 513 people were removed from the register of irretrievable losses, as they turned out to be alive according to the reports of the military registration and enlistment offices.

A preliminary calculation of 6 uncounted letters gave 2 million 910 thousand people of irretrievable losses. The result of the calculations was as follows: 12 million 434 thousand 398 Red Army soldiers and sergeants lost the Red Army in 1941-1945 (Recall that this is without loss Navy, internal and border troops NKVD USSR.)

The alphabetical file of irretrievable losses was calculated using the same method. officers Red Army, which is also stored in TsAMO RF. They amounted to about 1 million 100 thousand people.

Thus, the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders in the dead, missing, dead from wounds, diseases and in captivity.

These data are 4 million 865 thousand 998 more than the irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces (listed personnel) according to the General Staff, which included the Red Army, sailors, border guards, internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR.

Finally, we note one more new trend in the study of the demographic results of the Great Patriotic War. Before the collapse of the USSR, there was no need to assess the human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century, L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate value of the human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.

The killer, loved by people who are very sick in the head. And the war itself
the work of his hands, and the millions killed are the work of this serial killer

Editorial note. For 70 years, first the top leadership of the USSR (having rewritten history), and later the government Russian Federation supported a monstrous and cynical lie about greatest tragedy XX century - World War II

Editorial note . For 70 years, first the top leadership of the USSR (having rewritten history), and later the government of the Russian Federation, supported a monstrous and cynical lie about the greatest tragedy of the 20th century - World War II, mainly privatizing victory in it and keeping silent about its price and the role of other countries in the outcome. war. Now in Russia they have made a parade picture of victory, they support victory frenzy at all levels, and the cult St. George ribbon reached such an ugly form that it actually grew into a frank mockery of the memory of millions of fallen people. And while the whole world mourns for those who died fighting against Nazism, or became its victims, eReFiya arranges a blasphemous Sabbath. And over these 70 years, the exact number of losses of Soviet citizens in that war has not been finally clarified. The Kremlin is not interested in this, just as it is not interested in publishing the statistics of the dead military of the Russian Armed Forces in the Donbass, in the Russian-Ukrainian war, which he unleashed. Only a few who did not succumb to the influence of Russian propaganda are trying to find out the exact number of losses in WWII.

In the article that we bring to your attention, the most important thing is that the Soviet and Russian authorities, while PR in every possible way on their feat.

Estimates of the losses of Soviet citizens in World War II have a huge spread: from 19 to 36 million. The first detailed calculations were made by a Russian emigrant, demographer Timashev in 1948 - he got 19 million. B. Sokolov called the maximum figure - 46 million. The latest calculations show that only the military of the USSR lost 13.5 million people, the total losses were over 27 million.

At the end of the war, long before any historical and demographic studies, Stalin gave a figure of 5.3 million military casualties. He included in it the missing (obviously, in most cases - prisoners). In March 1946, in an interview with a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper, the generalissimo estimated the casualties at 7 million. The increase was due to civilians who died in the occupied territory or were driven to Germany.

In the West, this figure was perceived with skepticism. Already in the late 1940s, the first calculations of the demographic balance of the USSR for the war years, contradicting Soviet data, appeared. An illustrative example is the estimates of the Russian emigrant, demographer N. S. Timashev, published in the New York "New Journal" in 1948. Here is his technique.

The all-Union census of the population of the USSR in 1939 determined its number at 170.5 million. The increase in 1937-1940. reached, according to his assumption, almost 2% for each year. Consequently, the population of the USSR by the middle of 1941 should have reached 178.7 million. But in 1939-1940. Western Ukraine and Belarus, three Baltic states, the Karelian lands of Finland were annexed to the USSR, and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were returned to Romania. Therefore, excluding the Karelian population who went to Finland, the Poles who fled to the West, and the Germans repatriated to Germany, these territorial acquisitions gave a population increase of 20.5 million. Considering that the birth rate in the annexed territories was no more than 1% in year, that is, lower than in the USSR, and also taking into account the shortness of the time period between their entry into the USSR and the start of World War II, the author determined the population growth for these territories by mid-1941 at 300 thousand. Sequentially summing up the above figures, he received 200.7 million living in the USSR on the eve of June 22, 1941.

Next, Timashev divided the 200 million into three age groups, again relying on data from the All-Union Census of 1939: adults (over 18 years old) - 117.2 million, adolescents (from 8 to 18 years old) - 44.5 million, children (under 8 years) - 38.8 million. At the same time, he took into account two important circumstances. First: in 1939-1940. two very weak annual flows, born in 1931-1932, during the famine, which engulfed large areas of the USSR and negatively affected the size of the adolescent group, passed from childhood into the group of adolescents. Second, there were more people over 20 in the former Polish lands and the Baltic states than in the USSR.

Timashev supplemented these three age groups with the number of Soviet prisoners. He did it in the following way. By the time of the elections of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in December 1937, the population of the USSR reached 167 million, of which voters made up 56.36% of the total, and the population over 18 years old, according to the All-Union Census of 1939, reached 58.3%. The resulting difference of 2%, or 3.3 million, in his opinion, was the population of the Gulag (including the number of those executed). This turned out to be close to the truth.

Next, Timashev moved on to post-war figures. The number of voters included in the voting lists for the elections of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the spring of 1946 amounted to 101.7 million. Adding to this figure the 4 million prisoners of the Gulag calculated by him, he received 106 million of the adult population in the USSR at the beginning of 1946. Calculating the teenage group, he took as a basis 31.3 million primary and secondary school students in the 1947/48 academic year, compared with the data of 1939 (31.4 million schoolchildren within the borders of the USSR until September 17, 1939) and received a figure of 39 million Calculating the children's group, he proceeded from the fact that by the beginning of the war the birth rate in the USSR was approximately 38 per 1000, in the second quarter of 1942 it decreased by 37.5%, and in 1943-1945. - half.

In an article published in 1953, "Casualties in World War II," the German researcher G. Arntz concluded that "20 million people is the closest figure to the truth for the total losses of the Soviet Union in World War II." The collection, which includes this article, was translated and published in the USSR in 1957 under the title "Results of the Second World War". Thus, four years after Stalin's death, Soviet censorship let the figure of 20 million into the open press, thereby indirectly recognizing it as true and making it the property of at least specialists: historians, international affairs specialists, etc.

Only in 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Swedish Prime Minister Erlander, admitted that the war against fascism "claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people." Thus, in comparison with Stalin, Khrushchev increased the Soviet casualties by almost 3 times.

In 1965, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, Brezhnev spoke of "more than 20 million" human lives lost by the Soviet people in the war. In the 6th and final volume of the fundamental “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union” published at the same time, it was stated that out of the 20 million dead, almost half “are military and civilians killed and tortured by the Nazis in the occupied Soviet territory.” In fact, 20 years after the end of the war, the USSR Ministry of Defense recognized the death of 10 million Soviet troops.

Four decades later, the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, in a footnote, told the truth about the calculations that military historians carried out in the early 1960s when preparing the “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union”: “Our losses in the war were then they were determined at 26 million. But the figure “over 20 million” turned out to be accepted by high authorities.”

As a result, "20 million" not only took root for decades in historical literature, but also became part of the national identity.

In 1990, M. Gorbachev published a new loss figure, obtained as a result of research by demographic scientists, - "almost 27 million people."

A little later, Sokolov clarified these figures (brought new losses). He received the loss figure as follows. From the size of the Soviet population at the end of June 1941, which he determined at 209.3 million, he subtracted 166 million who, in his opinion, lived in the USSR on January 1, 1946, and received 43.3 million dead. Then, from the resulting number, he subtracted the irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces (26.4 million) and received the irretrievable losses of the civilian population - 16.9 million.

“It is possible to name the number of killed Red Army soldiers during the entire war close to reality, if we determine that month of 1942, when the losses of the Red Army by the dead were taken into account most fully and when it had almost no losses as prisoners. For a number of reasons, we chose November 1942 as such a month and extended the ratio of the number of dead and wounded obtained for it to the entire period of the war. As a result, we came to the figure of 22.4 million killed in battle and died from wounds, illnesses, accidents and shot by the tribunals of Soviet military personnel.

In addition to B. Sokolov, similar calculations were made by L. Polyakov, A. Kvasha, V. Kozlov, and others. USSR, which is almost impossible to determine exactly. It was this difference that they considered the total loss of life.

In 1993, a statistical study “Secrecy removed: losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts” was published, prepared by a team of authors headed by General G. Krivosheev. The main source of statistical data was previously secret archival documents, primarily reports from the General Staff. However, the losses of entire fronts and armies in the first months, and the authors specifically stipulated this, were obtained by them by calculation. In addition, the reports of the General Staff did not include the losses of units that were not organizationally part of the Soviet Armed Forces (army, navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR), but were directly involved in the battles: the people's militia, partisan detachments, underground groups.

Finally, the number of prisoners of war and missing persons is clearly underestimated: this category of losses, according to the reports of the General Staff, totals 4.5 million, of which 2.8 million remained alive (were repatriated after the end of the war or re-conscripted into the ranks of the Red Army on the liberated from the occupiers of the territory), and, accordingly, the total number of those who did not return from captivity, including those who did not wish to return to the USSR, amounted to 1.7 million.

As a result, the statistical data of the handbook “The Classification Removed” were immediately perceived as requiring clarifications and additions. And in 1998, thanks to the publication of V. Litovkin “During the war years, our army lost 11 million 944 thousand 100 people”, these data were replenished by 500 thousand reserve reservists drafted into the army, but not yet included in the lists of military units and who died along the way to the front.

V. Litovkin’s research sowed even greater doubts about the completeness of the information published in the collection “Secret Classification Removed”, because a logical question arose: were all the data contained in the “Statistical Collection of the Shtemenko Commission” declassified?

And yet, the handbook “Secrecy Removed” significantly expanded and supplemented the ideas not only of historians, but of the entire Russian society about the price of the Victory in 1945. It is enough to refer to the statistical calculation: from June to November 1941, the Armed Forces of the USSR daily lost 24 thousand people, of which 17 thousand were killed and up to 7 thousand were wounded, and from January 1944 to May 1945 - 20 thousand people , of which 5.2 thousand were killed and 14.8 thousand were wounded.

In 2004, the second, corrected and supplemented, edition of the book by the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, "Feat and Forgery: Pages of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", was published. It provides data on losses: about 27 million Soviet citizens. And in the footnotes to them, the same addition mentioned above appeared, explaining that the calculations of military historians back in the early 1960s gave a figure of 26 million, but the "high authorities" preferred to take something else for "historical truth": "over 20 million".

Meanwhile, historians and demographers continued to look for new approaches to ascertaining the magnitude of the losses of the USSR in the war.

The historian Ilyenkov, who served in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, followed an interesting path. He tried to calculate the irretrievable losses of the personnel of the Red Army on the basis of card indexes of irretrievable losses of privates, sergeants and officers. These file cabinets began to be created when, on July 9, 1941, the department for recording personal losses was organized as part of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Manning of the Red Army (GUFKKA). The duties of the department included personal accounting of losses and the compilation of an alphabetical file of losses.

Accounting was carried out according to the following categories: 1) dead - according to reports from military units, 2) dead - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 3) missing - according to reports from military units, 4) missing - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 5) those who died in German captivity , 6) those who died from diseases, 7) those who died from wounds - according to reports from military units, those who died from wounds - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices. At the same time, the following were taken into account: deserters; military personnel sentenced to imprisonment in forced labor camps; sentenced to the highest measure of punishment - execution; removed from the register of irretrievable losses as survivors; those who are suspected of having served with the Germans (the so-called "signals"), and those who were captured, but survived. These soldiers were not included in the list of irretrievable losses.

After the war, the file cabinets were deposited in the Archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense (now the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). Since the early 1990s, the archives have begun counting index cards by alphabetical letters and loss categories. As of November 1, 2000, 20 letters of the alphabet were processed, according to the remaining uncounted 6 letters, a preliminary calculation was carried out, which fluctuates up or down by 30-40 thousand personalities.

Calculated 20 letters in 8 categories of losses of privates and sergeants of the Red Army gave the following figures: 9 million 524 thousand 398 people. At the same time, 116 thousand 513 people were removed from the register of irretrievable losses as they turned out to be alive according to the reports of the military registration and enlistment offices.

A preliminary calculation for 6 uncounted letters gave 2 million 910 thousand people of irretrievable losses. The result of the calculations turned out as follows: 12 million 434 thousand 398 Red Army soldiers and sergeants lost the Red Army in 1941-1945. (Recall that this is without the loss of the Navy, internal and border troops of the NKVD of the USSR.)

The alphabetical card file of irretrievable losses of officers of the Red Army, which is also stored in the TsAMO of the Russian Federation, was calculated using the same methodology. They amounted to about 1 million 100 thousand people.

Thus, during the Second World War, the Red Army lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders in the dead, missing, dead from wounds, diseases and in captivity.

These data are 4 million 865 thousand 998 more than the irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces (roster) according to the General Staff, which included the Red Army, military sailors, border guards, internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR.

Finally, we note another new trend in the study of the demographic results of World War II. Before the collapse of the USSR, there was no need to assess the human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century, L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate value of the human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.

(Quotes: S. Golotik and V. Minaev - “The demographic losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War: the history of calculations”, “New historical messenger", No. 16, 2007.)

In 1945, the most "bloody" war of the 20th century ended, causing terrible destruction and claiming millions of lives. From our article you can find out what losses the countries participating in the Second World War suffered.

Total losses

62 countries were involved in the most global military conflict of the 20th century, 40 of which were directly involved in hostilities. Their losses in World War II are primarily calculated among the military and civilian population, which amounted to about 70 million people.

Financial losses (the price of lost property) of all parties to the conflict were significant: about $2,600 billion. The countries spent 60% of their income on providing the army and conducting military operations. total amount spending reached $4 trillion.

The Second World War led to huge destruction (about 10 thousand people). major cities and settlements). In the USSR alone, more than 1,700 cities, 70,000 villages, and 32,000 enterprises suffered from bombing. Opponents destroyed about 96 thousand people. Soviet tanks and self-propelled artillery installations, 37 thousand units of armored vehicles.

Historical facts show that it is the USSR of all the participants anti-Hitler coalition suffered the most serious losses. Special measures were taken to clarify the death toll. In 1959 a population census was carried out (the first since the war). Then the figure of 20 million victims sounded. To date, other specified data (26.6 million) are known, announced by the state commission in 2011. They coincided with the figures announced in 1990. Most the dead were civilians.

Rice. 1. The ruined city of the Second World War.

human sacrifice

Unfortunately, the exact number of victims is still unknown. Objective reasons(lack of official documentation) complicate the count, so many continue to be listed as missing.

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

The official figure for the demographic losses of the Soviet Union has changed several times. In February 1946, the loss figure of 7 million people was published in the Bolshevik magazine. In March 1946, Stalin, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, stated that the USSR had lost 7 million people during the war years: “As a result of the German invasion Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, and also thanks to German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude about seven million people. Published in 1947, the report " War economy USSR during the Patriotic War, ”Voznesensky, chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, did not indicate human losses.

In 1959, the first post-war census of the population of the USSR was carried out. In 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden, reported 20 million dead: “How can we sit back and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists unleashed a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people?” In 1965, Brezhnev, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, announced more than 20 million dead.

In 1988–1993 a team of military historians led by Colonel-General G. F. Krivosheev conducted a statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about casualties in the army and navy, border and internal troops NKVD. The result of the work was the figure of 8668400 people lost power structures USSR during the war.

Since March 1989, on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU, she worked state commission on the study of the number of human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. The commission included representatives of the State Statistics Committee, the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Defense, the Main archival management under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Committee of War Veterans, the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The commission did not calculate losses, but estimated the difference between the estimated population of the USSR at the end of the war and the estimated population that would have lived in the USSR if there had been no war. The commission first made public its demographic loss figure of 26.6 million people at a solemn meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990.

On May 5, 2008, the President of the Russian Federation signed a decree "On the publication of the fundamental multi-volume work" The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 "". On October 23, 2009, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation signed an order "On the Interdepartmental Commission for Calculating Losses During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". The commission included representatives of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosstat, Rosarkhiv. In December 2011, a commission representative announced the country's overall demographic losses during the war period. 26.6 million people, of which losses of active armed forces 8668400 people.

military personnel

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense irretrievable losses during the fighting on Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 amounted to 8,860,400 Soviet troops. The source was data declassified in 1993 and data obtained during prospecting work Watch of Memory and in historical archives.

According to declassified data from 1993: killed, died of wounds and diseases, not combat losses – 6 885 100 people, including

Killed - 5,226,800 people.
Died from inflicted wounds - 1,102,800 people.
perished by various reasons and accidents, shot - 555,500 people.

On May 5, 2010, Major General A. Kirilin, head of the RF Ministry of Defense Directorate for perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military casualties - 8 668 400 , will be reported to the leadership of the country, so that they are announced on May 9, the day of the 65th anniversary of the Victory.

According to the data of G. F. Krivosheev, during the Great Patriotic War, 3,396,400 military personnel were missing and captured (about 1,162,600 more were attributed to unaccounted for combat losses in the first months of the war, when combat units did not provide any reports), that is, all

missing, captured and unaccounted for combat losses - 4,559,000;
1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, did not return (died, emigrated) - 1,783,300, (that is, the total number of prisoners - 3,619,300, which is more than together with the missing);
previously considered missing and were called up again from the liberated territories - 939,700.

So the official irretrievable losses(6,885,100 dead, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 who did not return from captivity) amounted to 8,668,400 military personnel. But from them you need to subtract 939,700 re-conscripts who were considered missing. We get 7,728,700.

The mistake was pointed out, in particular, by Leonid Radzikhovsky. The correct calculation is as follows: the number 1,783,300 is the number of those who did not return from captivity and went missing (and not just those who did not return from captivity). Then official irretrievable losses (dead 6,885,100, according to declassified data of 1993, and those who did not return from captivity and went missing 1,783,300) amounted to 8 668 400 military personnel.

According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet servicemen and 500,000 conscripts called up for mobilization, but not included in the lists of troops, were captured and went missing. From this figure, the calculation gives the same result: if 1,836,000 returned from captivity and 939,700 were re-conscripted from those who were considered unknown, then 1,783,300 military personnel were missing and did not return from captivity. So the official irretrievable losses (6,885,100 died, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 went missing and did not return from captivity) are 8 668 400 military personnel.

Additional information

Civilian population

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses civilian population USSR in the Great Patriotic War, approximately 13.7 million people.

The final number is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:

were exterminated in the occupied territory and died as a result of hostilities (from bombing, shelling, etc.) - 7,420,379 people.
died due to humanitarian catastrophe(hunger, infectious diseases, absence medical care etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
died on forced labor in Germany - 2,164,313 people. (another 451,100 people according to different reasons did not return and became emigrants).

According to S. Maksudov, in the occupied territories and in besieged Leningrad about 7 million people died (of which 1 million were in besieged Leningrad, 3 million were Jews, victims of the Holocaust), and about 7 million more died as a result of increased mortality in non-occupied territories.

The total losses of the USSR (together with the civilian population) amounted to 40–41 million people. These estimates are confirmed by comparing the data of the 1939 and 1959 censuses, since there is reason to believe that in 1939 there was a very significant undercount of the male draft contingents.

In general, the Red Army during the Second World War lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders in the dead, missing, dead from wounds, diseases and in captivity.

Nationalitydead soldiers	Number of casualties (thousand people)	% of total irretrievable losses
Russians	5 756.0	66.402
Ukrainians	1 377.4	15.890
Belarusians	252.9	2.917
Tatars	187.7	2.165
Jews	142.5	1.644
Kazakhs	125.5	1.448
Uzbeks	117.9	1.360
Armenians	83.7	0.966
Georgians	79.5	0.917
Mordva	63.3	0.730
Chuvash	63.3	0.730
Yakuts	37.9	0.437
Azerbaijanis	58.4	0.673
Moldovans	53.9	0.621
Bashkirs	31.7	0.366
Kyrgyz	26.6	0.307
Udmurts	23.2	0.268
Tajiks	22.9	0.264
Turkmens	21.3	0.246
Estonians	21.2	0.245
Mari	20.9	0.241
Buryats	13.0	0.150
Komi	11.6	0.134
Latvians	11.6	0.134
Lithuanians	11.6	0.134
Peoples of Dagestan	11.1	0.128
Ossetians	10.7	0.123
Poles	10.1	0.117
Karely	9.5	0.110
Kalmyks	4.0	0.046
Kabardians and Balkars	3.4	0.039
Greeks	2.4	0.028
Chechens and Ingush	2.3	0.026
Finns	1.6	0.018
Bulgarians	1.1	0.013
Czechs and Slovaks	0.4	0.005
Chinese	0.4	0.005
Assyrians	0,2	0,002
Yugoslavs	0.1	0.001

The greatest losses on the battlefields of the Second World War were suffered by Russians and Ukrainians. Many Jews were killed. But the most tragic was fate Belarusian people. In the first months of the war, the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by the Germans. During the war, the Byelorussian SSR lost up to 30% of its population. In the occupied territory of the BSSR, the Nazis killed 2.2 million people. (Data latest research in Belarus are as follows: the Nazis destroyed civilians - 1,409,225 people, destroyed prisoners in German camps death - 810,091 people, driven into German slavery - 377,776 people). It is also known that in percentage- amount dead soldiers/number of population, among Soviet republics Georgia suffered a great loss. Almost 300,000 out of 700,000 Georgians called to the front did not return.

Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

To date, there are no sufficiently reliable figures for losses german army obtained by direct statistical calculation. This is explained by the absence, for various reasons, of reliable initial data. statistical materials about German losses. The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. By Russian sources, Soviet troops 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in the NKVD camps. Estimated German historians, in Soviet camps prisoners of war only German soldiers were about 3.1 million.

The discrepancy is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in the assessment of the number of Germans killed in captivity: according to Russian archival documents 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of Germans who died in captivity is more reliable, and the missing 0.7 million Germans who went missing and did not return from captivity actually died not in captivity, but on the battlefield.

There is another statistics of losses - the statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the appendix to the law of the Federal Republic of Germany "On the preservation of burial sites", the total number German soldiers located in recorded burials on the territory of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, is 3 million 226 thousand people. (on the territory of the USSR alone - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as the starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, but it also needs to be adjusted.

Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burial places of the Germans, and as part of the Wehrmacht fought big number soldiers of other nationalities: Austrians (of which 270 thousand people died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states (357 thousand people died). From total number dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht of non-German nationality, the share of the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6-0.7 million people.
Secondly, this figure refers to the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, CIS countries and countries of Eastern Europe continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, Russian Association war memorials, established in 1992, reported that in the 10 years of its existence it had transferred German Union for the care of military graves information about the graves of 400 thousand soldiers of the Wehrmacht. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they have already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, no generalized statistics of the newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers could be found. Tentatively, it can be assumed that the number of newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
Thirdly, many burial places of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht on Soviet land disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately in such disappeared and unmarked graves 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried.
Fourthly, these data do not include burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops in Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, only in the last three spring months the war killed about 1 million people. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, on German soil and in Western European countries, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died in battles with the Red Army.
Finally, fifthly, the Wehrmacht soldiers who died of “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people) were also among the buried.

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses of Germany

The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
Population in 1946 - 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
Emigration inflow of 7.25 million people.
Total losses ((70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.

conclusions

Recall that disputes about the number of deaths are ongoing to this day.

Almost 27 million citizens of the USSR died during the war ( exact number– 26.6 million). This amount included:

military personnel killed and died from wounds;
who died from diseases;
executed by firing squad (according to the results of various denunciations);
missing and captured;
representatives of the civilian population, both in the occupied territories of the USSR, and in other regions of the country, in which, due to the ongoing hostilities in the state, there was an increased mortality from starvation and disease.

This also includes those who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return to their homeland after the victory. The vast majority of the dead were men (about 20 million). Modern researchers claim that by the end of the war, of the men born in 1923. (i.e. those who were 18 years old in 1941 and could be drafted into the army) about 3% survived. By 1945, there were twice as many women as men in the USSR (data for people aged 20 to 29).

In addition to the dead, human losses can be attributed to a sharp drop in the birth rate. Yes, by official counts, if the birth rate in the state remained at least at the same level, the population of the Union by the end of 1945 was supposed to be 35-36 million people more than it was in reality. Despite numerous studies and calculations, the exact number of those who died during the war is unlikely to ever be named.

The Soviet Union suffered in the Second world war the most significant losses are about 27 million people. At the same time, the division of the dead along ethnic lines was never welcomed. However, such statistics exist.

History of counting

For the first time, the total number of victims among Soviet citizens in World War II was named by the Bolshevik magazine, which published in February 1946 the figure of 7 million people. A month later, Stalin gave the same figure in an interview with the Pravda newspaper.

In 1961, at the end of the post-war population census, Khrushchev announced corrected data. “How can we sit back and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists unleashed a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people?” wrote the Soviet Secretary General to Swedish Prime Minister Fridtjof Erlander.

In 1965, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, already new head USSR Brezhnev said: "So brutal war, which the Soviet Union suffered, did not fall to the lot of any people. The war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people.

However, all these calculations were approximate. Only in the late 1980s did the group Soviet historians under the leadership of Colonel General Grigory Krivosheev, she was admitted to the materials of the General Staff, as well as the main headquarters of all types of the Armed Forces. The result of the work was the figure of 8 million 668 thousand 400 people, reflecting the losses of the power structures of the USSR throughout the war.

The final data of all human losses of the USSR for the entire period of the Great Patriotic War was published by the state commission, which worked on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 26.6 million people: this figure was announced at the solemn meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990. This figure turned out to be unchanged, despite the fact that the methods of calculating the commission were repeatedly called incorrect. In particular, it was noted that the final figure included collaborators, Hiwis and others Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Nazi regime.

By nationality

Counting those killed in the Great Patriotic War by nationality for a long time no one did. Such an attempt was made by the historian Mikhail Filimoshin in the book “Casualties of the Armed Forces of the USSR”. The author noted that the lack of a nominal list of the dead, dead or missing with an indication of nationality greatly complicated the work. Such a practice was simply not provided for in the Report Card of Urgent Reports.

Filimoshin substantiated his data with the help of proportionality coefficients, which were calculated on the basis of reports on the payroll of the Red Army military personnel according to socio-demographic characteristics for 1943, 1944 and 1945. At the same time, the researcher failed to establish the nationality of approximately 500,000 conscripts called up in the first months of the war for mobilization and missing along the way to the unit.

1. Russians - 5 million 756 thousand (66.402% of the total number of irretrievable losses);

2. Ukrainians - 1 million 377 thousand (15.890%);

3. Belarusians - 252 thousand (2.917%);

4. Tatars - 187 thousand (2.165%);

5. Jews - 142 thousand (1.644%);

6. Kazakhs - 125 thousand (1.448%);

7. Uzbeks - 117 thousand (1.360%);

8. Armenians - 83 thousand (0.966%);

9. Georgians - 79 thousand (0.917%)

10. Mordva and Chuvash - 63 thousand each (0.730%)

The demographer and sociologist Leonid Rybakovsky in his book "The USSR's Human Losses in the Great Patriotic War" separately calculates civilian casualties using the ethno-demographic method. This method includes three components:

1. Death of civilians in combat areas (bombing, shelling, punitive operations etc.).

2. Non-return of part of the Ostarbeiters and other population who voluntarily or under duress served the occupiers;

3. increase in mortality of the population over normal level from hunger and other deprivations.

According to Rybakovsky, Russians lost 6.9 million civilians in this way, Ukrainians - 6.5 million, Belarusians - 1.7 million.

Alternative estimates

Historians of Ukraine give their own methods of counting, which relate primarily to the losses of Ukrainians in the Great Patriotic War. The researchers of the Independent refer to the fact that Russian historians adhere to certain stereotypes when counting victims, in particular, they do not take into account the contingent of corrective labor institutions, where a significant part of the dispossessed Ukrainians were kept, whose sentence was replaced by being sent to penal companies.

Head of the research department of the Kyiv " National Museum History of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. Lyudmila Rybchenko refers to the fact that Ukrainian researchers have collected a unique fund of documentary materials on accounting for the human military losses of Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War - funerals, lists of missing persons, correspondence on the search for the dead, loss records.

In total, according to Rybchenko, more than 8.5 thousand archival files were collected, in which about 3 million personal testimonies about the dead and missing soldiers called up from the territory of Ukraine. However, the museum worker does not pay attention to the fact that representatives of other nationalities also lived in Ukraine, which could well be included in the number of 3 million victims.

Belarusian experts also give independent estimates of the number of losses during the Second World War. Some believe that every third inhabitant of 9 million Belarus became a victim of Hitler's aggression. One of the most authoritative researchers of this topic is the professor of the State Pedagogical University doctor historical sciences Emmanuel Ioffe.

The historian believes that in total 1 million 845 thousand 400 inhabitants of Belarus died in 1941-1944. From this figure, he subtracts 715,000 Belarusian Jews who became victims of the Holocaust. Among the remaining 1 million 130 thousand 155 people, in his opinion, about 80% or 904 thousand people are ethnic Belarusians.

*Country*	*Dead military*	*Dead civilians*
Germany	About 5 million	About 3 million



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