World War II casualties of the Soviet Union

World War II losses of the Soviet Union were about 27 million both civilian and military from all war-related causes,[1] although exact figures are disputed.

However, the official figure of 8.7 million military deaths has been disputed by Russian scholars who believe that the number of dead and missing POWs is not correct and new research is necessary to determine actual losses.

[8] Officials at the Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel.

[13][14][15][16] In 2020, Mikhail Meltyukhov, who works with the Russian Federal archival project, claimed that 15.9–17.4 million civilians were killed on Soviet territory by Germany and its allies during the war.

In 1993, the Russian Ministry of Defense report authored by a group headed by General G. F. Krivosheev detailed military casualties.

Krivosheev's analysis shows that 4,559,000 were reported missing (including 3,396,400 per field reports and an additional 1,162,600 estimated based on German documents), out of which 500,000 were missing and presumed dead, 939,700 were re-conscripted during the war as territories were liberated, 1,836,000 returned to the U.S.S.R. after the war, while the balance of 1,283,300 died in German captivity as POWs or did not return to the USSR.

Krivosheev's group estimated losses for the early part of the war, because from 1941 to 1942 no surrounded or defeated divisions reported their casualties.

Field reports stated the number of wounded and sick as 18,344,148, while the records of the military medical service show a total of 22,326,905.

[10] Makhmut Gareev, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, maintains that the published information on Soviet casualties is the work of the individual authors and not based on official data.

[57] Notes: S. N. Mikhalev included in his figure irrecoverable losses the deaths of 994,300 Soviet military personnel that were convicted of offences during the course of the war (422,700 sent to penal battalions, 135,000 executed and 436,600 imprisoned)[57] An alternative method is to determine losses from the Russian Military Archives database of individual war dead.

He concluded by stating, "We established the number of irreplaceable losses of our Armed Forces at the time of the Great Patriotic War of about 13,850,000.

[9] Krivosheev maintained that the database of individual war dead is unreliable because some personnel records are duplicated and others omitted.

Filimoshin, an associate of the Russian Defense Ministry, put the civilian death toll in the regions occupied by Germany at 13.7 million.

Filimoshin cited sources from Soviet era to support his figures and used the terms "genocide" and "premeditated extermination" when referring to deaths of 7.4 million civilians caused by direct, intentional violence.

Darski and T. L. Kharkova ("ADK") authored The Population of the Soviet Union 1922–1991, which was published by the Russian Academy of Science in 1993.

Notes: Remarks: Another study, The Demographic History of Russia 1927–1959, analyzed voters in the February 1946 Soviet election to estimate the surviving population over the age of 18 at the end of the war.

ADK maintained that many young military men did not participate in the election, and an overestimation of women in rural areas without internal passports who sought to avoid compulsory heavy labor.

In a live broadcast of 16 December 2010, A Conversation with Vladimir Putin, he maintained that the Russian Federation had suffered the greatest proportional losses in World War II—70 percent of the total.

Military casualties alone may be estimated as exceeding 7 million, according to the final volume of the Ukrainian book "In the memory of posterity" and research of V. E. Korol, writes an American (former Soviet) Doctor of History Vilen Lyulechnik.

[109] (D) Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad maintains that about 200,000 Soviet Jews or 40 per cent of all draft were killed in battles or captivity — the highest percentage of all nations of the USSR.

[116][117][118] The record breaking estimates of 700,000 military casualties out of a total 1,25 million Turkmenian citizens (with slightly less than 60 per cent being Turkmens) are attributed to the late President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov.

This extra two million would presumably include Soviet POWs that died in Nazi captivity, partisans, and militia.

The names of Soviet war dead are presented at the OBD (Central Data Bank) Memorial database online.

[38][7] In the spring of 1941 Stalin ignored the warnings of his intelligence services of a planned German invasion and refused to put the Armed forces on alert.

[124] To suppress the partisan units the Nazi occupation forces engaged in a campaign of brutal reprisals against innocent civilians.

[126] During the Communist era in the Soviet Union historical writing about World War II was subject to censorship and only official approved statistical data was published.

In the USSR during the Glasnost period under Gorbachev and in post communist Russia the casualties in World War II were re-evaluated and the official figures revised.

[98] In November 1961 Nikita Khrushchev stated that Soviet war losses were 20 million; this was to be the official figure until the Gorbachev era of Glasnost.

[126] The Russian scholar Dmitri Volkogonov, writing at this, time estimated total war deaths at 26–27,000,000, including 10,000,000 in the military.

This revised figure was the result of research by the committee set up by Gorbachev that estimated total war dead at between 26 and 27 million.