How many people died in WW2. How many people died in the Great Patriotic War

Losses during the Second World War can be estimated in different ways, depending on the methods of obtaining initial data and methods of calculation. In our country, the data calculated by a research group led by a consultant from the Military Memorial Center of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were recognized as official data. In 2001, the data was revised, and at the moment it is believed that during the years of the Great Patriotic War, 8.6 million Soviet military personnel died and another 4.4 million were missing or captured. The total loss of the population, not only the military, but civilians, amounted to 26.6 million people.

Germany's losses in this war were somewhat less - a little more than 4 million soldiers killed, including those who died in captivity. Germany's allies lost 806,000 servicemen killed, and 662,200 soldiers returned from captivity after the war.

Answering the question of how many servicemen died in the Second World War, we can say that according to official data, the irretrievable losses of the Soviet Union and Germany amounted to 11.5 million people on the one hand and 8.6 million people on the other, i.e. . the ratio of losses of the opposing sides was 1.3:1.

In past years, completely different numbers were considered official data on the losses of the Soviet Union. So, until the end of the 80s of the 20th century, studies of losses during the war were not actually carried out. This information was not then publicly available. Official losses were those named in 1946 by Joseph Stalin, which amounted to 7 million people. During the years of Khrushchev's rule, the figure was more than 20 million people.

And only at the end of the 1980s, a group of researchers, relying on archival documents and other materials, was able to assess the losses of the Soviet Union in various types of troops. The work also used the results of the commissions of the Ministry of Defense held in 1966 and 1988, and a number of other materials declassified in those years. For the first time, the figure obtained by this research group and now considered official was made public in 1990 at the celebration of the 45th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.

The losses of the Soviet Union significantly exceeded similar losses in the First World War or in the Civil War. The overwhelming majority of the dead, of course, fell on the male population. After the end of the war, the number of women from 20 to 30 years old exceeded the number of men of the same age by half.

Foreign experts generally agree with the Russian assessment. However, some of them say that this figure can only be the lower limit of real losses in 1941-1945. As the upper limit is called the figure of 42.7 million people.

World War II was the most destructive war in the history of mankind. Its consequences are still debated to this day. 80% of the world's population took part in it.

Many questions arise about how many people died in World War II, as different sources of information give different figures for the loss of life between 1939 and 1945. The differences are due to where the original information was obtained, as well as to which method of calculation was used.

Total death toll

It is worth noting that many historians and professors have been studying this issue. The number of deaths from the Soviet Union was calculated by the staff of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. According to new archival data, the information of which is given for 2001, the Great Patriotic War claimed the lives of 27 million people in total. Of these, more than seven million people are military personnel who were killed or died from their injuries.

Talk about how many people died from 1939 to 1945. as a result of hostilities, continue to this day, since it is almost impossible to calculate the losses. Various researchers and historians give their data: from 40 to 60 million people. After the war, the real data was hidden. During the reign of Stalin, it was said that the losses of the USSR amounted to 8 million people. During the Brezhnev era, this figure increased to 20 million, and during the period of perestroika - up to 36 million.

The free encyclopedia Wikipedia provides the following data: more than 25.5 million military personnel and about 47 million civilians (including all participating countries), i.e. in total, the number of losses exceeds 70 million people.

Read about other events in our history in the section.

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. The total spending reached $4 trillion.

World War II led to huge destruction (about 10 thousand large cities and towns). In the USSR alone, more than 1,700 cities, 70,000 villages, and 32,000 enterprises suffered from bombing. The opponents destroyed about 96,000 Soviet tanks and self-propelled artillery mounts, 37,000 armored vehicles.

Historical facts show that it was the USSR that of all the participants in the 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 of 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.

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Before talking about the dead, let us indicate the number of people called up for service by states whose participation in the war was key, and who suffered during the hostilities:

  • Germany : 17,893,200 soldiers, of which: 5,435,000 wounded, 4,100,000 were captured;
  • Japan : 9 058 811: 3 600 000: 1 644 614;
  • Italy : 3,100,000: 350 thousand: 620 thousand;
  • USSR : 34,476,700: 15,685,593: about 5 million;
  • Great Britain : 5,896,000: 280 thousand: 192 thousand;
  • USA : 16 112 566: 671 846: 130 201;
  • China : 17,250,521: 7 million: 750 thousand;
  • France : 6 million: 280 thousand: 2,673,000

Rice. 2. Wounded soldiers from World War II.

For convenience, here is a table of countries' losses in World War II. The number of deaths in it is indicated, taking into account all causes of death, approximately (average figures between the minimum and maximum):

Country

Dead military

Dead civilians

Germany

About 5 million

About 3 million

Great Britain

Australia

Yugoslavia

Finland

Netherlands

Bulgaria

The Soviet Union suffered the most significant losses in World War II - 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, the new head of the USSR, Brezhnev, declared: “No nation has suffered such a cruel war that the Soviet Union endured. The war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people.

However, all these calculations were approximate. Only in the late 1980s, a group of Soviet historians led by Colonel-General Grigory Krivosheev was allowed access to the materials of the General Staff, as well as the main headquarters of all branches 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 on 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, "Khivi" and other Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Nazi regime.

By nationality

For a long time, no one was engaged in counting the dead in the Great Patriotic War on a national basis. 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. an increase in the death rate of the population above the 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 Nezalezhnaya 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 of the History of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" Lyudmila Rybchenko refers to the fact that Ukrainian researchers 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 Professor of the State Pedagogical University, Doctor of Historical Sciences Emmanuil 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.

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.

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 cost and the role of other countries in the outcome. war. Now in Russia, victory has been made into a ceremonial image, victory is supported at all levels, and the cult of the St. George ribbon has reached such an ugly form that it has actually grown 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 spat on the fate of how many millions of people, 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 to 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 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.

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, "Casualties in World War II," the German researcher G. Arntz concluded that "20 million people is the closest figure to the truth of 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 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, 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.

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. USSR, which is almost impossible to determine exactly. It was this difference that they considered the total loss of life.

In 1993, the statistical study “Secret Class Removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Operations and Military Conflicts” was published, prepared by a team of authors headed by General G. Krivosheev. Previously secret archival documents became the main source of statistical data, primarily the reporting materials of 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 reporting 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 want 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 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 logical 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, apparently, were shot.

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 1945 Victory. 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 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”, edited by 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 of 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, 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 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 Bulletin", No. 16, 2007.)

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