World War II casualties of the Soviet Union

Dead Soviet civilians near Minsk, Belarus, 1943
Kyiv, 23 June 1941
A victim of starvation in besieged Leningrad suffering from muscle atrophy in 1941

World War II losses of the Soviet Union were about 27,000,000 both civilian and military from all war-related causes,[1] although exact figures are disputed. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. The post-Soviet government of Russia puts the Soviet war losses at 26.6 million,[2] on the basis of the 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, including people dying as a result of effects of the war.[3][4][5] This includes 8,668,400 military deaths as calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defence.[2][6][7]

The figures published by the Russian Ministry of Defence have been accepted by most historians outside Russia. 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.[9][10][11] Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated in 2009 that more than 2.4 million people are still officially considered missing in action, and that of the 9.5 million persons buried in mass graves, six million are unidentified.[12] Some Russian scholars put the total number of losses in the war, both civilian and military, at over 40 million.[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.[17]

  1. ^ Lopez Aubin Bernard Guillerat Fenby, Jean Nicolas Vincent Nicolas Jonathan (2019). World War II Infographics. Thames & Hudson. p. 146.
  2. ^ a b Министерство обороны Российской Федерации, MOD Russian Federation. "On Question of war Losses (in Russian)". MOD Russian Federation. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  3. ^ Andreev, Darski & Kharkova 2002.
  4. ^ Ellman & Maksudov 1994, p. 677.
  5. ^ Haynes 2003.
  6. ^ Krivosheev 1993, p. 38.
  7. ^ Krivosheev 1997, p. 79.
  8. ^ Zemskov, Viktor (2012). "О масштабах людских потерь CCCР в Великой Отечественной Войне" [About the scale of human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War]. Военно-исторический архив [Military Historical Archive] (in Russian) (9): 59–71 – via Демоскоп Weekly [Democcope Weekly].
  9. ^ Il'Enkov 2001, pp. 73–80.
  10. ^ Il'Enkov 1996.
  11. ^ "УШЛИ ПОД ДЕРН" [Gone under the sod] (in Russian).
  12. ^ Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "Medvedev orders precise Soviet WWII death toll". Fox News. Associated Press. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  13. ^ Bershidsky, Leonid (10 May 2017). "A Message to Putin From 42 Million Dead". Bloomberg. Retrieved 31 August 2017.
  14. ^ Korol 1996.
  15. ^ Sokolov 1996.
  16. ^ "Парламентские слушания "Патриотическое воспитание граждан России: "Бессмертный полк"" [Parliamentary hearings "Patriotic education of Russian citizens:" Immortal Regiment"]. Бессмертный полк России [Immortal Regiment of Russia]. 5 July 2018. Archived from the original on 5 July 2018. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference rusarchives was invoked but never defined (see the help page).