They did not return from the battle: the number of those killed in the Great Patriotic War has been declassified. Which peoples of the USSR suffered the heaviest losses in the Great Patriotic War?

How the official data on the losses of the USSR changed

Recently, the State Duma announced new figures for human losses Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War - almost 42 million people. An additional 15 million people were added to the previous official figures. The head of the Museum-Memorial of the Great Patriotic War of the Kazan Kremlin, our columnist Mikhail Cherepanov, in the author's column of Realnoe Vremya talks about the declassified losses of the USSR and Tatarstan.

The irretrievable losses of the Soviet Union as a result of the factors of the Second World War are more than 19 million military personnel.

Despite many years of well-paid sabotage and all sorts of efforts by generals and politicians to hide the true price of our Victory over fascism, February 14, 2017 at State Duma at parliamentary hearings Patriotic education citizens of Russia: "The Immortal Regiment" finally declassified the numbers closest to the truth:

“According to the declassified data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the losses of the Soviet Union in World War II amount to 41 million 979 thousand, and not 27 million, as previously thought. The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people. Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of the action of war factors are more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians.

According to the report, this information is confirmed big amount authentic documents, authoritative publications and testimonies (details - on the Immortal Regiment website and other resources).

The history of the matter is

In March 1946, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, I.V. Stalin announced: “As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, as well as thanks to the German occupation and hijacking Soviet people about seven million people for German penal servitude.

In 1961, N.S. Khrushchev, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden, wrote: "The German militarists unleashed a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people."

May 8, 1990 at a meeting Supreme Council USSR in honor of the 45th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic war announced the final number of casualties: "Almost 27 million people."

In 1993, a team of military historians led by Colonel General G.F. Krivosheeva published statistical study“The seal of secrecy has been removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts. It indicates the amount of total losses - 26.6 million people, including those published for the first time combat losses: 8,668,400 soldiers and officers.

In 2001, a reprint of the book was published under the editorship of G.F. Krivosheev “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the XX century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study". One of her tables stated that the irretrievable losses of the Soviet Army and Navy alone during the Great Patriotic War were 11,285,057 people. (See page 252.) In 2010, in the next edition of the Great Patriotic War without a secrecy stamp. The Book of Losses, again edited by G.F. Krivosheev, the data on the losses of the armies fighting in 1941-1945 were specified. Demographic losses reduced to 8,744,500 troops (p. 373):

A natural question arises: where was the mentioned “data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR” on the combat losses of our Army stored, if even the heads of the special commissions of the Ministry of Defense could not study them for more than 70 years? How true are they?

Everything is relative. It is worth remembering that it was in the book “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century” that we were finally allowed to find out in 2001 how many of our compatriots were mobilized into the ranks of the Red (Soviet) Army during the years of World War II: 34,476,700 people (p. 596.).

If we take on faith the official figure of 8,744 thousand people, then the share of our military losses will be 25 percent. That is, according to the commission of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, only every fourth Soviet soldier and officer did not return from the front.

I don't think anyone would agree with this. locality former USSR. In every village or aul there are plates with the names of the dead fellow countrymen. At best, only half of those who went to the front 70 years ago wear them.

Statistics of Tatarstan

Let's see what the statistics are in our Tatarstan, on the territory of which there were no battles.

In the book of Professor Z.I. Gilmanov “Workers of Tataria on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War”, published in Kazan in 1981, it was stated that the military registration and enlistment offices of the republic sent 560 thousand citizens to the front and 87 thousand of them did not return.

In 2001, Professor A.A. Ivanov in his doctoral thesis "Combat losses of the peoples of Tatarstan during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." announced that from 1939 to 1945 about 700 thousand citizens were drafted into the army from the territory of the Tatar Republic, and 350 thousand of them did not return.

As the head of the working group of the editorial board of the Book of Memory of the Republic of Tatarstan from 1990 to 2007, I can clarify: taking into account the natives called up from other regions of the country, the losses of our Tatarstan during the Second World War amounted to at least 390 thousand soldiers and officers.

And these are the irretrievable losses of the republic, on whose territory not a single bomb or shell of the enemy fell!

Are the losses of other regions of the former USSR even less than the national average?

Time will show. And our task is to wrest from obscurity and enter into the database of the losses of the Republic of Tatarstan, presented in the Victory Park of Kazan, if possible, the names of all fellow countrymen.

And this should be done not only by single enthusiasts on their own initiative, but also by professional search engines on behalf of the state itself.

It is physically impossible to do this only in excavations at the battlefields in all Memory Watches. This requires massive permanent job in archives published on the websites of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and other thematic Internet resources.

But that's a completely different story...

Mikhail Cherepanov, illustrations provided by the author

reference

Mikhail Valerievich Cherepanov- Head of the Museum-Memorial of the Great Patriotic War of the Kazan Kremlin; Chairman of the Association "Club military glory»; Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Military Historical Sciences, Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Tatarstan.

• Born in 1960.
• Graduated from Kazan State University them. IN AND. Ulyanov-Lenin with a degree in Journalism.
• Since 2007 he has been working in National Museum RT.
• One of the creators of the 28-volume book "Memory" of the Republic of Tatarstan about those who died during the Second World War, 19 volumes of the Book of Memory of the Victims political repression Republic of Tatarstan and others.
• Creator eBook in memory of the Republic of Tatarstan (a list of natives and residents of Tatarstan who died during the Second World War).
• Author of thematic lectures from the cycle "Tatarstan during the war years", thematic excursions "Feat of countrymen on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War".
• Co-author of the concept of the virtual museum "Tatarstan - Fatherland".
• Member of 60 search expeditions to bury the remains of soldiers who fell in the Great Patriotic War (since 1980), board member of the Union of Search Teams of Russia.
• Author of more than 100 scientific and educational articles, books, participant of all-Russian, regional, international conferences. Columnist of Realnoe Vremya.

Calculation of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War remains one of the scientific problems unsolved by historians. Official statistics - 26.6 million dead, including 8.7 million military personnel - underestimate the losses among those who were at the front. Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the dead were military personnel (up to 13.6 million), and not the civilian population of the Soviet Union.

There is a lot of literature on this problem, and maybe someone gets the impression that it has been studied enough. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but there are still many questions and doubts. Too much here is unclear, controversial and clearly unreliable. Even the reliability of the current official data on the loss of life of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts.

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, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, and also thanks to the German occupation and 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 8,668,400 people lost by the power structures of the USSR during the war.

Since March 1989, on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a state commission has been working to study the number of human losses in 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 Administration 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.

May 5, 2008 President Russian Federation signed an order "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 the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945, they amounted to 8,860,400 Soviet military personnel. 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 from wounds and diseases, non-combat losses - 6 885 100 people, including

• Killed - 5,226,800 people.
• Died from inflicted wounds - 1,102,800 people.
• Died from various causes 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 killed in the defense of the Fatherland, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military losses - 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 data

Civilian population

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses of the civilian population of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War at 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 as a result of a humanitarian catastrophe (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care, etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
• died in 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.

Finally, we note one more new trend in the study of the demographic results of the Second World 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 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 the fate of the 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. (The data of recent studies on Belarus are as follows: the Nazis destroyed civilians - 1,409,225 people, destroyed prisoners in German death camps - 810,091 people, driven into German slavery - 377,776 people). It is also known that as a percentage dead soldiers/number of population, among Soviet republics big damage borne by Georgia. 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 source statistics on German losses. The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, Soviet troops 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in the NKVD camps. According to estimates by German historians, there were about 3.1 million German servicemen in Soviet prisoner of war camps alone.

The discrepancy is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in the estimate 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 places", the total number of German soldiers who are in recorded burials in 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.

1. 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 Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6-0.7 million people.
2. 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.
3. Thirdly, many burial places of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht on Soviet soil disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could be buried in such disappeared and nameless graves.
4. 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.
5. 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

1. The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
2. Population in 1946 - 65.93 million people.
3. Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
4. Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
5. Emigration inflow of 7.25 million people.
6. 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 (the exact number is 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 argue 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 actual deaths, a sharp drop in the birth rate can also be attributed to human losses. So, according to official estimates, if the birth rate in the state remained at least at the same level, the population of the Union by the end of 1945 should have been 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.

For the first time after the end of the Second World War, it was impossible to count the losses. Scientists tried to keep accurate statistics of the dead of the Second World War by nationality, but the information became really accessible only after the collapse of the USSR. Many believed that the victory over the Nazis was due to a large number dead. The statistics of the Second World War were not seriously kept by anyone.

The Soviet government deliberately manipulated the numbers. Initially, the number of deaths during the war was about 50 million people. But by the end of the 1990s, the figure had risen to 72 million.

The table provides a comparison of the losses of the two great 20th century:

Briefly about the beginning of hostilities

The USSR entered the war without a single ally (1941–1942). Initially, the battles were fought with defeat. The statistics of the victims of the Second World War in those years demonstrates a huge number of irretrievably lost soldiers and military equipment. The main destructive moment was the seizure of territories by the enemy, rich in the defense industry.

The SS authorities suspected a possible attack on the country. But, visible preparations for war were not conducted. The effect of a surprise attack played into the hands of the aggressor. The seizure of the territories of the USSR was carried out with great speed. Military equipment and weapons in Germany were enough for a large-scale military campaign.

The number of deaths during WWII

The statistics of losses in World War II are only approximate. Each researcher has his own data and calculations. 61 states participated in this battle, and hostilities took place on the territory of 40 countries. The war affected about 1.7 billion people. The main blow was taken by the Soviet Union. According to historians, the losses of the USSR amounted to about 26 million people.

At the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union was very weak in terms of the production of equipment and military weapons. However, the statistics of those who died in World War II show that the number of deaths by year by the end of the battle had significantly decreased. The reason is the rapid development of the economy. The country learned to produce high-quality defensive means against the aggressor, and the technique had multiple advantages over the fascist industrial blocs.

As for prisoners of war, most of they were from the USSR. In 1941, the prison camps were overcrowded. Later, the Germans began to let them go. At the end of this year, about 320,000 prisoners of war were released. The bulk of them were Ukrainians, Belarusians and Balts.

Official statistics of those killed in World War II points to colossal losses among Ukrainians. Their number is much greater than the French, Americans and British combined. As the statistics of the Second World War show, Ukraine lost about 8-10 million people. This includes all combatants (killed, dead, prisoners, evacuees).

The price of the victory of the Soviet authorities over the aggressor could be much less. The main reason is the unpreparedness of the USSR for a sudden invasion of German troops. The stocks of ammunition and equipment did not correspond to the scale of the unfolding war.

About 3% of men born in 1923 survived. The reason is the lack military training. The guys were taken to the front straight from school. Persons with an average were sent to quick courses pilots or for the training of platoon commanders.

German losses

The Germans very carefully concealed the statistics of those killed in World War II. It is somehow strange that in the battle of the century the number of military units lost by the aggressor was only 4.5 million. The statistics of the Second World War regarding the dead, wounded or captured were underestimated by the Germans several times. The remains of the dead are still being dug up in the battlefields.

However, the German was strong and persistent. Hitler at the end of 1941 was ready to celebrate the victory over the Soviet people. Thanks to the allies, the SS was prepared both in terms of food and logistics. The SS factories produced many high-quality weapons. However, losses in the Second World War began to grow significantly.

After a while, the fuse of the Germans began to decrease. The soldiers understood that they could not withstand the popular fury. Soviet command began to correctly build military plans and tactics. The statistics of the Second World War in terms of the dead began to change.

IN war time around the world, the population died not only from hostilities by the enemy, but also from the spread of various kinds of hunger. The losses of China in the Second World War are especially noticeable. The statistics of the dead is in second place after the USSR. More than 11 million Chinese died. Although the Chinese have their own statistics of those killed in World War II. It does not correspond to the numerous opinions of historians.

Results of the Second World War

Given the scale of hostilities, as well as the lack of desire to reduce losses, it affected the number of victims. It was not possible to prevent the losses of countries in the Second World War, the statistics of which were studied by different historians.

The statistics of the Second World War (infographics) would have been different if it were not for the many mistakes made by the commanders in chief, who initially did not attach importance to the production and preparation of military equipment and technology.

The results of the second world war according to statistics more than cruel, not only in terms of shed blood, but also in the destructive scale of cities and villages. World War II statistics (losses by country):

1. The Soviet Union - about 26 million people.
2. China - more than 11 million
3. Germany - more than 7 million
4. Poland - about 7 million
5. Japan - 1.8 million
6. Yugoslavia - 1.7 million
7. Romania - about 1 million
8. France - more than 800 thousand.
9. Hungary - 750 thousand
10. Austria - more than 500 thousand.

Some countries or certain groups of people fundamentally fought on the side of the Germans, as they did not like the Soviet policy and Stalin's approach to leading the country. But, despite this, the military campaign ended with the victory of the Soviet government over the Nazis. World War II served good lesson for the politicians of the time. Such casualties could have been avoided in the Second World War on one condition - preparation for an invasion, regardless of whether the country was threatened with an attack.

The main factor that contributed to the victory of the USSR in the fight against fascism was the unity of the nation and the desire to defend the honor of their homeland.

Vladimir TIMAKOV: In this article, my modest experience in teaching demography is mobilized to investigate one of the most painful historical mysteries: how many Soviet soldiers died in the Great Patriotic War?

Vladimir Timakov

In the proposed article, my modest experience in teaching demography is mobilized to investigate one of the most painful historical mysteries: how many Soviet soldiers died in the Great Patriotic War?

Let us first consider the balance of servicemen who passed through the army, compiled by the group of authors General Staff under the direction of G.F. Krivosheev. When the authors reduce the call to decline, 8 million 668 thousand people remain on the article "irretrievable losses" (dead). However, there are obvious "holes" in the balance sheet. So, the column "waste" includes 427 thousand soldiers sent to penal battalions. But in the end, these penalized men should have either been included in the “killed” article or in the army’s combat squad on July 1, 1945. Where did they go?

Likewise, 500,000 recruits who did not have time to get into units, and 939,000 released from captivity, who were called up for the second time, also fall out of the balance.

On the other hand, Krivosheev's group did not reflect in the balance such an item of loss as captured Red Army soldiers who went over to the side of the enemy and / or preferred to remain in exile. Their number is expressed in the six-digit figure, and when the balance is reduced, it reduces the number of deaths. The loss of emigrants and defectors from the balance sheet of the author's group of the General Staff testifies to the varnishing of reality, but dismisses suspicions that main goal Krivosheeva comrades was an underestimation of Soviet combat losses.

At first glance, the proportion of male contingents that passed through the Wehrmacht (21.1 million, according to the German historian Müller-Hillebrand) and through the Soviet army (34.5 million, according to Krivosheev) is protesting. This ratio seems implausible, since the population of the USSR exceeded the population of Germany (even with Austria and the Sudetenland) by about two and a half times.

However, it must be taken into account that by the beginning of the war, a significant part of Poland (East Silesia, West Prussia, Gau Posen), Bohemia and Moravia, Alsace and Lorraine, most of Slovenia, Luxembourg, with general population at least 20 million people. The fact that the inhabitants of these territories were subject to conscription into the armed forces is eloquently evidenced by ethnic composition captured Nazi soldiers. By the way, the share of the inhabitants of these lands who fell into our captivity significantly exceeds the share of the Red Army soldiers who fell into German captivity, representing ten republics that entered (or formed) in the USSR after 1922. Thus, taking into account the new lands, the population of the Reich on June 22, 1941 can be estimated at 102 million people.

The population of the Soviet Union on the fateful June Sunday was 196.7 million people (according to the calculations of Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov).

It should also be taken into account that the sex and age pyramid in the pre-war USSR resembled the age and sex pyramid of modern Pakistan or India, with a huge preponderance of childhood ages. Therefore, the proportion of Soviet men aged 18 to 50 was only 21.7% (1939 census), and their peers in Germany - 23.4% (Urlanis' estimate). Consequently, the potential conscription contingents of our country and the Reich were correlated as 42.7 million people. to 23.9 million people, that is, they differed by less than 1.8 times.

Note that the enemy could use his manpower more efficiently by attracting huge masses of foreign labor, as well as by conscripting a significant (1.17 million, according to Romanko) number of Soviet collaborators and Volksdeutsche to the Wehrmacht. In view of this, the proportion of conscripts, which follows from a comparison of the figures of Krivosheev and Müller-Hillebrand, looks quite realistic.

The following verification calculations can be done by any educated person, since the background information are situated in open access(for example, on the site demoscope.ru). First of all, we are interested in comparing the census tables of 1939 and 1959 (due to the expansion of the borders of the USSR, the data of 1939, in order to correlate with the data of 1959, must be multiplied by a factor of 1.116).

Following the fate of men born in 1889-1898. (when comparing the cohort of 40-49 years old in the pre-war and 60-69 years old in the post-war census), we see that their number has decreased from 7.8 million to 4.1 million, or by 47.5%. In the same age cohort, between the 1970 and 1989 censuses, the decline was 36.5%. Given that the natural mortality rates in the near-war years were higher than in the prosperous seventies, it must be admitted that the army losses of men born in 1889-1898. were not too big. They fully correlate with the figure given in Krivosheev's work of 520 thousand dead soldiers and officers over 46 years old.

The fate of the generation born in 1899-1928 developed more tragically and can be presented in the table.

The key to determining army casualties is the 12.9 million difference between male and female losses that emerged in this cohort. The excess mortality of men is primarily associated with the war. However, we know that in Peaceful time the natural mortality of men reaching the age of 30-60 years significantly exceeds the female mortality. From this we can conclude that the army losses in the studied cohort are unlikely to exceed 10 million people.

Female decline in 1939-1959. should be divided into civilian casualties (about 4-4.5 million people) and natural loss (5-5.5 million people). Then the civilian casualties among men of this generation can be estimated at 2-2.5 million, and their natural decline - at 9-10 million people. (taking into account the fact that male mortality rates for these ages exceed female ones by more than twice, but 1/5 of the male cohort will not live to natural death as a result of military losses).

As a result, the specific male loss of this generation during the war years will be approximately 10.4-11 million people. This includes not only the loss of military personnel, but also partisans, collaborators, prisoners of the Gulag, etc.

In general, if we sum up the front-line losses of all age cohorts and add to them the dead female servicemen (1-2% of men), the final figure of losses of the Soviet army is unlikely to exceed the indicated level of 10-11 million people. A similar assessment is given by the British historian Norman Davies, who gained popularity with the recent edition of Europe at War.
1939-1945. No easy win."

Let's pay attention: if you "patch" the above "gaps" in Krivosheev's balance sheet, you will also get very similar numbers.

Demography is a science in which it is quite difficult to lie. The various indicators are so intertwined with each other that any lie shakes the entire system of statistical relationships - like a entangled fly shakes the entire fabric of the cobweb.

We can, for example, estimate how many boys born in 1923 returned home from the war. These are the conscripts of the forty-first, the "knocked out call", which suffered the maximum losses compared to other ages.
At the beginning of 1959, for every 100 women of this age, there were 64 of their peers.

For comparison, in the peaceful year of 1939, for 100 thirty-five-year-olds Soviet women accounted for 93 peers.
And in Germany, according to Urlanis, in 1950 there were 71 men for every 100 women of the "knocked out" generation (born 1920-1924). That is, taking into account the traditional difference in natural male mortality among Germans and Russians, it should be recognized that the proportion of those who died at the front in the USSR and in Germany is approximately the same.

The proportionality of front-line losses is also confirmed by the similarity in the post-war proportions of widows: the USSR - 19.0%, the GDR - 18.6%, Austria - 18.5%, the FRG - 17.7% ("Population of the world"; from total adult women). These figures, as well as a careful analysis of the Müller-Hillebrand balance, suggest that the German military statistics are "varnished" approximately on the same scale as the official conclusions of the Russian General Staff. But the studies of the German historian Overmans, who counted 5.3 million fallen soldiers of the Wehrmacht, look quite reliable.

It should be concluded that the army losses of the USSR and the Reich are approximately proportional to the draft contingents of these countries, i.e. are unlikely to differ more than twice.

Recently, parliamentary hearings “Patriotic Education of Russian Citizens: “The Immortal Regiment”” were held in the Duma. They were attended by deputies, senators, representatives of legislative and higher executive bodies state power subjects of the Russian Federation, Ministries of Education and Science, Defense, Foreign Affairs, Culture, members public associations, organizations of foreign compatriots ... True, there were no those who came up with the action itself - ​journalists from Tomsk TV-2, no one even remembered them. And, in general, there was really no need to remember. "Immortal Regiment", which, by definition, did not provide for any staffing, no commanders and political officers, has already completely transformed into a sovereign "box" of parade crew, and its main task today is to learn to step in step and keep alignment in the ranks.

“What is a people, a nation? First of all, it is respect for victories,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the parliamentary committee, admonished the participants when opening the hearings. — ​Today, when new war, which someone calls "hybrid", our Victory becomes one of the main targets for attacks on historical memory. There are waves of falsification of history that should make us believe that it was not us, but someone else who won, and also make us apologize ... ”For some reason, the Nikonovs are seriously sure that it was they, long before own birth, won Great Victory for which, moreover, someone is trying to make them apologize. But they weren't attacked! And the aching note of the nationwide misfortune that has not passed, the phantom pain for the third generation of the descendants of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War is drowned out by a cheerful, thoughtless cry: “We can repeat it!”

Really, can we?

It was at these hearings that a terrible figure was named in between times, which for some reason was not noticed by anyone, which did not make us stop in horror on the run in order to understand WHAT we were told after all. Why this was done now, I do not know.

At the hearings, the co-chairman of the Immortal Regiment of Russia movement, State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, presented the report “Documentary basis People's Project"Establishing the fate of the missing defenders of the Fatherland", in which studies were carried out on population decline, which changed the idea of ​​​​the scale of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War.

“The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people,” Zemtsov said, citing declassified data from the USSR State Planning Committee. - Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of the action of war factors - more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians. The total natural mortality of military personnel and the civilian population during this period could have amounted to more than 10 million 833 thousand people (including 5 million 760 thousand - ​deceased children under the age of four). The irretrievable losses of the population of the USSR as a result of the action of war factors amounted to almost 42 million people.

Can we… do it again?!

Back in the 60s of the last century, the then young poet Vadim Kovda wrote a short poem in four lines: “ If only in my front door / there are three elderly disabled people / then how many of them were injured? / And killed?

Now these elderly people with disabilities due to natural causes are less and less visible. But Kovda imagined the scale of losses quite correctly, it was enough just to multiply the number of front doors.

Stalin, based on inaccessible normal person considerations, personally determined the losses of the USSR at 7 million people - a little less than the losses of Germany. Khrushchev - 20 million. Under Gorbachev, a book was published, prepared by the Ministry of Defense under the editorship of General Krivosheev, “Secrecy has been lifted”, in which the authors named and in every possible way justified this very figure - 27 million. Now it turns out that she was wrong.