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An open letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to party organizations, to all communists of the Soviet Union Dear comrades! The Central Committee of the CPSU considers it necessary to address you with an open letter to express its position

The Soviet Union suffered the most significant losses in World War II - about 27 million people. At the same time, dividing the dead along ethnic lines has never been welcomed. Nevertheless, such statistics exist.

Counting history

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

In 1961, at the end of the post-war population census, Khrushchev announced the corrected data. “Can we sit with our hands folded and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists launched 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, stated: “Such a brutal war that the Soviet Union endured has never befallen any nation. The war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people.”

However, all these calculations were approximate. Only at the end of the 1980s, a group of Soviet historians under the leadership of Colonel General Grigory Krivosheev was allowed to access 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 security forces of the USSR during the entire war.

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

By nationality

For a long time, no one was counting those killed in the Great Patriotic War by nationality. Such an attempt was made by historian Mikhail Filimoshin in the book “Human Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR.” The author noted that the work was significantly complicated by the lack of a personal list of the dead, dead or missing, indicating nationality. Such a practice was simply not provided for in the Table of Urgent Reports.

Filimoshin substantiated his data using proportionality coefficients, which were calculated on the basis of reports on the number of military personnel of the Red Army according to socio-demographic characteristics for 1943, 1944 and 1945. At the same time, the researcher was unable to establish the nationality of approximately 500 thousand conscripts who were called up for mobilization in the first months of the war and went missing along the way to their units.

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. Mordovians and Chuvashs – 63 thousand each (0.730%)

Demographer and sociologist Leonid Rybakovsky, in his book “Human Losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War,” separately counts civilian casualties using the ethnodemographic method. This method includes three components:

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

2. Failure to return part of the ostarbeiters and other population who served the occupiers voluntarily or under duress;

3. an increase in population mortality above the normal level from hunger and other deprivations.

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

Alternative estimates

Historians of Ukraine present their methods of calculation, which relate primarily to the losses of Ukrainians in the Great Patriotic War. Researchers on Square 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 correctional labor institutions, where a significant part of the dispossessed Ukrainians were located, for whom the serving of their sentences 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 have collected a unique fund of documentary materials on recording the human military losses of Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War - funerals, lists of missing persons, correspondence on the search for the dead, loss accounting books.

In total, according to Rybchenko, more than 8.5 thousand archival files were collected, in which about 3 million personal certificates about 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, who could well have been included in the number of 3 million victims.

Belarusian experts also provide estimates of the number of losses during the Second World War, independent of Moscow. Some believe that every third resident of the 9 million population of Belarus became a victim of Hitler's aggression. One of the most authoritative researchers on this topic is considered to be Professor of the State Pedagogical University, Doctor of Historical Sciences Emmanuel Ioffe.

The historian believes that in total in 1941-1944, 1 million 845 thousand 400 inhabitants of Belarus died. From this figure he subtracts 715 thousand 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.

There are different estimates of the losses of the Soviet Union and Germany during the war of 1941-1945. The differences are associated both with the methods of obtaining initial quantitative data for different groups of losses, and with the methods of calculation.

In Russia, official data on losses in the Great Patriotic War are considered to be those published by a group of researchers led by Grigory Krivosheev, a consultant at the Military Memorial Center of the Russian Armed Forces, in 1993. According to updated data (2001), the losses were as follows:

• Human losses of the USSR - 6.8 million military personnel killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing. Total demographic losses (including civilian deaths) - 26.6 million Human;
• German casualties - 4.046 million military personnel killed, died from wounds, missing in action (including 442.1 thousand died in captivity), more 910.4 thousand returned from captivity after the war;
• Human losses of Germany's allied countries - 806 thousand military personnel killed (including 137.8 thousand died in captivity), also 662.2 thousand returned from captivity after the war.
• Irreversible losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million And 8.6 million people (not to mention 1.6 million prisoners of war after May 9, 1945) respectively. The ratio of irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany with their satellites is 1,3:1 .

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

Research into the Soviet Union's losses in the war actually began only in the late 1980s. with the advent of glasnost. Before this, in 1946, Stalin announced that the USSR had lost during the war 7 million people. Under Khrushchev this figure increased to "more than 20 million". Only in 1988-1993. a team of military historians under the leadership of Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev conducted a comprehensive statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about human losses in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. In this case, the results of the work of the General Staff commission to determine losses, headed by Army General S. M. Shtemenko (1966-1968) and a similar commission of the Ministry of Defense headed by Army General M. A. Gareev (1988), were used. The team was also cleared to be declassified in the late 1980s. materials of the General Staff and main headquarters of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, border troops and other archival institutions of the former USSR.

The final figure of human losses in the Great Patriotic War was first published in rounded form (“ almost 27 million people."") at the ceremonial meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990, dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. In 1993, the results of the study were published in the book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed. Losses of the USSR Armed Forces in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study,” which was then translated into English. In 2001, a reissue of the book “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century” was published. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study."

To determine the scale of human losses, this team used various methods, in particular:

• accounting and statistical, that is, by analyzing existing accounting documents (primarily reports on losses of personnel of the USSR Armed Forces),
• balance, or the method of demographic balance, that is, by comparing the size and age structure of the population of the USSR at the beginning and end of the war.

In the 1990-2000s. Both works proposed amendments to official figures (in particular, by clarifying statistical methods) and completely alternative studies with very different data on losses appeared in the press. As a rule, in works of the latter type, the estimated loss of life far exceeds the officially recognized 26.6 million people.

For example, the modern Russian publicist Boris Sokolov estimated the total human losses of the USSR in 1939-1945. V 43,448 thousand people, and the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. V 26.4 million people (of which 4 million people died in captivity). If you believe his calculations about the loss 2.6 million German soldiers on the Soviet-German front, the loss ratio reaches 10:1. At the same time, the total human losses of Germany in 1939-1945. he rated it at 5.95 million people (including 300 thousand Jews, Gypsies and anti-Nazis who died in concentration camps). His estimate of the dead Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel (including foreign formations) is 3,950 thousand Human). However, it must be taken into account that Sokolov also includes demographic losses in the losses of the USSR (that is, those who could have been born, but were not born), but does not keep such a calculation for Germany. The calculation of the total losses of the USSR is based on outright falsification: the population of the USSR in mid-1941 was taken at 209.3 million people (12-17 million people higher than the real one, at the level of 1959), at the beginning of 1946 - at 167 million (3. 5 million higher than the real one), - which in total gives the difference between the official and Sokolov figures. B.V. Sokolov’s calculations are repeated in many publications and media (in the NTV film “Victory. One for All”, interviews and speeches of writer Viktor Astafiev, book by I.V. Bestuzhev-Lada “Russia on the eve of the 21st century”, etc.)

Casualties

Overall rating

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimates the total human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, determined by the demographic balance method, in 26.6 million people. This includes all those killed as a result of military and other enemy actions, those who died as a result of the increased mortality rate during the war in the occupied territory and in the rear, as well as persons who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return after its end. For comparison, according to the same team of researchers, the population decline in Russia in the First World War (losses of military personnel and civilians) was 4.5 million people, and a similar decline in the Civil War was 8 million people.

As for the gender composition of the dead and deceased, the overwhelming majority, naturally, were men (about 20 million). In general, by the end of 1945, the number of women aged 20 to 29 years was twice the number of men of the same age in the USSR.

Considering the work of G. F. Krivosheev’s group, American demographers S. Maksudov and M. Elman come to the conclusion that their estimate of human losses of 26-27 million is relatively reliable. They, however, indicate both the possibility of underestimating the number of losses due to incomplete accounting of the population of the territories annexed by the USSR before the war and at the end of the war, and the possibility of overestimating losses due to failure to take into account emigration from the USSR in 1941-45. In addition, official calculations do not take into account the drop in the birth rate, due to which the population of the USSR by the end of 1945 should have been approximately 35-36 million people more than in the absence of war. However, they consider this figure to be hypothetical, since it is based on insufficiently strict assumptions.

According to another foreign researcher M. Haynes, the figure of 26.6 million obtained by G. F. Krivosheev’s group sets only the lower limit of all USSR losses in the war. The total population decline from June 1941 to June 1945 was 42.7 million people, and this figure corresponds to the upper limit. Therefore, the real number of military losses lies in this interval. However, he is opposed by M. Harrison, who, based on statistical calculations, comes to the conclusion that even taking into account some uncertainty in estimating emigration and the decline in the birth rate, the real military losses of the USSR should be estimated within 23.9 to 25.8 million people.

Military personnel

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, irretrievable losses during combat operations on the 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 - 8,668,400 military personnel and data obtained during the search work of the Memory Watch and in historical archives. Of these (according to 1993 data):

• Killed, died from wounds and illnesses, non-combat losses - 6,885,100 people, including
• Killed - 5,226,800 people.
• Died from wounds - 1,102,800 people.
• Died from various causes and accidents, were shot - 555,500 people.

According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet military personnel and 500 thousand persons liable for military service, called up for mobilization, but not included in the lists of troops, were captured and went missing.

According to G.F. Krivosheev: during the Great Patriotic War, a total of 3,396,400 military personnel were missing and captured; 1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, 1,783,300 did not return (died, emigrated).

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 figure is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:

• were deliberately exterminated in the occupied territory - 7,420,379 people.
• died and perished from the cruel conditions of the occupation regime (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 for various reasons did not return and became emigrants)

However, the civilian population also suffered heavy losses from enemy combat in front-line areas, besieged and besieged cities. There are no complete statistical materials on the types of civilian casualties under consideration.

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

Property losses

During the war years, 1,710 cities and towns and more than 70 thousand villages, 32 thousand industrial enterprises, 98 thousand collective farms, and 1,876 state farms were destroyed on Soviet territory. The State Commission found that material damage amounted to about 30 percent of the national wealth of the Soviet Union, and in areas subject to occupation, about two-thirds. In general, the material losses of the Soviet Union are estimated at about 2 trillion. 600 billion rubles. For comparison, the national wealth of England decreased by only 0.8 percent, France - by 1.5 percent, and the United States essentially avoided material losses.

Losses of Germany and their allies

Casualties

The German command involved the population of the occupied countries in the war against the Soviet Union by recruiting volunteers. Thus, separate military formations appeared from among citizens of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Croatia, as well as from citizens of the USSR who were captured or in occupied territory (Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Muslim, etc.). How exactly the losses of these formations were taken into account is not clear in German statistics.

Also, a constant obstacle to determining the real number of military personnel losses was the mixing of military casualties with civilian casualties. For this reason, in Germany, Hungary, and Romania, the losses of the armed forces are significantly reduced, since some of them are included in the number of civilian casualties. (200 thousand people lost military personnel, and 260 thousand lost civilians). For example, in Hungary this ratio was “1:2” (140 thousand - military casualties and 280 thousand - civilian casualties). All this significantly distorts the statistics on the losses of troops of the countries that fought on the Soviet-German front.

A German radio telegram emanating from the Wehrmacht casualty department dated May 22, 1945, addressed to the OKW Quartermaster General, provides the following information:

According to a certificate from the OKH organizational department dated May 10, 1945, the ground forces alone, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), lost 4 million 617.0 thousand people during the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945.

Two months before his death, Hitler announced in one of his speeches that Germany had lost 12.5 million killed and wounded, half of whom were killed. With this message, he actually refuted the estimates of the scale of human losses made by other fascist leaders and government agencies.

General Jodl, after the end of hostilities, stated that Germany, in total, lost 12 million 400 thousand people, of which 2.5 million were killed, 3.4 million missing and captured and 6.5 million wounded, of which approximately 12-15% did not return to duty for one reason or another.

According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites,” the total number of German soldiers buried in the USSR and Eastern Europe is 3.226 million, of which the names of 2.395 million are known.

Prisoners of war of Germany and its allies

Information on the number of prisoners of war of the armed forces of Germany and its allied countries, recorded in the camps of the NKVD of the USSR as of April 22, 1956.

Alternative theories

In the 1990-2000s, publications appeared in the Russian press with data on losses that were very different from those accepted by historical science. As a rule, the estimated Soviet losses far exceed those cited by historians.

For example, the modern Russian publicist Boris Sokolov estimated the total human losses of the USSR in 1939-1945 at 43,448 thousand people, and the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. 26.4 million people (of which 4 million people died in captivity). According to his calculations about the loss of 2.6 million German soldiers on the Soviet-German front, the loss ratio reaches 10:1. At the same time, he estimated the total human losses of Germany in 1939-1945 at 5.95 million people (including 300 thousand Jews, Gypsies and anti-Nazis who died in concentration camps). His estimate of the dead Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel (including foreign formations) is 3,950 thousand people). However, it must be taken into account that Sokolov also includes demographic losses in the losses of the USSR (that is, those who could have been born, but were not born), but does not keep such a calculation for Germany. The calculation of the total losses of the USSR is based on outright falsification: the population of the USSR in mid-1941 was taken at 209.3 million people (12-17 million people higher than the real one, at the level of 1959), at the beginning of 1946 - 167 million (3. 5 million below the real one), which in total gives the difference between the official and Sokolov’s figures. B.V. Sokolov’s calculations are repeated in many publications and media (in the NTV film “Victory. One for All”, interviews and speeches of writer Viktor Astafiev, book by I.V. Bestuzhev-Lada “Russia on the eve of the 21st century”, etc.)

In contrast to Sokolov’s highly controversial publications, there are works by other authors, many of whom are driven by establishing the real picture of what happened, and not by the requirements of the modern political situation. The work of Igor Lyudvigovich Garibyan stands out from the general series. The author uses open official sources and data, clearly pointing out inconsistencies in them, and focuses on the methods used to manipulate statistics. Interesting are the methods that he used for his own assessment of Germany’s losses: the female preponderance in the age-sex pyramid, the balance method, the method of assessment based on the structure of prisoners, and the assessment based on the rotation of army formations. Each method produces similar results - from 10 before 15 million people of irretrievable losses, excluding losses of satellite countries. The results obtained are often confirmed by indirect and sometimes direct facts from official German sources. The work deliberately focuses on the indirectness of multiple facts. Such data is more difficult to falsify, because the totality of facts and their vicissitudes during falsification cannot be foreseen, which means attempts at falsification will not stand up to scrutiny under different methods of assessment.

Surprisingly, 70 years after our Victory, one of the most important questions has not been settled - how many of our fellow citizens died during the Great Patriotic War. Official figures have changed several times. And always in one direction – the direction of increasing losses. Stalin called 9 million dead (which is close to the truth, if we take into account military losses); under Brezhnev, the figure of 20 million lives given for the freedom of the Motherland was introduced. At the end of Perestroika, figures appeared that historians and politicians use today - 27 million USSR citizens died during the Great Patriotic War. Voices are already being heard that “more than 33 million people actually died.”

So who and why is constantly increasing our losses, why is the myth of “being showered with corpses” maintained? And why did the Immortal Regiment appear, as the first step towards a new version of the “inhuman leadership of the USSR” during the Second World War, “saving itself at the expense of ”.

On the eve of Victory Day, I received two letters that are an excellent illustration of the question of the true losses of our people in the war against fascism.

From these two letters from readers we got material about the war and our losses.

Letter one.

“Dear Nikolai Viktorovich!

I agree with you that history is like the rules of the road (). Failure to follow the rules leads to a dead end or worse... In history, not only facts are important, but also numbers (not just dates).

Since “perestroika and glasnost” a lot of figures have appeared, but not achievements, but losses. And one of these figures is 27 million who died in the Great Patriotic War (WWII).

At the same time, this is not enough for some “politicians” and they begin to voice larger numbers.

Remember what a shock (as they say nowadays) the number of many millions of “victims of repression” causes in people. For some, it is obligatory and with clarification - “Stalinist”. And the real figure for normal researchers is from 650 thousand to 680 thousand people. By the way, in Grover Furr’s book “Shadows of the 20th Congress, or anti-Stalinist meanness” (M. Eksmo, Algorithm, 2010) the following figures are given for those executed in 1937 - 353,074 people, 1938 - 328,618 people, a total of 681,692 people. But this number includes not only political, but also criminals.

The study of WWII losses itself indicates a figure of 26.6 million people. It is indicated that 1.3 million are emigrants. That is, they left the country. This means that there are still 25.3 million dead.

It is very difficult to directly establish the losses of the USSR. The number of casualties of the Red Army alone was established in a study conducted by the Min. Defense in 1988-1993 under the leadership of Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev.

Estimates of the direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK data from 1946, amounted to 6,390,800 people on the territory of the USSR. This number also includes prisoners of war. What about the number of deaths from hunger, bombing, and artillery shelling? I have not seen such studies.

The assessment of USSR losses is carried out according to a completely logical formula:

Losses of the USSR = Population of the USSR as of June 22, 1941 - Population of the USSR at the end of the war + Number of children who died due to increased mortality (from those born during the war) - The population would have died in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 .

We substitute the numbers into the above formula and get:

196.7 million - 159.5 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 26.6 million people

There is almost no discrepancy between the researchers in two figures - these are:

Number of children who died due to increased mortality (among those born during the war). The figure cited is 1.3 million people.

The population would have died in peacetime, based on the 1940 mortality rate = 11.9 million people.

But there are questions about the other two numbers. The population of the USSR at the end of the war (those born before June 22, 1941) was determined to be 159.5 million people based on data for December 1945. It is worth remembering the following facts: in 1944, Tuva became part of the USSR. Moreover, since 1943, Tuvan volunteers took part in battles on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In 1939 and 1940, the lands of Western Belarus, Ukraine, and the Carpathian region became part of the USSR. The population of these regions was included in the population of the USSR. But in 1945 Poland and

Czechoslovakia, and also defined new borders for them (and for Hungary and Romania). And many Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians (former citizens of the USSR) decided to return to their states. This raises the question: how were these people counted in the post-war census? Researchers are silent about this.

Now the population of the USSR as of June 22, 1941. How did this figure come about?

To the population of the USSR as of January 1939, we added the population of the annexed territories and the population growth over 2.5 years, i.e.

170.6 million + 20.8 million + 4.9 million and another + 0.4 million due to the “infant mortality reduction coefficient” and received 196.7 million people by June 22, 1941.

Wherein:

The population of the USSR according to the 1926 census is 147 million people

The population of the USSR according to the 1937 census is 162 million people.

The population of the USSR according to the 1939 census is 170.6 million people.

The 1926 census took place in December, the 1937 and 1939 censuses took place in early January, that is, all three censuses were carried out within the same boundaries. Population growth from 1926 to 1937 amounted to 15 million people over 10 years, or 1.5 million per year. And suddenly, over the 2 years of 1937 and 1938, it was calculated that the population growth was 8.6 million. And this was at the time of urbanization and the “demographic echo” of the First World War and the Civil War. By the way, the average annual population growth of the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s was approximately 2.3-2.5 million people per year.

In statistical reference books of the 50s, the population of the USSR in 1941 was generally indicated as 191.7 million people. Even a democrat and officially called a traitor, Rezun-Suvorov, in his books about the Second World War, writes that “The population of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1941 was 191 million people” (Viktor Suvorov. About half a billion. Chapter from a new book. http://militera. lib.ru/research/pravda_vs-3/01.html).

(The question of why, when calculating the population of the USSR, they decided to increase the population figure by 5 million remains unanswered).

By indicating in the calculation a figure that is closer to the real value, i.e. 191.7 million people at the beginning of the Second World War we get:

The population of the USSR as of June 22, 1941 was 191.7

The population of the USSR as of December 31, 1945 was 170.5

Incl. born before June 22, 1941 - 159.5

Total population decline among those living on June 22, 1941 (191.7 million - 159.5 million = 32.2 million people) - 32.2

Number of children who died due to increased mortality (of those born during the war) - 1.3

The population would have died in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 - 11.9

Total human losses of the USSR as a result of the war: 32.2 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 21.6 million people.

Firstly, we must take into account that non-military mortality in 1941-1945 It is incorrect to calculate based on mortality in 1940. During the war years 1941-1945. non-military mortality should have been much HIGHER than in the peaceful year of 1940.

Secondly, this “general population decline” also includes the so-called. “second emigration” (up to 1.5 million people) and the loss of collaborationist formations that fought on the side of the Germans (Estonian and Latvian SS men, “ostbattalions”, policemen, etc.) - they also consisted, as it were, of citizens of the USSR! This is still up to 400,000 people.

And if these numbers are subtracted from 21.6 million, you get about 19.8 million.

That is, in round numbers - the same “Brezhnev” 20 million.

Therefore, until researchers have been able to provide reasonable calculations, I propose not to use the figures that appeared during Gorbachev’s time. The purpose of these calculations was certainly not to establish the truth. I wrote to you about this because I heard several times in your speeches about the USSR’s losses of 27 million people.

Sincerely, Matvienko Gennady Ivanovich

P.S. According to estimates, the losses (minimal) of Germans alone in World War 2 were no less than 12 million people (while the maximum estimate of losses of the German civilian population does not exceed 3 million). And they completely forgot the Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Finns.

At Stalingrad in September 1942, Paulus’s army was 270 thousand people, and 2 Romanian and 1 Hungarian armies were about 340 thousand people.”

Thank you very much to Gennady Ivanovich for his letter. But the letter from another reader sent a little earlier is simply an illustration of what is written above.

Letter two.

“Dear Nikolai Viktorovich

Let me introduce myself. My name is Berkaliev Askar Abdrakhmanovich. I live in Kazakhstan in Almaty, a pensioner, but I continue to be interested in social and political life in the territory of the former USSR. I try to follow the television battles that our television broadcasts. I am impressed by your interpretation of the History of the Great Patriotic War and the fact that you examine the most controversial moments of this war. I would not bother you and take up your time if I had not accidentally stumbled upon facts that shook the established (for me personally) information about the losses of our country in the last war.

Until the 70s of the last century, it was believed that our country’s losses in the Great Patriotic War amounted to 20 million dead. Then the figure of 27 million appeared out of nowhere and there is a strong trend towards an increase in the number of our losses.

Some sections of society (especially the intelligentsia) have a point of view that the Soviet army showered the Germans with the corpses of its soldiers and won not by skill, but by numbers. I think that such an opinion contributes to belittling the merits of our people in winning that war. As well as regularly expressed points of view that without supplies under Lend-Lease we would not have won, that without the second front we would not have won, etc.

I'll tell you a little about what facts I found.

In the fall of 2013, I made a trip to Ukraine. My older brother Nariman Berkaliev died there at the end of 1943. For a long time we did not know the exact place of death and burial. The death notice stated that he died in the Kirovograd region on December 20, 1943, without indicating the exact place of burial. In 1991, the “Book of Memory” was published in our regional newspaper. The names of our fellow countrymen who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War were listed there, and the specified places of their burial were indicated.

Due to various circumstances, none of the remaining family members were able to travel to Ukraine. The parents were no longer alive, the older brothers were aged and their health did not allow them to travel to Ukraine. I was the youngest of the brothers and, putting aside other matters, I still went to the Kirovograd region and found the village of Sukhodolskoye in the Dolinsky district (during the war it was called Batyzman). Found a mass grave. The brother's name and surname were on the list engraved on granite stones. The mass grave is kept in good condition, thanks to the village residents. I laid flowers and handfuls of earth brought from my homeland.

Having the goal of visiting the grave of my older brother, I wanted to look at the land for the liberation of which my father fought. My father was drafted into the army in the summer of 1942 and ended up in the Stalingrad area. He was awarded the rank of sergeant (he had experience in the Civil War). He served in the 706th Infantry Regiment of the 204th Division, which was part of the 64th Army. On January 18, 1943, during the liquidation of an encircled German group, he was wounded. He was in a hospital in the city of Buzuluk and in the summer of 1943 he returned to the active army. He ended up in the 983rd regiment of the 253rd division, which was part of the 40th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. He took part in the battles for the liberation of the Poltava region, walked through Gogol’s places, was in Dikanka, and almost drowned in the Psel River there. In November 1943, part of them crossed the Dnieper in the area of ​​the Bukrin bridgehead, simulating that the main attack would come from here. In fact, the main attack was made from the Lyutezh bridgehead. For two days, their regiment, which moved to the right bank, held out under fire from the Germans, who were entrenched on the high bank of the Dnieper. On the third day, my father was wounded by a German mine explosion and evacuated to the rear. They wanted to amputate his legs, but he did not allow it, endured six months of treatment in a rear hospital and returned home in the summer of 1944. My father died in 1973 at the age of 70.

After a trip to Ukraine, I began to study in more detail the combat path of my closest relatives. From close relatives, my father, older brother, and six older cousins ​​took part in that war.

I am now retired, I have enough time and after a trip to Ukraine I decided to compose something like memoirs for the younger generation. Of course, a lot of space in the memoirs is devoted to how the older generation showed itself in the war. Of the eight close relatives who went to war, only four returned alive.

In the course of compiling my notes, which later grew into memoirs, I had to rummage through my home archives. It turned out that a lot of information can be found on the Internet. There are special sites “Feat of the People” and OBD “Memorial”. You, of course, know about this, but for me it was a big find. It turns out that having information about the number of a military unit, you can trace its combat path. You can find information about awards and even awards submissions. I remember my father talking about his last battle - crossing the Dnieper in early November 1943. On the third day after the crossing, already on the right bank, my father was wounded and was taken to the rear. Before being sent to the hospital, the commander told my father that he would nominate him for the Order of Glory, 2nd class (my father already had the Order of Glory, 3rd class). But he never received the promised order. On the Internet I found an award sheet (nomination for an award). My father was nominated not for the order, but only for the medal “For Courage,” but he didn’t receive that either. The award sheet indicated the circumstances and location of the battle. It was near the village of Khodorovka on the famous Bukrinsky bridgehead.

I started digging more thoroughly on the Internet. I entered the Memorial OBD website and found out that my father was considered killed on January 18, 1943 during the liquidation of an encircled German group (that is, during the first wound).

After discovering an obvious discrepancy between the information received and reality, I checked whether the Memorial OBD contained information about my other relatives who died at the front.

1. Two older cousins ​​died back in 1941. There is no information about them. They were ordinary soldiers. In addition, I do not know exactly the years of birth and surnames (for Kazakhs, the surname is often taken from the name of the father, grandfather or distant ancestor).
2. Another older cousin of Kairov, Salim, was a career military man who fought on the Kalinin Front. His name is listed on the Memorial OBD list of irretrievable losses three times. All three information contain the same last name and first name. Even the numbers of the military unit and division are the same. The difference is that somewhere he was recorded as a lieutenant, and somewhere as a senior lieutenant. In one case he was considered killed on January 9, 1943, and in another information on January 8, 1943. Somewhere he was considered to have been born in the Ashgabat region, and somewhere in the West Kazakhstan region. Although they were clearly talking about the same person (too many coincidences in details). But at the same time, each information from the Memorial OBD has a separate folder and file.

1. My actually deceased elder brother Nariman also appears on the lists of the dead in the Memorial OBD three times. In one case, he is considered a fighter of the 68th brigade and is buried in the village. Batyzman, Dolinsky district. In other information, he is identified as a fighter who only has field mail 32172, without indicating the place of death. In the third case, he is recorded as a fighter of the 68th brigade. But the burial place is named the village of Batyzman, Novgorodkovsky district.

1. There was another participant in the war in our family - the father of my wife Seidalin Mukash, born in 1910. When searching for data about him, the Memorial OBD indicated that senior sergeant of the 1120th Infantry Regiment Mukash Seydalin died in hospital from wounds in December 1942. In fact, he was wounded on December 6, 1942. After being wounded, he was given a commission and from 1943 worked as a teacher in the city of Chu, Dzhambul region. He died in 1985 at the age of 75.

I got a bunch of contradictory information.

• My father returned from the war wounded but alive. According to information from Memorial OBD, he is considered dead.
• My wife's father returned from the war wounded but alive. There is information about him that he died in the hospital.
• My brother Nariman really died, but according to information from the Memorial OBD, he is on three lists, that is, he is listed as three different dead people.
• Another brother (cousin) was also really killed, but according to information from the Memorial OBD, he was killed three times and there are three separate records about this.

It turns out that for four people there are eight reports of death, although only two actually died.

It seems to me that errors in the information could have arisen at the first stage, i.e. when filling out reports of irrecoverable losses. I saw the original military field records on the Internet. These are certainly genuine documents, written on yellowed paper which confirms the authenticity of the originals. But we must take into account that the recordings were made in conditions of hostilities, and by people who did not always themselves witness what happened, they often wrote from the words of other people. I cannot explain the appearance of information about the death of people who were in fact only wounded by other reasons. Ordinary human factor.

The appearance of errors associated with repeated inclusion in lists of irretrievable losses, I think, occurred at the digitization stage. Probably the information was not filtered enough to repeat the information. The computer is not able to detect the identity of the information if, for example, if there is the same last name and first name, the burial place does not match. For the computer, this is a different person. Here we can talk not about the human factor, but about its absence or insufficiency. A person would definitely guess that the information contained information about the same person. Too many matching details.

To objectively assess my doubts, it is necessary to conduct a study of a large sample of hundreds and thousands of people. I can’t do this, and besides, I’m not an expert in digging through archives and the Internet. Here we need professional historians who know how to understand archives and have access to large amounts of archival documents. I ask you to clarify whether my doubts are justified. If the facts that I encountered are widespread, then it is necessary to find out, at least to a first approximation, the percentage of errors. The usual human factor could greatly exaggerate our losses in the war. To my letter I attach information about my relatives who died in the war (and are considered dead). Maybe this will help you get a more objective picture.

I congratulate you on the upcoming 70th anniversary of Victory, I wish you creative success in the necessary work that you are carrying out.”

Thank you very much, dear Gennady Ivanovich and Askar Abdrakhmanovich, for your important and extremely interesting letters. Health and happiness to you!

So what is it, the true price of our Victory? When will speculation about the feat of our people come to an end and “new research” and “independent researchers” will stop exaggerating the number of victims that our multinational people brought to the altar of Victory?

And as a postscript, material about the Immortal Regiment as an inappropriate and harmful reform of the established order of celebrating Victory Day:

Let the Immortal Regiment become an attribute

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

Germany's losses in this war were somewhat smaller - a little more than 4 million military personnel killed, including those who died in captivity. Germany's allied countries lost 806 thousand military personnel killed, and 662.2 thousand military personnel returned from captivity after the war.

Answering the question about how many military personnel 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. Thus, until the end of the 80s of the 20th century, studies of losses during the war years were virtually not conducted. This information was not publicly available at that time. Official losses were considered to be those named in 1946 by Joseph Stalin, which amounted to 7 million people. During the reign of Khrushchev, the figure was more than 20 million people.

And only in the late 1980s, a group of researchers was able, based on archival documents and other materials, to estimate the losses of the Soviet Union in various types of troops. The work also used the results of commissions of the Ministry of Defense conducted in 1966 and 1988, as well as a number of materials declassified in those years. For the first time, the figure obtained by this research group and now considered official was published 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 the Civil War. The vast majority of deaths, naturally, were among 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 twice.

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