Russian War Dead
In 1946, reacting to Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech that marked the start of the Cold War, Joseph Stalin mentioned the Great Patriotic War (how Russians refer to the war with Nazi Germany) and stated that “as a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irrevocably lost… around 7 million people.” That was the first ever official Soviet stance on war casualties. Stalin had knowledge of the other statistical data: 15 million casualties. This number was contained in a report delivered to him in early 1946, by the commission led by The State Planning Committee’s president Nikolai Voznesensky. Stalin was eager to hide the real scale of losses from both the Soviet citizens and the world – in order not to show the USSR as a state weakened by the war.
In 1965, Nikita Khrushchev, who succeeded Stalin as USSR’s leader, mentioned a higher number: 20 million. Essentially, this is the number that became the official evaluation for the rest of the Soviet era – Leonid Brezhnev adhered to it too, but added “more than” to the 20 million casualties. After the dissolution of the USSR, the estimate grew again.
According to the researches conducted by Col.-Gen. G. Krivosheyev – the Wehrmacht's losses were about 7 million troops killed in action, while the Red Army's losses were about 8.7 million troops who were also killed in action. The Soviet civil losses by one count were about 13,000,000 people, while the German civil losses (caused mainly by the Anglo-American massive bombing raids) were about 1,223,000 people. John Keegan in 1989 estimated civilian deaths at 7,000,000. The Cambridge History of Russia by Dominic C. B. Lieven, Maureen Perrie, Ronald Grigor Suny, p.226, counted premature deaths under German occupation at 13.7M, including "killed in hot or cold blood": 7.4M, "taken to Germany and worked to death": 2.2M, and "died of overwork, hunger and disease": 4.1M. By another count, 6,000,000 died in Nazi occupied zones; 4,000,000 died in Nazi labor camps; and 3,000,000 died in unoccupied zonea of war-related injuries.
The military dead of 8.7 million calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defense are accepted by most historians outside of Russia. But the figure has been disputed by some historians in Russia because it conflicts with the official database of the Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) which lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing servicemen. In 1993 a study by the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated total Soviet population losses due the war at 26.6 million, including military dead of 8.7 million calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
According to the latest statements that Russian authorities officially acknowledge, overall losses (both among soldiers and civilians) amounted to 26.6 million people. That’s the official evaluation of the losses today (in 2022) – at least, it’s the number Russian state officials mention on Victory day, commemorations and so on. Around 12 million soldiers were killed in the battlefield, captured (not having returned) or gone missing. The rest (approximately 14.6 million people) were civilians who died in the occupation zones, were forcefully moved to Germany (and did not come back) or lost their lives to starvation, illnesses and so on.
In his 2015 article, Viktor Zemskov suggested that the estimation of war casualties (11,5 – 12 million) is correct, but the number of civilian losses due to war factors includes too many people: “Such statistics include the increased mortality in the Soviet home front because of malnutrition, overburdening work and so on… I disagree with such an approach.” According to Zemskov, it is too hard to distinguish between deaths caused by war and natural reasons in this case – so to be more precise, historians should have only included in the number of civilian deaths caused by war, i.e. those killed directly by Germans, by bombardments, those who died during the Siege of Leningrad – that amounts to 4.5 million victims. Combined with actual war casualties, that gives 16 million people.
The consensus figure for those that Joseph Stalin murdered when he ruled the Soviet Union prior to 1941 is 20,000,000.
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