During the period of Glasnost, the official figure of 20 million war dead was challenged by Soviet scholars. In 1988–1989 estimates of 26 to 28 million total war dead appeared in the Soviet press. The Russian scholar Dmitri Volkogonov, writing at this, time estimated total war deaths at 26–27,000,000, including 10,000,000 in the military. In March 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev established a committee to investigate Soviet war losses. In a May 1990 speech, Gorbachev gave the figure for total Soviet losses at "almost 27 million". This revised figure was the result of research by the committee set up by Gorbachev that estimated total war dead at between 26 and 27 million. In January 1990, M.A. Moiseev, Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces, disclosed for the first time in an interview that Soviet military war dead totaled 8,668,400. In 1991, the Russian scholar A.A. Shevyakov published an article with summary of civilian losses based on his analysis of the archival records of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission, civilian dead were given as 17.7 million. In a second article in 1992, A.A. Shevyakov gave a figure of 20.8 million civilian dead; no explanation for the difference was given.