World War II casualties of the Soviet Union

World War II losses of the Soviet Union were about 27 million both civilian and military from all war-related causes, although exact figures are disputed. A figure of 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. The post-Soviet government of Russia puts the Soviet war losses at 26.6 million, on the basis of the 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, including people dying as a result of effects of the war. This includes 8,668,400 military deaths as calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defence.
The figures published by the Russian Ministry of Defence have been accepted by most historians outside Russia. However, the official figure of 8.7 million military deaths has been disputed by Russian scholars who believe that the number of dead and missing POWs is not correct and new research is necessary to determine actual losses. Officials at the Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated in 2009 that more than 2.4 million people are still officially considered missing in action, and that of the 9.5 million persons buried in mass graves, six million are unidentified. Some Russian scholars put the total number of losses in the war, both civilian and military, at over 40 million. In 2020, Mikhail Meltyukhov, who works with the Russian Federal archival project, claimed that 15.9–17.4 million civilians were killed on Soviet territory by Germany and its allies during the war.
The war related deaths detailed in Russian sources are as follows.
In 1993, the Russian Ministry of Defense report authored by a group headed by General G. F. Krivosheev detailed military casualties. Their sources were Soviet reports from the field and other archive documents that were secret during the Soviet era, including a secret Soviet General Staff report from 1966 to 1968. Krivosheev's study puts Soviet military dead and missing at 8.7 million and is often cited by historians. Krivosheev maintained that the figure of 8.668 million is correct because it excludes called up reservists that were never inducted, men who were duplicated as conscripts because they were conscripted again into the Soviet army and Navy during the war as territories were being liberated and non-combat related causes. The statistic of 8.668 million military dead includes only the combat related deaths of the forces in the field units of the Army and Navy and does not include civilian support forces in rear areas, conscripted reservists killed before being listed on active strength, militia units, and Soviet partisan dead, Krivosheev maintained that they should be included with civilian war losses.
The schedule below summarizes Soviet casualties from 1941 to 1945.
Krivosheev's analysis shows that 4,559,000 were reported missing (including 3,396,400 per field reports and an additional 1,162,600 estimated based on German documents), out of which 500,000 were missing and presumed dead, 939,700 were re-conscripted during the war as territories were liberated, 1,836,000 returned to the U.S.S.R. after the war, while the balance of 1,283,300 died in German captivity as POWs or did not return to the USSR. Krivoshhev wrote, "According to German sources 673,000 died in captivity. Of the remaining 1,110,300, Soviet sources indicate that over half also died in captivity". Sources published outside of Russia put total POW dead at 3.0 million. Krivosheev maintains that this figure based on German sources includes civilian personnel that were not included in the reports of the Army and Navy field forces. In a 1999 article Krivosheev noted that after the war 180,000 liberated POWs did not return to the USSR and most likely settled in other countries, Krivosheev did not mention this in the English language translation of his study. According to declassified documents from the Soviet archives 960,039 surviving Soviet military POW were turned over to the Soviet authorities by the Western powers and 865,735 were released by the Soviet forces in territory they occupied.
The June 1945 force strength of 12,840,000 included 11,390,600 on active service; 1,046,000 in hospital; and 403,200 in civilian departments.
Krivosheev's group estimated losses for the early part of the war, because from 1941 to 1942 no surrounded or defeated divisions reported their casualties.
Total wounded and sick includes 15,205,592 wounded, 3,047,675 sick and 90,881 frostbite cases. Included in the total of 11.444 million irrecoverable losses are 1,100,327 died of wounds in hospital.
Field reports stated the number of wounded and sick as 18,344,148, while the records of the military medical service show a total of 22,326,905. According to Krivosheev the difference can be explained by the fact that the medical service included sick personnel who did not take part in the fighting.
Krivosheev's analysis has been disputed by independent scholars in Russia. His critics maintain that he underestimated the number of missing in action and POW deaths and deaths of service personnel in rear area hospitals. Makhmut Gareev, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, maintains that the published information on Soviet casualties is the work of the individual authors and not based on official data. According to Gareev the Russian government has not disclosed the actual losses in the war.
Western scholars estimate 3.3 million dead out of 5.7 million total Soviet POW captured. According to German figures 5,734,000 Soviet POWs were taken Between 22 June 1941 and the end of the war, roughly 5.7 million members of the Red Army fell into German hands. In January 1945, 930,000 were still in German camps. A million at most had been released, most of whom were so-called ‘volunteers’ (Hilfswillige) for (often compulsory) auxiliary service in the Wehrmacht. Another 500,000, as estimated by the Army High Command, had either fled or been liberated. The remaining 3,300,000 (57.5 percent of the total) had perished.". However, according to Krivosheev the Germans claimed to have captured up to 5.750 million POWs, he maintains that the figures in Nazi propaganda included civilians and military reservists that were caught up in the German encirclement's. Krivosheev puts the number of Soviet military POW that actually were sent to the camps at 4,059,000. Krivosheev maintained that the figure of 3.0 million POW dead reported in western sources included partisans, militia and civilian men of military age taken as POWs in the early stages of the war in 1941. In addition to the German-held POW Romania captured 82,090 Soviet POWs, 5,221 died, 3,331 escaped, and 13,682 were released Finland captured 64,188 Soviet POWs, at least 18,318 were documented to have died in Finnish prisoner of war camps.
In 2000, S. N. Mikhalev published a study of Soviet casualties. From 1989 to 1996 he was an associate of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defence. Mikhalev disputed Krivosheev's figure of 8.7 million military war dead, he put Soviet military dead at more than 10.9 million persons based on his analysis of those conscripted. He maintained that the official figures could not be reconciled to the total men drafted and that POW deaths were understated. Mikhalev put the total irreplaceable losses at 13.7 million; he believed that the official figures understated POW and missing losses, that the deaths of service personnel convicted of offenses were not included with the overall losses and that the number who died of wounds was understated.
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S. N. Mikhalev included in his figure irrecoverable losses the deaths of 994,300 Soviet military personnel that were convicted of offences during the course of the war (422,700 sent to penal battalions, 135,000 executed and 436,600 imprisoned)
An alternative method is to determine losses from the Russian Military Archives database of individual war dead. S. A. Il'Enkov, an official at the Russian Military Archives, maintained that the "complex military situation at the front did not always allow for the conduct of a full accounting of losses, especially in the first years of the war" He pointed out that in the reports from the field units did not include deaths in rear area hospitals of wounded personnel. Il'Enkov maintained that the information in the Russian Military Archives alphabetical card-indexes "is a priceless treasure of history, which can assist in resolving the problems of the price of Soviet victory" Il'Enkov maintained it could provide an accurate accounting of war losses. He concluded by stating, "We established the number of irreplaceable losses of our Armed Forces at the time of the Great Patriotic War of about 13,850,000. Krivosheev maintained that the database of individual war dead is unreliable because some personnel records are duplicated and others omitted.
Critics of the official figures by the Russian Ministry of Defense base their arguments on self analyses of documents in the Soviet archives and demographic models of the Soviet population during the Stalin era.
Andreev, Darski and Karkova (ADK) put total losses at 26.6 million. The authors did not dispute Krivoshev's report of 8.7 million military dead. Their demographic study estimated the total war dead of 26.6 million included 20.0 million males and 6.6 million females. In mid-1941 the USSR hosted 8.3 million more females; by 1946 this gap had grown to 22.8 million, an increase of 13.5 million.
A 1995 paper published by M.V. Filimoshin, an associate of the Russian Defense Ministry, put the civilian death toll in the regions occupied by Germany at 13.7 million. Filimoshin cited sources from Soviet era to support his figures and used the terms "genocide" and "premeditated extermination" when referring to deaths of 7.4 million civilians caused by direct, intentional violence. Civilians killed in reprisals during the Soviet partisan war account for a major portion. Filimoshin estimated that civilian forced laborer deaths in Germany totaled 2.1 million. Germany had a policy of forced confiscation of food that resulted in famine deaths of an estimated 6% of the population, or 4.1 million. Russian government sources currently cite these civilian casualty figures in their official statements.
E.M. Andreev, L.E. Darski and T. L. Kharkova ("ADK") authored The Population of the Soviet Union 1922–1991, which was published by the Russian Academy of Science in 1993. Andreev worked in the Department of Demography Research Institute of the Central Statistical Bureau (now the Research Institute of Statistics of Federal State Statistical Service of Russia). The study estimated total Soviet war losses of 26.6 million. As of 2015, this was the official Russian government figure for total losses. These losses are a demographic estimate rather than an exact accounting.
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Another study, The Demographic History of Russia 1927–1959, analyzed voters in the February 1946 Soviet election to estimate the surviving population over the age of 18 at the end of the war. The population under 18 was estimated based on the 1959 census. Official records listed 101.7 million registered voters and 94.0 million actual voters, 7.7 million less than the expected figure. ADK maintained that the official results of the 1946 election are not a good source for estimating the population. They believe that the total of expected voters should be increased by 10.5 million because the roll of voters excluded those deprived of their rights, in prison or in exile. ADK maintained that many young military men did not participate in the election, and an overestimation of women in rural areas without internal passports who sought to avoid compulsory heavy labor. Included in the voter total were 29.9 million "excess" women. However number of expected voters estimated by ADK the gap between males and females was 21.4 million, which approximates the 20.7 million gap revealed by the 1959 census. The prewar population of 1939 (including the annexed territories) had an excess of 7.9 million females. The ADK analysis found that the gap had increased by about 13.5 million.
Russian demographer Rybakovsky found a wide range of estimates for total war dead. He estimated the actual population in 1941 at 196.7 million and losses at 27–28 million. He cited figures that range from 21.7 to 46 million. Rybakovsky acknowledged that the components used to compute losses are uncertain and disputed.
Population estimates for mid-1941 range from 191.8 to 200.1 million, while the population at the end of 1945 range from 167.0 million up to 170.6 million. Based on the pre-war birth rate, the population shortfall was about 20 million births in 1946. Some were born and died during the war, while the balance was never born. Only rough estimates are available for each group. Estimates for the population of the territories annexed from 1939 to 1945 range from 17 to 23 million persons.
Rybakovsky provided a list of the various estimates of Soviet war losses by Russian scholars since 1988.
Former Soviet republics The contemporary nations that were formerly Soviet Republics dispute Krivosheev's analysis. In a live broadcast of 16 December 2010, A Conversation with Vladimir Putin, he maintained that the Russian Federation had suffered the greatest proportional losses in World War II—70 percent of the total. Official estimates by the former republics of the USSR claim military casualties exceeding those of Krivosheev's report by 3.5 times. It is claimed by the website sovsekretno.ru that there are no Memory Books published in the USSR, Russia and the other contemporary republics in the 80s and 90s listing casualties of 25 percent of the draft or less, but there are many Memory Books with 50 per cent and more with some telling us of a 70, 75, 76 and up to 79 per cent mortality rate among the conscripted.
(A) The Ukrainian authorities and historians ardently dispute these figures. Military casualties alone may be estimated as exceeding 7 million, according to the final volume of the Ukrainian book "In the memory of posterity" and research of V. E. Korol, writes an American (former Soviet) Doctor of History Vilen Lyulechnik. Former President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych maintains that Ukraine has lost more than 10 million lives during the Second World War.
(B) According to a Belarusian military historian, Doctor of History, professor V. Lemeshonok, the Belarusian military casualties, including partisans and underground group members, exceed 682,291.
(C) The Memory Book of Tatarstan Government contains names of about 350,000 inhabitants of the republic, mostly Tatars.
(D) Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad maintains that about 200,000 Soviet Jews or 40 per cent of all draft were killed in battles or captivity — the highest percentage of all nations of the USSR.
(E) Kazakhstan estimates its military casualties at 601,029.
(F) Armenians estimate their military casualties at over 300,000.
(G) Georgians also estimate their military casualties at over 300,000.
(I) Among the others, Azerbaijanis claim military casualties of 300,000, Bashkirs of about 300,000, Mordvas of 130,000 and Chuvashes of 106,470. But one of the most tragic figures comes from the Far Eastern republic of Yakutia and its small nation. 37,965 citizens, mostly Yakuts, or 60.74 per cent of 62,509 drafted did not return home with 7,000 regarded missing. About 69,000 died of severe famine in the republic. This nation could not restore its population even under 1959 census. The record breaking estimates of 700,000 military casualties out of a total 1,25 million Turkmenian citizens (with slightly less than 60 per cent being Turkmens) are attributed to the late President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov. Historians do not regard them as being trustworthy.
Russian historian Vadim Erlikman pegs total war deaths at 10.7 million, exceeding Krivosheev's 8.7 million by an extra two million. This extra two million would presumably include Soviet POWs that died in Nazi captivity, partisans, and militia.
The names of Soviet war dead are presented at the OBD (Central Data Bank) Memorial database online.
The Red Army suffered catastrophic losses of men and equipment during the first months of the German invasion. In the spring of 1941 Stalin ignored the warnings of his intelligence services of a planned German invasion and refused to put the Armed forces on alert. The bulk of the Soviet combat units were deployed in the border regions in a lower state of readiness. In the face of the German onslaught the Soviet forces were caught by surprise. Large numbers of Soviet soldiers were captured and many perished due to the brutal mistreatment of POWs by the Nazis. Earl F. Ziemke maintained high Soviet losses can be attributed to 'less efficient medical services and the Soviet tactics, which throughout the war tended to be expensive in terms of human life"
Russian scholars attribute the high civilian death toll to the Nazi Generalplan Ost which treated Soviet peoples as "subhumans", they use the terms "genocide" and "premeditated extermination" when referring to civilian losses in the occupied USSR. German occupation policies implemented under the Hunger Plan resulted in the confiscation of food stocks which resulted in famine in the occupied regions. During the Soviet era the partisan campaign behind the lines was portrayed as the struggle of the local population against the German occupation. To suppress the partisan units the Nazi occupation forces engaged in a campaign of brutal reprisals against innocent civilians. The extensive fighting destroyed agricultural land, infrastructure, and whole towns, leaving much of the population homeless and without food. During the war Soviet civilians were taken to Germany as forced laborers under inhumane conditions.
Estimates for Soviet losses in the Second World War range from 7 million to over 43 million. During the Communist era in the Soviet Union historical writing about World War II was subject to censorship and only official approved statistical data was published. In the USSR during the Glasnost period under Gorbachev and in post communist Russia the casualties in World War II were re-evaluated and the official figures revised.
Joseph Stalin in March 1946 stated that Soviet war losses were 7 million dead. This was to be the official figure until the Khrushchev era. In November 1961 Nikita Khrushchev stated that Soviet war losses were 20 million; this was to be the official figure until the Gorbachev era of Glasnost. Leonid Brezhnev in 1965 put the Soviet death toll in the war at "more than 20 million" Ivan Konev in a May 1965 Soviet Ministry of Defense press conference stated that Soviet military dead in World War II were 10 million. In 1971, the Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis put losses at 20 million including 6,074,000 civilians and 3,912,000 prisoners of war killed by Nazi Germany, military dead were put at 10 million.
Documents from the Extraordinary State Commission prepared in March 1946 not but published until the 1990s listed 6,074,857 civilians killed, 3,912,283 prisoner of war dead, 3,999,796 deaths during German forced labor and 641,803 civilian famine deaths during Siege of Leningrad. The Soviet general staff put losses at 8,668,000 dead and missing, however the General Staffs figures were not published until 1993. Also 688,772 Soviet citizens who remained in western countries after the war were included with the war losses.
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.
In 1949, Soviet Colonel Kalinov defected to the west, where he published a book claiming that Soviet records indicated the military loss of 13.6 million men, including 2.6 million POW dead. Sergei Maksudov, a Russian demographer living in the west, estimated Soviet war losses at between 24.5 and 27.4 million, including 7.5 million military dead. The Soviet mathematician Iosif G. Dyadkin published a study in the United States that estimated the total Soviet population losses from 1939 to 1945, due to the war and political repression, at 30 million. Dyadkin was imprisoned for publishing this study in the west.
Historians writing outside of the Soviet Union and Russia have evaluated the various Russian language sources and have offered their estimates of Soviet war dead. Here is a listing of estimates by recognized scholars published in the West.
(in Russian)