page_title: World War II casualties of the Soviet Union
section_title: Civilian losses
hierarchical_section_title: World War II casualties of the Soviet Union / Civilian losses
context_page_description: World War II losses of the Soviet Union from all related causes were about 27,000,000 both civilian and military, 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 Defense.
  The figures published by the Ministry of Defense 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 maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated in 2009 that "data about our losses haven't been revealed yet...We must determine the historical truth."
context_section_description: A 1995 paper published by the M.V. Philimoshin, an associate of the Russian Defense Ministry, put the civilian death toll in the regions occupied by Germany at 13.7 million. Philimoshin 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. Philimoshin 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.
  The sources cited for these figures are from the Soviet period. The Statistic of 7.420 million civilian war dead has been disputed by Viktor Zemskov who believed that the actual civilian death toll was at least 4.5 million. He maintained that the official figures included POWs, persons who emigrated from the country and militia/partisan fighters. According to his analysis the forced laborer death figure of 2.164 million includes the balance of losses not reported in Krivosheev's figure of 8.668 million military war dead, including POWs
  Civilian losses include 57,000 killed in bombing raids (40,000 Stalingrad and 17,000 Leningrad).
  Russian sources include Jewish Holocaust deaths among total civilian dead. Gilbert put Jewish losses at one million within 1939 borders; Holocaust deaths in the annexed territories numbered an additional 1.5 million, bringing total Jewish losses to 2.5 million.
  Civilian losses include deaths in the siege of Leningrad. According to David Glantz the 1945 Soviet estimate presented at the Nuremberg Trials was 642,000 civilian deaths. He noted that Soviet era source from 1965 put the number of dead in the Siege of Leningrad at "greater than 800,000" and that a Russian source from 2000 put the number of dead at 1,000,000. Other Russian historians put the Leningrad death toll at between 1.4 and 2.0 million.
  Russian sources maintain that there were 4.1 million famine deaths in the regions occupied by Germany. Russian sources also report 2.5 to 3.2 million Soviet civilians who died due to famine and disease in non-occupied territory of the USSR, which was caused by wartime shortages in the rear areas.
  These casualties are for 1941–1945 within the 1946–1991 borders of the USSR. Included with civilian losses are deaths in the territories annexed by the USSR in 1939–1940 including 600,000 in the Baltic states and 1,500,000 in Eastern Poland (500,000 ethnic Poles and  1 million Jews).
  Documents from the Soviet archives number the total deaths of prisoners in the Gulag from 1941 to 1945 at 621,637. In a 1995 report Viktor Zemskov noted "due to general difficulties in 1941–1945 in the camps, the GULAG and prisons about 1.0 million prisoners died.
caption: Executed partisan, Minsk
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