First published in: Military-Historical Archive. 2012, no. 9. P. 59−71
There is a lot of literature on this issue, and maybe someone gets the impression that it has been sufficiently researched. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but many questions and doubts remain. There are too many unclear, controversial and obviously unreliable here. Even the reliability of the current official data on the USSR's human losses in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts. This article shows the evolution of official statistics on these losses (from 1946 to the present, it has changed several times), and an attempt is made to establish the actual number of losses of servicemen and civilians in 1941-1945. In solving this problem, we relied only on truly reliable information contained in historical sources and literature. The article provides a system of evidence that in fact direct human losses amounted to about 16 million people, of which 11.5 million were military and 4.5 million were civilians.
During the 16 years after the war, all the human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (total military and civilian) were estimated at 7 million people. In February 1946 this figure (7 million) was published in the Bolshevik magazine 2. She was named by I. V. Stalin in an interview with a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda. Here is a verbatim quote by I. V. Stalin, published in this newspaper: "As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, as well as thanks to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude, about seven million people."
In fact, I. V. Stalin knew completely different statistics - 15 million.4 This was reported to him at the beginning of 1946 based on the results of the work of the commission, which was headed by the candidate for membership in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee N. A. Voznesensky. Little is known about the work of this commission, and it is not clear what methodology it used in calculating 15 million casualties. The question is: where did these data go? It turns out that in the document presented to him by the commission, I. V. Stalin made an "editorial revision", correcting 15 million to 7 million. Otherwise, how to explain that 15 million “disappeared”, and 7 million were made public and became official data?
About the motives of the act of I. V. Stalin is anyone's guess. Of course, there were also propaganda motives and a desire to hide from both our people and the world community the real scale of the USSR's human losses.
In the first half of the 1960s. demographers tried to determine the total human losses in the war using the balance method, comparing the results of the All-Union population censuses of 1939 and 1959. This was done, of course, with the sanction of the Central Committee of the CPSU. This immediately revealed a lot of difficulties in solving this problem, since with differing approaches and methods, it was really possible to deduce any value in the range from 15 million to 30 million. An extremely professional and correct approach was required here. Based on the results of calculations carried out in the early 1960s, two conclusions emerged: 1) the exact number of casualties in 1941-1945. it is impossible to install; 2) in reality they amount to approximately 20 million or, perhaps, even more. Since experts understood that this indicator is purely demographic, including not only the victims of the war, but also the increased mortality of the population due to the deterioration of living conditions during wartime, the correct wording was developed - "the war took lives." In this spirit, all this was reported "upward".
At the end of 1961, the Stalinist 7 million were finally "buried". November 5, 1961 N. S. Khrushchev, in a letter to Swedish Prime Minister T. Erlander, noted that the past war "claimed two tens of millions of Soviet lives." May 9, 1965, on the day of the 20th anniversary of Victory, L. I. Brezhnev said in his speech that the country has lost “over 20 million people” 6. A little later L. I. Brezhnev corrected the wording: "The war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people." Thus, N. S. Khrushchev named 20 million, L. I. Brezhnev - more than 20 million with the same terminology - "the war took lives."
These statistics are reliable with the proviso that they take into account not only the direct victims of the war, but also the increased level of natural mortality of the population, exceeding the corresponding indicators in peacetime. This circumstance made these 20 million (or more than 20 million) incomparable with the corresponding statistics of other countries (where only direct victims of war are included in human losses). In other words, based on the calculation methods adopted in other countries, the calculation of the human losses of the USSR, determined by the value of 20 million, can even be called exaggerated. And in this case, it is exaggerated, according to our estimates, by about 4 million people.
In fact, 20 million is the total number of direct (16 million) and indirect (4 million) losses. This fact itself speaks of the shortcomings and costs of the balance calculation method, which is only able to establish the total number of direct and indirect losses and is not able to isolate and separate them from each other. And here we involuntarily get a methodologically incorrect summation of direct and indirect losses, leading to a certain devaluation of the concept of “victims of war” and an exaggeration of their scale. Let us remind you that there are no indirect losses in the corresponding statistics of other countries. In general, the problem of indirect losses is a separate topic, and here, in theory, there should be separate statistics, and if they are included in the total number of casualties in the war, then this should be accompanied by a number of serious reservations. Since such explanations have never been made, in the public consciousness the value of 20 million was distortedly perceived as the total number of direct victims of the war.
For a quarter of a century, these 20 million were the official figures for the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. But in the late 1980s, in the midst of Gorbachev's perestroika, when many previous stereotypes and ideas were criticized and subverted, the same also affected the official data on losses. In journalism, they were then branded as "fake" and it was argued that in fact the number of victims of the war was much higher (over 40 million). Moreover, these deliberately false statements were actively introduced into the mass consciousness. There were calls to "establish the truth about the losses." In the wake of this "truth-seeking" in 1989, a rather stormy activity began to "recount" the human losses of the USSR in 1941-1945.
In fact, all this was an integral part of a wide propaganda campaign, inspired by Gorbachev's Politburo, to "expose Stalinism." All the propaganda of that time was built in such a way that I. V. Stalin looked like the only culprit (A. Hitler was rarely mentioned) of huge human losses in the Great Patriotic War, and there was a predisposition (in order to increase the degree of negativity of the image of I. V. Stalin and “Stalinism” in the public mind) to “cancel” 20 million and “count”much more.
Since March 1989, on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a state commission has been working to study the number of human losses in the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. The commission included representatives of the State Statistics Committee, the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Defense, the Main Archive Department under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Committee of War Veterans, the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. A peculiarity of the psychological attitude of the members of this commission was the conviction that the then official figures of the USSR's human losses in the war (20 million) were supposedly "approximate" and "incomplete" (which was their delusion), and the commission should count much more. They viewed the method of demographic balance they used as "innovative", not understanding or not wanting to understand that it was exactly the same method in the first half of the 1960s. were calculated and designated 20 million.
The All-Russian Book of Memory, published in 1995, describes in detail the calculation methodology, which resulted in almost 27 million (more precisely, 26.6 million) of all Soviet casualties in the Great Patriotic War. Since even the smallest details and nuances are important for our further conclusions, below we give this description verbatim and in full: the mortality rate during the war in the occupied territory and in the rear, as well as those who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return after its end. The number of direct human losses does not include indirect losses: from a decrease in the birth rate during the war and increased mortality in the post-war years.
The calculation of losses using the balance method was carried out for the period from June 22, 1941 to December 31, 1945. The upper boundary of the period was moved from the end of the war at the end of the year to take into account the deaths from wounds in hospitals, the repatriation of prisoners of war and displaced civilians to the USSR population and repatriation from the USSR of citizens of other countries.
The demographic balance implies a comparison of the population within the same territorial boundaries. For calculations, the borders of the USSR were taken on June 22, 1941.
The estimate of the population of the USSR on June 22, 1941 was obtained by moving the results of the pre-war census of the country's population (January 17, 1939) to the indicated date, adjusting the number of births and deaths for the two and a half years that have passed from the census to the attack of Nazi Germany. Thus, the population of the USSR in the middle of 1941 is determined at 196.7 million people. At the end of 1945, this number was calculated by moving back the age data of the All-Union Census of 1959. In this case, updated information on the mortality rate of the population and data on external migration for 1946−1958 were used. The calculation was made taking into account the changes in the borders of the USSR after 1941. As a result, the population as of December 31, 1945 was determined at 170.5 million people, of which 159.5 million were born before June 22, 1941.
The total number of deaths, deaths, missing persons and who ended up outside the country during the war years amounted to 37, 2 million people (the difference between 196, 7 and 159, 5 million people). However, all this value cannot be attributed to human losses caused by the war, since in peacetime (for 4, 5 years) the population would have undergone natural decline due to ordinary mortality. If the mortality rate of the population of the USSR in 1941-1945. take the same as in 1940, the number of deaths would have amounted to 11, 9 million people. Subtracting the indicated value, the human losses among citizens born before the start of the war are 25.3 million people. To this figure it is necessary to add the loss of children born during the war years and who died at the same time due to increased infant mortality (1.3 million people). As a result, the total human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, determined by the demographic balance method, are equal to 26.6 million people”7.
Despite the seeming fundamentality and solidity of these calculations, as we repeatedly tried to double-check them, a suspicion of this kind steadily grew: are they, these calculations, the result of a correct approach and is there a falsification here? Finally, it became clear what was the matter: behind a detailed and seemingly impartial description of the calculation methodology, a statistical forgery was concealed, designed to increase the previous official data on losses by 7 million people (from 20 million to 27 million) by underestimating the same number (by 7 million) of the scale of natural mortality in 1941-1945. based on the mortality rate of the population of the USSR in 1940(without specifying the specific number of deaths in 1940). The logic here, apparently, was this: anyway, no one knows how many people in the USSR died in 1940, and will not be able to check.
However, you can check. In 1940, 4.2 million people died in the USSR. This figure was published in 1990 in the journal "Statistics Bulletin" 8. It also appears in the 1st volume of the fundamental scientific work "Population of Russia in the XX century", published in 2000 9. This means that in 4.5 years (from mid-1941 to the end of 1945), if calculated in a 1: 1 ratio to the mortality rate of the USSR population in 1940, 18.9 million would die (4.2 million x 4, 5 years = 18.9 million). This is the number of people who would still have died during the specified period (1941−1945), even if there was no war, and they must be deducted from any calculations to determine human losses due to the war.
The commission that worked in 1989-1990 understood this and carried out the corresponding operation in its calculations, but deducted (supposedly from the mortality rate in the USSR in 1940) only 11.9 million people. And it was necessary to deduct 18.9 million. It was in this way that “additional” 7 million losses were obtained (18.9 million - 11.9 million = 7 million). By means of this clever statistical fraud in 1990, the official data on the USSR's human losses in the Great Patriotic War were increased from 20 million to 27 million. In fact, these 27 million are the same profanation as Stalin's 7 million - only inside out.
This is the rationale behind the emergence of the new official statistics of casualties in the war. All other existing and existing versions of its origin, including the funny "mathematical formula" (Stalin's 7 million + Khrushchev's 20 million = Gorbachev's 27 million), are, of course, erroneous.
On May 8, 1990, the President of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev, in a report dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the Victory, said that the war claimed nearly 27 million Soviet lives10. Note that M. S. Gorbachev used the same wording ("took lives") as NS Khrushchev and L. I. Brezhnev. From that time, that is, from May 1990 to the present day, these almost 27 million (sometimes called "more precisely" - 26, 6 million) are the official figures of the USSR's human losses in the Great Patriotic War. Moreover, often in propaganda, instead of the rather correct expression “war claimed lives”, which implies demographic losses in a broad sense, the verb “perish” is used, which is a serious semantic distortion (then it is necessary to isolate the direct victims of the war as part of the total demographic losses).
It is curious that even in 1990 the old Soviet tradition was observed, according to which any new information on the statistics of human losses in 1941-1945. came only from the highest officials of the party and state. For 1946-1990 this statistics was changed and refined 4 times, and it was always voiced by the general secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee - consistently I. V. Stalin, N. S. Khrushchev, L. I. Brezhnev and M. S. Gorbachev. The last three, apparently, did not doubt the reliability of the figures mentioned (I. V. Stalin, as you know, deliberately falsified the statistics in the direction of reducing its scale).
Despite the prevailing perception of these new official data (27 million) of human losses of the USSR in the war as allegedly the ultimate truth, there was still no complete unanimity in historical science, and there were estimates that cast serious doubt on their reliability. Thus, the famous historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences A. K. Sokolov noted in 1995: “… I would like to remind some authors, inclined to exaggeration, that Russia, by world standards and taking into account its territory, is a country in general, sparsely populated. A strange idea of the inexhaustibility of its human resources is a myth that most authors work on, who are “scattered” to the right and left by tens of millions of victims. The number of those killed during the war is still less than 27 million people”11.
Since the early 1990s. in the scientific community, the results of calculating total military losses, carried out by a team of military historians headed by Colonel-General G. F. Krivosheev. According to them, all losses of servicemen killed and deceased (including those killed in captivity) amounted to almost 8, 7 million people (more precisely - 8668, 4 thousand) 12. All these calculations were published in 1993 in the statistical study "The classified classification is removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts." The indicated value of the total losses of servicemen killed and deceased was in fact unreliable, significantly lower than the actual losses, but, nevertheless, quickly entered the scientific circulation.
Thus, during 1990-1993. for specialists and a wider audience, two actually false figures were "launched": an overestimated almost 27 million (total human losses) and an underestimated almost 8, 7 million (total military losses). Moreover, even in the minds of many specialists (not all), these figures were perceived as some kind of dogma that was not subject to doubt and dispute. And then something began that went beyond common sense. Immediately they determined the total number (18.3 million) of civilian casualties killed and tortured (27 million - 8.7 million = 18.3 million), and the absurd idea of the “special nature of the Great Patriotic War, in which civilians losses significantly exceeded military ones. " It is clear and understandable to any sane person that such a ratio between military and civilian losses, by definition, could not exist and that the dead servicemen undoubtedly prevailed in the total composition of direct human losses.
Nevertheless, these fantastic 18.3 million began to “walk” through the pages of various publications. Since this value was not documented in any way, there was a tendency to explain this by a kind of virtual underestimation of the death of the civilian population on the territory of the USSR, which was subjected to enemy occupation. So, A. A. Shevyakov, in an article published in 1991, confidently stated: "As a result of the mass extermination of the civilian population, the deliberate organization of famine in the occupied Soviet territories themselves and the death of the deported population in German penal servitude, the Soviet Union lost 18.3 million of its citizens." A. A. Shevyakov also found an explanation of why such a gigantic scale of civilian deaths in the occupied territories was not known to anyone and no one even suspected about them. The main "blame" for this he placed on the Extraordinary State Commission for the establishment and investigation of the atrocities of the German fascist invaders and their accomplices (CHGK), which, in his words, "on the ground often consisted of low-skilled people who did not have political flair and methods for identifying fascist atrocities "14.
A. A.'s claims Shevyakova to ChGK in this matter is completely unfair. The local commissions of the ChGK carried out painstaking work to establish the losses (killed and tortured) of the civilian population in the former occupied territory. In total, they counted 6, 8 million such victims. Until the end of the 1960s. this figure was strictly classified and was first published in 1969 in an article by the former chief prosecutor from the USSR at the Nuremberg trials, R. A. Rudenko 15. It is also cited in the 10th volume of "History of the USSR from ancient times to the present", published in 1973, 16. Any serious underestimation, contrary to A. A. Shevyakova, in the statistics of the ChGK is not traced, but the overestimation of data is undoubtedly present. So, the local commissions of the ChGK often took into account all the inhabitants of the burned deserted villages who had previously lived here as perished, and then it turned out that these people did not die at all, but simply moved to live in other areas. The number of victims even included people who were evacuated. In this regard, Academician of the RAS Yu. A. Polyakov noted: “It is known, for example, that in many cities immediately after the war, people who were evacuated in 1941 and did not return were entered into the lists of losses, and then they returned from somewhere from Tashkent or Alma-Ata” 17. In practice, the local commissions of the ChGK included in the lists of the dead and tortured many living people who were absent for various other reasons. It is quite clear to us that the ChGK data on the deaths of the civilian population in the occupied territory (6, 8 million) are exaggerated by at least 2 times. Of course, it is impossible to deny the genocide, terror and repression of the invaders and their accomplices, and, according to our estimates, such victims, taking into account the combat losses of partisans from among the local residents, amounted to no less than 3 million people. This is the main component of the direct victims of the war of the civilian population of the USSR.
The direct civilian victims of the war also include the deceased Soviet citizens who were driven to forced labor in Germany and who were there in the position of the so-called "eastern workers" ("ostarbeiter"). If we strictly rely on the statistical data available in historical sources (which is our professional duty), then the scale of mortality of the "ostarbeiter" can only be discussed in the following range: from 100 thousand to 200 thousand people. But this is a sphere where the direct testimony of historical sources is completely ignored and ridiculous and fantastic "assumptions" and "calculations" with virtual "millions of victims" are presented instead. A. A. Shevyakov "counted" even two versions of the most absurd "statistics" of the deaths of Soviet civilians at work in Germany - 2, 8 million and 3, 4 million. people 19. The "accuracy" of this figure should not be misleading - it is a distraction. All these "statistics" do not appear in any documents and are entirely the fruit of the author's fantasies.
However, there is a relatively reliable historical source in the form of summary German mortality statistics for "Eastern workers" for individual months. Unfortunately, for a number of months, the researchers failed to identify such reports, but even from the available ones, it is possible to draw up a fairly clear picture of the scale of their mortality. We give the number of deceased "Ostarbeiter" for individual months of 1943: March - 1479, May - 1376, October - 1268, November - 945, December - 899; for 1944: January - 979, February - 1631 people20. Based on these data and using the extrapolation method (taking into account possible jumps in the mortality rate in individual months, for which there is no information), P. M. Polyan determined the overall mortality rate for "eastern workers" in the range from 80 thousand to 100 thousand. In principle, with P. M. Glade we can agree, but we are confused by one circumstance - the lack of information in the last months of the war, and in connection with the transfer of hostilities to German territory, the scale of the death of "eastern workers", according to a number of indirect signs, increased. Therefore, we are inclined to determine the number of dead and deceased Soviet civilians ("Eastern workers") in Germany at about 200 thousand.
Direct civilian losses include the dead fighters of civil volunteer formations - unfinished militias, self-defense units of cities, extermination detachments, combat groups of party and Komsomol activists, special formations of various civilian departments, etc. (losses of partisans are included in the general statistics of victims in the occupied territory), as well as the death of civilians from bombing, shelling, etc. These victims number in the hundreds of thousands. An integral part of direct civilian losses are the Leningrad siege (about 0.7 million deaths).
Summing up all of the above components of direct civilian losses, to which the term “victims of war” can be applied without any exaggeration, we define their total number as at least 4.5 million people.
As for the military losses killed and deceased, they amounted to at least 11, 5 million (and by no means almost 8, 7 million). We are talking about the total number of servicemen who did not survive until the end of the war, and we conventionally divide them into three groups: 1) combat losses; 2) non-combat losses; 3) those who died in captivity.
We estimate the combat losses of servicemen at about 7 million (most of them died directly on the battlefield). Our estimates regarding combat losses in killed and dead are somewhat at odds with the value indicated in the book "The secrecy stamp has been removed" - 6329.6 thousand.22 However, this discrepancy can be eliminated by explaining one obvious misunderstanding. In one place of this book it is noted: "About 500 thousand died in the battles, although according to reports from the fronts, they were counted as missing." But in the total number of combat losses (6329, 6 thousand) these about 500 thousand people were not included by the authors of the book "The secrecy stamp has been removed" for some reason, despite the fact that they died in the battles. Therefore, when we assert that the combat losses in killed and deceased were about 7 million, we must bear in mind that this is taking into account the estimated number of those killed in battles as part of the missing.
The so-called non-combat losses amount to over 0.5 million people. These are military personnel who died from disease, as well as a depressingly large number of deaths as a result of all kinds of incidents and accidents not related to the combat situation. This also includes 160 thousand people who were shot by military tribunals and commanders' orders, mainly for cowardice and desertion. In the book "The classification of secrecy has been removed" the total number of all these non-combat losses is indicated - 555, 5 thousand people24.
The total number of military casualties killed and deceased also includes almost 4 million Soviet prisoners of war. It may be objected that in the domestic and foreign literature other figures are named, significantly lower than the indicated value. In the book "The secrecy stamp has been removed" under the heading "Did not return from captivity (died, died, emigrated to other countries)", an incomprehensible and causing acute distrust of specialists is indicated as a final figure - 1783, 3 thousand people25. This figure should be discarded at once due to its obvious absurdity. Incomparably closer to the truth are the data of the German summary statistics, according to which 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity26. This figure is the most popular in the scientific literature and does not cause much mistrust among specialists. However, the study of the methodology for calculating the German summary data revealed their very significant incompleteness - from 600 to 700 thousand Soviet prisoners of war who actually died in captivity were not included in the German summary mortality statistics. So that our statements do not look unfounded, we will give the following reasoning. First, the summary German statistics on the mortality of Soviet prisoners of war (3.3 million people) as of May 1, 1944, while the war continued for another whole year, for which there is no relevant information; secondly, the specified summary statistics consists, as it were, of two parts, where the data for 1942−1944. can be considered complete, since the countdown was carried out from the moment of capture, but for 1941 the Germans "built" into it, summary statistics, only the camp statistics, that is, the prisoners who died in 1941 in the period from the moment captivity before entering the camps (this is a major underestimation - according to our estimates, the Germans did not bring at least 400 thousand Soviet prisoners to the camps alive in 1941). Thirdly, these statistics only concern German captivity, and they do not reflect the mortality of Soviet prisoners of war in Finnish and Romanian captivity. Based on this reasoning, we continue to insist that the mortality rate of Soviet prisoners of war (in total for German, Finnish and Romanian captivity) was almost 4 million people.
Thus, the total losses of servicemen killed and deceased (including those killed in captivity) amounted to at least 11, 5 million people. The assertion of the authors of the book "The classification of secrecy has been removed" that all these losses of servicemen in total amounted to almost 8, 7 million (more precisely - 8668, 4 thousand), is undoubtedly erroneous. This is mainly due to the fact that the authors of this book completely incorrectly determined the scale of mortality of Soviet prisoners of war, significantly underestimating it.
Consequently, by adding up specific losses, approximately 16 million are obtained, of which 11.5 million are military, 4.5 million are civilians. And it is in this way that it is customary to calculate losses in other warring countries. For example, the total human losses of Japan in World War II (2.5 million people) 27 were calculated based on the specifics of Japanese losses, by adding their components: those killed in the war + those who died in captivity + victims of bombing, including from American atomic bombings Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The so-called balance method was not used in such calculations either in Japan or in other countries. And this is the correct approach: the total number of victims of the war, of course, must be calculated by adding up the various components of specific losses.
But it is also possible to use the balance method to prove that direct human losses (war casualties) of the USSR amounted to about 16 million. The ratio is 1: 1, established by the operating in 1989-1990. commission cannot be considered correct. After all, it was clear that in 1941-1945. due to worsening living conditions, lack of scarce drugs, etc. the natural mortality rate of the population will inevitably increase. And here an upward correction is needed when calculating this level in relation to the extreme 1941−1945. and to establish it within the framework of not 18, 9 million, but to bring at least 22 million. This value (22 million) is the minimum permissible level of natural mortality of the population in 1941-1945. According to our calculations and estimates, by the end of 1945, about 38 million people who lived before the war, as well as those who were born during the war and died at the same time, were not alive (this number includes people who were actually alive, but they were in emigration), and if we subtract the indicated 22 million from this amount, then 16 million victims of the war remain (38 million - 22 million = 16 million).
Let us touch a little on the problem of comparing our losses with the losses of other countries. The total human losses in Japan (2.5 million) are comparable to the 16 million we calculated, but not comparable to the Khrushchev and Brezhnev 20 million. Why is this? But because the Japanese losses did not take into account the possible increased mortality of the civilian population during the war years compared to peacetime. This is not taken into account in either the German, or the British, or the French, or other general casualties in the war. In other countries, it was direct human losses that were calculated, and named in 1961 by N. S. Khrushchev, the value of 20 million implied demographic losses in a broad sense, including not only direct human losses, but also a jump in the natural mortality of the population in wartime. By the way, the minimum calculations of German human losses (6.5 million) are comparable precisely with our 16 million, but incomparable with 20 million, since the Germans, not using the balance method and not determining the jump in the natural mortality of the population, tried to scrupulously calculate and to summarize all components of direct military and civilian casualties, including the victims of the Holocaust of German Jews28.
Of course, the birth rate dropped sharply during wartime. In the amateurish environment, there is a tendency to include "unborn children" in the total number of casualties in the war. Moreover, the "authors" usually have no idea how many, in fact, the children were "unborn", and they make extremely dubious "calculations", being guided exclusively by their own "intuition" and due to this, bringing the total human losses of the USSR sometimes even up to 50 million. Of course, such "statistics" cannot be taken seriously. In the scientific demography of the whole world, it is considered incorrect to include unborn children in the total number of casualties in war. In other words, this is a forbidden technique in world science.
There is a fairly large layer of all kinds of literature, in which, even without taking into account “unborn children”, through incorrect statistical manipulations and tricks and “intuitive estimates”, the most incredible and, naturally, deliberately false figures of direct losses are derived - from 40 million and more. It is impossible to conduct a civilized scientific discussion with these "authors", because, as we have repeatedly seen, their goal is not in the search for historical truth, but lies on a completely different plane: to defame and discredit Soviet leaders and military leaders and the Soviet system as a whole; to belittle the significance and greatness of the feat of the Red Army and the people in the Great Patriotic War; to glorify the successes of the Nazis and their accomplices.
Of course, 16 million direct casualties are huge sacrifices. But they, in our deep conviction, by no means belittle, but, on the contrary, glorify the feat of the peoples of the multinational country (USSR) in the Great Patriotic War.
2 Bolshevik. 1946. No. 5. P. 3.
3 True. 1946.14 March.
4 Volkogonov D. A. Triumph and tragedy. M., 1990. Book. 2. P. 418.
5 International life. 1961. No. 12, p. 8.
6 Political self-education. 1988. No. 17. P. 43.
7 All-Russian Book of Memory. 1941-1945: Survey volume. M., 1995. S. 395−396.
8 Bulletin of statistics. 1990. No. 7. S. 34−46.
9 The population of Russia in the twentieth century: Historical essays / Otv. editors: Yu. A. Polyakov, V. B. Zhiromskaya. M., 2000. Vol. 1. P. 340.
10 True. 1990.9 May.
11 Sokolov A. K. Methodological foundations for calculating the losses of the population of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War // Human losses of the USSR during the Second World War. SPb., 1995. S. 22.
12 The classification has been removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical research / Under the general editorship of G. F. Krivosheeva. M., 1993. S. 131.
13 Shevyakov A. A. Hitler's genocide in the territories of the USSR // Sociological research. 1991. No. 12. P. 10.
14 There, p. 6.
15 Rudenko R. A. Not subject to oblivion // Truth. 1969.24 March. P. 4.
16 History of the USSR from ancient times to the present day. M., 1973. T. 10. S. 390.
17 Polyakov Yu. A. The main problems of studying the human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War // Human losses of the USSR during the Second World War. SPb., 1995. S. 11.
18 Shevyakov A. A. Decree. article. P. 10.
19 All-Russian Book of Memory. P. 406.
20 Polyan P. M. Victims of two dictatorships: Ostarbeiters and prisoners of war in the Third Reich and their repatriation. M., 1996. S. 146.
21 Ibid. P. 68.
22 The classification has been removed. P. 130.
23 Ibid. P. 338.
24 Ibid. P. 130.
25 Ibid. P. 131.
26 Streit C. Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen. 1941-1945. Bonn, 1991, S. 244-246.
Our navies are in a panic: they are defenseless in front of the US destroyer
27 Hattori T. Japan in the war. 1941-1945 / Per. with jap. M., 1973. S. 606.
28 For the method of German calculations, see: G.-A. Jacobsen. 1939-1945. World War II: Chronicle and Documents / Per. with him. // World War II: Two Views. M., 1995.
