of the victory over Nazi Germany has been more than 68 years, but only since the late eighties began to produce scientific assessment of the four-year series of sacrifices and privations.
first called the Soviet losses in World War II in the newspaper "Pravda" Chairman SNK IVStalin.An interview he gave after just ten months after the victory, during which time to count all the dead and the dead was impossible, but this was not required.The genius of the Soviet leadership at that time questioned not subject to, the approximate loss in Germany of eight million, and it is logical to assume that the figure of 7 000 000 is the result of counting the rings of smoke coming out of the tube of the Supreme Commander, given the fact that the number should have been lessthan the Germans.
In the early sixties the loss of the Soviet Union in World War II was revalued.Even the figure of "twenty million" appeared in the letter N.Khrushchev addressed to the Swedish Prime Minister.Data obviously based on the forms of presentation, approximate, as a whole better reflect the already formed a picture of the war.The atrocities of the occupiers against the civilian population, the siege of Leningrad and hunger in the rear became public, on the subject of the book were written and filmed movies.This figure approaches and LIBrezhnev and Y.Andropov and KonstantinChernenko.For nearly three decades Officially, 20 million have given their lives for the victory.
And at the end of the eighties were produced new calculations.To eliminate errors Soviet losses in World War II were computed by two methods.Accounts is trying to bring all the documents of the victims who died of starvation in captivity, in hospitals, tortured in concentration camps or under other circumstances associated with the German aggression.Equity method should be used for control.It consisted in comparing the population at the beginning of the war and its end, taking into account the birth rate and natural mortality.The census was carried out in early 1939, when the approximation of June 1941 in the Soviet Union lived 196,700 thousand. People.After the data has been calculated in 1959 the country's population at the end of 1945, 159 500 thousand. People.Thus, the overall decline was more than 37 million. People.However, it does not take into account the natural mortality.For four years, I would have died about 12 million people in the case, if Germany had not attacked.Soviet losses in World War II objectively make up 26 600 thousand. People, up to half a million.This figure includes both killed at the front, and tortured in the occupied territories.Losses in fleeting and victorious war with Japan were relatively small, about 12 000 people, so they have neglected in the calculations.
Cost method was too time-consuming calculations are carried out on it to this day and is unlikely to ever be completed.
documents kept in the archives of the Russian Defense Ministry, provide a glimpse of what losses in World War II suffered the army, air force and navy.The approximate figure is 12 million, but it is also approximate.So, do not count those who voluntarily or by force defected to the enemy, and there were at least a million.
USSR in the Great Patriotic War has lost more people than all the other member states put together.This is indirectly confirmed even by Soviet movies and songs.In what other country it was thought that if the children returned from the front, the "luck in the three villages around"?
