How was the loss of the USSR counted in the Great Patriotic War?

More than 68 years have passed since the victory over German Nazism, but only after the end of the eighties did scientific evaluation of the four-year series of victims and privations begin.

First named the loss of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War on the pages of the newspaper "Pravda" Chairman SNK I.V. Stalin. He gave an interview in just ten months after the Victory, during this time it was simply impossible to count all the dead and dead, and this was not required. The genius of the Soviet leadership in those years was beyond question, the approximate loss of Germany was eight million, and it is logical to assume that the figure of 7,000,000 arose as a result of counting the smoke rings emanating from the tube of the Supreme Commander, given that the number should have been less, Than the Germans.

In the early sixties, the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War were overestimated. Already the figure in the "two tens of millions" appeared in a letter to NS. Khrushchev, addressed to the Swedish Prime Minister. Data known, based on the form of submission, approximate, on the whole better reflected the already formed picture of the war. Atrocities against the civilian population, the blockade of Leningrad and the famine in the rear became common knowledge, books were written on this subject and films were filmed. This number suited LI. Brezhnev, and Yu.V. Andropov, and K.U. Chernenko. For nearly three decades, it was officially believed that 20 million gave their lives for the victory.

And in the late eighties new calculations were made. To eliminate the errors of the loss of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War, they were calculated at once by two methods. All records of those who died, died of starvation, prisoners of war, hospitals, tortured in concentration camps or under other circumstances connected with German aggression were tried and recorded. The balance method was to serve for control. It consisted of comparing the population at the beginning of the war and its end, taking into account the birth rate and natural mortality of the population. The census was carried out at the beginning of 1939, with the approximation for June 1941 in the Soviet Union there were 196,700,000 people. After processing the data in 1959, the country's population was calculated at the end of 1945, 159,500 thousand people. Thus, the total loss was over 37 million people. However, it did not take into account the natural mortality of the population. In four years, about 12 million people would have died, if Germany had not attacked. Losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War objectively amount to 26 600 thousand people, with an accuracy of half a million. This figure includes both those who died at the fronts and those who were tortured in the occupied territories. The losses in the fleeting and victorious war with Japan were relatively small, about 12,000 people, so they were neglected in the calculations.

The accounting method turned out to be too time consuming, calculations on it are conducted to this day and are unlikely to ever be completed.

The documents stored in the Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation make it possible to judge what losses the army, aviation and navy suffered in the Great Patriotic War. The approximate figure is 12 million, but it is also approximate. So, those who voluntarily or under compulsion went over to the side of the enemy are not considered, and there were at least one million of them.

The USSR lost more people in the Great Patriotic War than all the other participating countries combined. Indirectly it is confirmed even by Soviet films and songs. In what other country was it believed that if the sons returned from the front, it was "lucky to have three villages around"?