Page 468 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

468 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

major participant in the events of the Revolution, military losses of the Revolution [as differ-
ent from the war] were very small, thus it will not be discussed here.
The Civil War in Russia came in continuation of the First World War in Russia. It started
in July 1918, ended formally in early 1920, but in fact continued in series of rebellions in
some outlying parts of Soviet Russia and these brought suppression operations by the Red
Army. There are great methodological difficulties in acquiring data on military casualties,
and generally on demographic losses. Soviet statistics and census result are insufficient and
problematic. Data on the ‘White’, anti--Soviet forces and the areas under their rule are even
more difficult to obtain and are even more problematic than data on the Soviet side. Estimates
range between 2 and 5 millions deaths during the years of the Civil War in Russia, mostly
civilians, mostly because of famine and disease. In regards to military losses, without going
into too many details, the best estimate for the present discussion is that combat losses of the
Red Army in the years from 1918 to 1922 were almost 940,000. This includes killed in action,
died of injuries, missing in action, POW that did not return, and those who died of disease.
It is assumed that losses of the ‘White’ armies were similar to those of the Red Army. This
includes also losses in the war with Poland, in which Poland suffered over 250,000 casualties
of all kinds. 5
During this period there were series of peasants rebellion in Russia, mainly on the Volga,
in 1918-22. The best known is the Tambov Rebellion [named in Russian Antonovshchina
after its best known leader Aleksandr Antonov]. These were suppressed in military opera-
tions by the Red Army, employing artillery, air power, and chemical weapons. There were
approximately 250,000 dead, mainly civilians, mainly of famine and disease.

Irrecoverable losses in the inter-war period. These numbers, given by Soviet sources of
the ‘Perestroika’ era, are very low, perhaps much lower than estimates by other, mainly non-
Soviet sources:
Against the ‘Basmachi’ [Basmachestvo], 1922-1931: 626 Soviet deaths.
Sino - Soviet conflict, October-November 1929: 187 Soviet deaths.
‘Volunteers’ in the ‘Military assistance to the Spanish Republic’, 1936-1939: 158 Soviet
deaths.
Military assistance to China, 1937-1939: 195 Soviet deaths.
Soviet - Japanese armed clashes on Lake Khasan, on the border of the USSR, Korea and
China [Manchuria/Manchukuo], 30 July-12 August 1938: 989 Soviet deaths.
Campaign against the Japanese Kwantung Army on the river Khalkhin-Gol [on the most
eastern point of the border of Mongolia and Manchuria/Manchukuo], June-September 1939:
8,931 Soviet deaths. According to these Soviet sources the Japanese forces suffered 61,000
casualties, about 25,000 of them killed, while Japanese sources give only 8,440 killed.
Occupation of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia, 17 September to 2 October

5 G. F. Krivosheev [General editor], Grif sekresnosti snyat. Poteri vooruzhennykh sil SSSR v voinakh, boye-
vykh deistviyakh i voennykh konfliktov [Moskva, 1993]. Translated into English as Soviet casualties and
combat losses in the twentieth century [London, 1997], pp. 26-7. Iu. A. Polyakov, Sovetskaya strana posle
okonchaniya grazhdanskoi voiny: territoriya i naselenie [Moskva, 1986], pp. 102-3. V. A. Isupov, Demogra-
ficheskiye katastrofy i krizisy v Rossii [Novosibirsk, 2000], pp.62-3. Urlanis, op. cit., pp. 180-88.