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1939: 1,139 Soviet deaths.
The “Winter War” with Finland, 30 November 1939 to 13 March 1940: 126,875 Soviet
deaths [71,214 killed in action and died during casualty evacuation, 16,292 died in hospitals,
39,369 missing in action never returned]. 6
The longest, and certainly the most lethal and destructive war fought by Russia/USSR
was The Great Motherland War, as the Second World War on the Russian front is called in
Russian/Soviet terminology. It was fought for 1,418 days, just a little less than 4 years, from
June 1941 to May 1945 against Germany and her allies in Europe. It was followed with a war
against Japan in August 1945. Undoubtedly it was the greatest and most lethal and destruc-
tive war in history. It was fought mainly on Soviet soil, occupied the overwhelmingly greater
part of the Wehrmacht, in which both opposing military forces - the Red/Soviet Army and
the Wehrmacht suffered most of their losses. When the war started the Red Army had already
more than 4,826,900 men in service. During the war 29,574,900 persons - men and women
- were mobilized, in all 34,476,000 men served in the Soviet armed forces during the war.
On June 1941, on the eve of the war, the population of the Soviet Union was 196,700,000
persons. It was, then, an extremely high rate of mobilization, approximately 17.5% of the
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total population, probably the highest in modern history. The turnover in manpower in the
war was 21,700,000, that is 62.9% of all persons mobilized.
Of these 34 and a half millions mobilized Soviet citizens 11,944,100 persons were opera-
tional ‘irrecoverable losses’, i.e. killed in battle, died of disease, MIA and POWs, or perished
because of another reason, never to return to service. Thus for every 1,000 persons mo-
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bilized 346 were killed, died, or perished because of another cause. Of the total population
of the USSR in 1941 the military operational irrecoverable losses were 61 for every 1,000.
The demographic irrecoverable losses were somewhat smaller: almost a million soldiers, left
in encirclements and occupied areas were re-conscripted when those areas were liberated.
Of approximately 5 millions POWs lost to the Red Army, only slightly more than 1,800,000
returned [the others died in captivity]. The net demographic irrecoverable losses were, then,
8,668,400 persons. Clearly a comparison with other countries is needed. The Western Al-
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lies suffered only a fraction of Soviet losses, Britain suffered 382,600 war deaths in WWII,
and the U.S. had 407,300. Germany suffered very heavy losses, 5,500,000 military deaths,
but even this is much lower than that of the USSR. 10
Demographic losses of the USSR in WWII were much greater. It is estimated, and this
number is accepted by most researchers, that Second World War deaths in the Soviet Union
were 26 to 27 million. This is over 13% of the pre-war population, indeed a shocking
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number. As for the military losses, the structure of these losses, in age groups, is of great im-

6 G. F. Krivosheev, Soviet casualties and combat losses in the twentieth century, pp. 40-82.
7 Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, Istoricheskii ocherki, t. 2 [Moskva, 2001], p. 13
8 Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, Istoricheskii ocherki, t. 2 [Moskva, 2001], p. 26-27.
9 G. F. Krivosheev, Soviet casualties and combat losses in the twentieth century, p. 85.
10 Rčdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg, 2000. G. F. Kri-
vosheev, Soviet casualties and combat losses in the twentieth century, p. 276
11 Michael Ellman and S. Maksudov, “Soviet deaths in the Great Patriotic War: A Note” in Europe-Asia Stu-
dies, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 671-680.