Page 470 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

470 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

portance. Of the 8,668,400 irrecoverable deaths, 1,560,300 were 20 years of age or younger.
Indeed towards the end of the war the mobilization machine reached the bottom of the demo-
graphic barrel and started to recruit younger men. 1,907,000 deaths were of the age 21 to 25,
1,517,000 were 26 - 30, 1,430,000 were 31 - 35, 1,040,200 age 36 - 40, 639,000 age 41 - 45,
433,400 age 46 - 50, 86,700 were older than 51 years. In this way the war decimated the vi-
12
tal and most productive segment of the population, it destroyed a very large part of the central
age group of the Soviet society. More than previous wars, destructive as they were, WWII
arrested the development of Soviet population, hence Soviet society and, of course, Soviet/
Russian military. Its effects are seen clearly even in our days, almost three generations later.

12 Lyudskie poteri SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voine [St. Peterburg, 1995], p. 78.