42 million dead?

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Re: 42 million dead?

#16

Post by Art » 01 Jun 2017, 16:03

Also regarding some points about demographic calculations and methods raised by Ivlev

1.Quote "In 2001, the state commission announced a total decrease in the population of the USSR of 38.5 million people. Subtraction of it 11.9 million natural deaths gives the known number - 26.6 million. However, natural death have been already been included in this number! That means that natural mortality were counted twice". I read this part several times and I still don't understand what it means and where the conclusion follows from. In any case I don't see what is the practical result of these speculations, since in the final run Ivlev uses absolutely the same method and only pastes different numbers.
2. "Soviet Gosplan had a very detailed and accurate demographic stats, those stats must be used instead of present-day estimates". As explained above stats were actually far from perfectly accurate. The reasons were uncertainty about the results of 1939 census, lack of detailed information about population of territories annexed in 1939-40 and incomplete registration of deaths and births.
3. "The commission that investigated Soviet losses took 1 January 1946 instead of 1 July 1945 as a reference point for post-war population, hence an underestimation". Theoretically if no excess deaths happened after the war it doesn't matter what exact date is chosen, because "natural" mortality is subtracted in any case. On practice some calculation artifacts may result from the choice of date, but hardly significant ones, so it's not a major factor. ADK explained that 1 January 1946 was chosen to account for deaths of wounded in hospitals after the war and as a more comfortable in view of border changes in 1945. That seems an OK explanation to me.
4. "Some number of men that were in the armed forces would die for natural reasons even without the war. Hence the total number of military deaths include some component equal to this natural mortality. Hence the military part of demographic losses is smaller that the total number of military deaths by this component". That is actually a completely correct statement, however not of first rate importance. It can be calculated that the Soviet armed forces didn't make up more than 1/15 of the entire population in any moment of time and those recruited were healthy grown-ups. Death rate corresponding to this group in peace-time was relatively low. By a reasonable estimate a "natural" mortality corresponding to the personnel in the Soviet armed forces in four years of war is about several hundred thousand. In any case this remark relates to the distribution of losses between military and civilian parts and doesn't affect the total number of losses.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#17

Post by Art » 01 Jun 2017, 17:54

And also a good piece of criticism (in Russian):
http://lost-kritik.livejournal.com/64277.html

There are good points in additional to what I've said:

1. In 1941 the Russian Soviet Republic consisted of 52 administrative units. The documents published by Ivlev give the numbers of registered births and deaths for 38 units, that means that stats from the other 14 are missing. That fact confirms that data in the documents are incomplete and consequently Ivlev's estimates from them are also understated.
2. Statistics on the number of registered birth in the SU. for example in 1940 the raw number of registered births on the entire Soviet territory was 6.1 million. In 1945 - 2.5 million. A very simple and conclusive demonstration of wartime decrease of the birth rate.


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Re: 42 million dead?

#18

Post by Art » 03 Jun 2017, 14:29

Further examination of the Ivlev's article. As we remember Ivlev puts Soviet causalities at 42 million people. Of them 22.6 million as he believes were civilian causalities and 19.4 million - casualties of military personnel. Let's consider the last in details. It looks that 19.4 M figure is taken from another article published in 2012. What Ivlev gives to support it in the present article is the balance calculation, approximately as follows:

On strength in Soviet armed forces on 22.6.41 - 5 082 305 men, including:
4 665 855 - Army and Navy
341 500 - NKVD troops
74 950 - military formations of civil organizations (construction troops)

Conscripted during the war (22.6.41-30.6.45)- 32 578 798,
including 2 237 300 cases of double counting:
1 154 900 men discharged for health reasons bur re-conscripted after reexamination
887 258 - POWs re-conscripted after repatriation
195 142 - other reasons

On strength on 1.7.1945 - 12 839 800, including
11 390 600 effectives in Army, Navy and NKVD troops
1 046 000 in hospitals
403 200 - civil formations attached to the army (railroad troops etc)

Deficit - 5 082 305 + 32 578 798 - 12 839 800 = 24 821 303 men
That is supposed to be the number of men that left the armed forces for all reasons. Some of them were not causalities:
3 465 100 men physically unfit as a result of wounds or sickness
949 304 POWs repatriated (exuding reconscripted)
436 600 military personnel sentenced to jail terms
94 730 - valuable specialists transferred to civil economy
212 400 - deserters and stragglers
250 000 - non-repatriated POWs (emigrated)
Total 5 408 134
Excluding this number from the deficit Ivlev gets 19 413 169 military deaths which more than 2 times higher than official number. For other examples of balance calculations see:
viewtopic.php?f=79&t=80049

At first looks that part of the article looks solid enough but let's examine it more closely.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#19

Post by Art » 03 Jun 2017, 15:19

1. Strength as of 22.6.41 - compiled from several sources but looks ok. Let's note that official publication (Krivosheev) gives 4 826 900 men in army and navy or about 160 000 more than in the Ivlev's calculations. However his source ("Statistical handbook No.1" is more reailable

2. Conscription. First, official numbers are somewhat different from Ivlev: 31 812 158 men during the war (22.6.41-1.5.45) or about 800 000 less. A confusing thing is that Ivlev doesn't quote any sources here. Upon further examination it looks that the source is his own article from 2012 where he arrived to this number using some very indirect estimates. Frankly speaking I don't see a good reason to treat this estimate as very accurate and reliable given its crude nature. I would rather stick to the official number. The problem is the different time bracket (1 July 1945 as an ending date instead of 1 May). Some (unknown) number of men were conscripted in two months. However, I suppose they were mostly repatriated POWs and for reasons to be explained later their conscription can be neglected.
Another important thing is that both numbers, Ivlev's and official, include double counting i.e. men that were discharged or taken prisoners or left the forces for some other reasons but were re-conscripted then. It's obvious that the same person cannot by dead more than once, so we must exclude those cases of double counting from calculations. According to Krivosheev their number up to 1.5.45 was 2 237 300 (the same as used by Ivlev) so the real number of people conscripted was 29 575 000. Here Ivlev has an overestimate due to counting of "paper" persons. Just another consequence is that POWs repatriated and re-conscripted after 1.5.45 belonged to the same double-counting so they don't figure in the balance. The mostly nullifies the difference between different ending dates.

3. Strength on 1.7.45. Here Ivlev took numbers from Krivosheev, yet wasn't attentive enough. He claims that the number of effectives in the Army, Navy and NKVD troops was 11 390 600. In fact the original source says it was the number of men in the Army and Navy. Not a word about NKVD. Curiously the table with monthly strength from Krivosheevprovides somewhat different data:
10 786 628 effectives in the Red Army
Adding some 550 000 men in the Navy we'v got >11 300 000 effectives in the army and navy (a good match)
but only 750 000 hospital patients (almost 300 000 less). Curiously it looks like the numbers actually pertain to the 1 June (1 038 945 men in hospitals according to the monthly tables) instead of 1 July. In any case it's clear that Krivosheev's stats don't include NKVD troops. In August 1945 their strength was more than 800 000 men. I don't see any reasons for it to be much smaller on 1 July (or 1 June). So inclusion of NKVD gives some 12.8 +0.8 = 13.6 million men in the Soviet Armed forces after the war end.

Finally we arrive to the deficit equal to 5.1+29.6-13.6 = 21.1 million or considerably smaller than calculated by Ivlev.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#20

Post by Hamburg44 » 03 Jun 2017, 20:12

Hi Art,

much thanks for your infos.

After Krivosheev's analysis Soviet military dead and Missing by nationality (1941–45) are:

Total Percentage
Russians 5,756,000 66.402%
Ukrainians 1,377,400 15.890%
Belarusians 252,900 2.917%
Tatars 187,700 2.165%
Jews 142,500 1.644%
Kazakhs 125,500 1.448%
Uzbeks 117,900 1.360%
Armenians 83,700 0.966%
Georgians 79,500 0.917%
Others 545,300 6.291%
Total 8,668,000 100.0%

After Wikipedia Estimates of military losses by Former Soviet republics were:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War ... viet_Union

The contemporary nations that were formerly Soviet Republics dispute Krivosheev's analysis.

(A) The Ukrainian authorities and historians ardently dispute these figures.
They put the military casualties alone may be estimated as exceeding 7 million, according to the final volume
of the Ukrainian book "In the memory of posterity" and research of V. E. Korol, writes an American (former Soviet) Doctor of History Vilen Lyulechnik.[
Former President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych maintains that Ukraine has lost more than 10 million lives during the Second World War.[
The military casualties alone may be estimated as exceeding 7 million, according to the final volume of the
Ukrainian Book "In the memory of posterity" and research of V. E. Korol, writes an American (former Soviet) Doctor of History Vilen Lyulechnik.

(B) According to a Belorussian military historian, Doctor of History, professor V.Lemeshonok, t
he Belorussian military casualties, including partisans and underground group members, exceed 682,291.

(C) The Memory Book of Tatarstan Government contains names of about 350,000 inhabitants of the republic, mostly tatars.[

(D) An Israeli historian Itskhak Arad maintains that about 200,000 Soviet Jews or 40 per cent
of all draft were killed in battles or captivity — the highest percentage of all nations of the USSR.

(E) Kazakhstan estimates its military casualties at 601,029.

(F) Armenians estimate their military casualties at over 300,000.

(G) Georgians also estimate their military casualties at over 300,000.

(I) Among the others Azerbaidzhans claim military casualties of 300,000,[103] Bashkirs of about 300,000,[
Mordvas of 130,000 and Chuvashes of 106,470.But one of the most tragic figures comes from a Far Eastern republic of Yakutia and its small nation.
37,965 citizens, mostly Yakuts, or 60.74 per cent of 62,509 drafted have not returned home with 7,000 regarded missing.
About 69,000 died of severe famine in the republic. This nation could not restore its population even under 1959 census.
The record breaking estimates of 700,000 military casualties out of a total 1,25 million Turkmenian citizens (with slightly less than 60 per cent being Turkmens)
are attributed to the late President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov. Historians do not regard them trustworthy.

Why do the Former Soviet republics claim so much higher fatal military casualties ? Perhaps the numbers of the Former Soviet republics contain ethnic russians?

Hamburg 44

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Re: 42 million dead?

#21

Post by Art » 04 Jun 2017, 00:03

The next part - departures from the armed forces.

According to Ivlev (repeated):
1a) 3 465 100 men for medical reasons
2a) 94 730 - transferred to civil economy
3) 436 600 sentenced to jail
4) 212 400 - deserters and stragglers
5) 949 304 POWs repatriated (excluding reconscripted)
6) 250 000 - non-repatriated POWs (emigrated)
Total 5 408 134 men

For comparison departures according to Krivosheev
1b) 3 798 200 men for medical reasons
2b) 3 614 600 transferred to civil economy, MPVO (civil air defense), NVKD armed guard etc
3) 436 600 sentenced to jail
4) 212 400 deserters and stragglers
7) 1 174 600 transferred to NKVD troops and other military formations
8) 250 400 transferred to the allied armies (Polish, Czechoslovak, Romanian)
9) 206 000 - other reasons
Total 9 692 800 departures

From detailed comparison of the both lists:
1) and 1a) mean the same thing, yet Ivlev's number is smaller and from what I can see is calculated from E.I. Smirnov (1976). Ok, let's take his variant
2a) and 2b) are supposed to mean the same, but there is a huge difference. Ivlev forgets to put any reference to source here. In any case that there was a million scale transfer of conscripted men to labor and construction columns that made work under civil agencies is a common knowledge and I don't see good reasons to ignore it.
3) and 4) are the same
5) If were interested in military deaths this item is methodically correctly. Of course, POWs were military losses, but those who stayed alive were not military deaths. The source as indicated in the table is the well known article on repatriation by V. Zemskov. Total 1 825 774 POWs were repatriated to the Soviet Union and according to Zemskov 887 258 of them were re-conscripted to the army by 1 March 1946. That leaves the difference 949 304 calculated by Ivlev. The problem is that Ivlev uses the number pertaining to 1 March 1946 in calculations pertaining to 1 July 1945 (or even 1 June 1945 - remember the previous part). That is simply wrong because repatriation was by no means complete by that moment. So we need to put the right figure pertaining to 1 June/July 1945. What I have is the report by the Soviet Plenipotentiary on Repatriation general Golikov giving 1 250 812 civilians and 531 830 POWs repatriated by 20 May 1945, of them 553 831 civilians and POWs transferred to the army. As a very rough estimate we can assume that about 600 000 former POWs were returned to the army by 1 June/July, that leaves about 1.2 million those who were not.
6) This item depends on exact definition of losses. After all emigrants were also lost for the country in some sense. But if look at military deaths exclusion of emigration seems legitimate
7) Since NKVD troops and other military formations were included in the balance, this item is redundant
8) A legitimate item omitted by Ivlev for no good reason.
9) Looks mysterious as no explanation of "other reasons" are provided. I suppose that stands of Germans, Finns, Kalmyks, Chechens and other "unreliable" nations discharged from the army. In this case it's a legitimate item.

So finally we've got 3.5+3.6+0.4+0.2+1.2+0.2+0.2=9.3 million departures by rough count.

Excluding it from 21.1 million deficit calculated in the previous part we've got 11.8 million as deficit attributable to military deaths. That's a very rough estimate which can become bigger or smaller upon correction. Still it's closer to Krivosheev (9.2 million) than to the original Ivlev balance number (19.4).

Repeating what was said above: the difference between original (19.4 million) and corrected (11.8) balance comes from:
a) corrected conscription number (0.8 mln)
b) exclusion of double-counting in conscription (2.2 mln)
c) inclusion of NKVD troops in Soviet military strength after the war (0.8 mln)
d) full account of personnel transferred to civil occupations during the war (3.5 mln)
e) corrected repatriation numbers (0.25 mln)
f) inclusion of personnel transferred to allied armies or discharged during the war (0.45 mln)

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Re: 42 million dead?

#22

Post by Art » 04 Jun 2017, 11:33

Hamburg44 wrote: After Krivosheev's analysis Soviet military dead and Missing by nationality (1941–45) are:
As already mentioned elsewhere previously those percentage stand for averaged ethnic make-up of the Soviet Army in 1943-45. No military reports ever provided number of causalities by nationality. Krivosheev simply took his number of military losses and multiplied it by those percentage. That can only serve as a rough estimate. Then "ehnic Ukrainians" and population of Ukraine, "ethnic Belorussians" and population of Belorussia are different things. In particular only 1/2 of Tatarstan population were ethnic Tatars. Consequently this information simply cannot be true:
(C) The Memory Book of Tatarstan Government contains names of about 350,000 inhabitants of the republic, mostly tatars
Former President of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych maintains that Ukraine has lost more than 10 million lives during the Second World War
Well, it looks that population of Ukraine right after the war was about 10 million smaller than on June 1941 as a combined result of losses and migration/evacuation.
The Ukrainian authorities and historians ardently dispute these figures.
They put the military casualties alone may be estimated as exceeding 7 million
7 million is about the number of people ever conscripted from the Ukrainian territory. It's obvious that military causalities could never be that large, otherwise the generation of young men would be almost completely butchered (which was not the case).
(F) Armenians estimate their military casualties at over 300,000.
From population of 1.3 mln? Oh c'mon. I would put much trust in other statements either.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#23

Post by Art » 04 Jun 2017, 12:39

2a) and 2b) are supposed to mean the same, but there is a huge difference. Ivlev forgets to put any reference to source here.
There is a more detailed discussion in the Ivlev's original article (or rather an essay) from 2012:
http://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/1 ... voyne.html
which says:
Number of personnel transferred to civil industry with labor and construction columns and also to formations of MPVO, NKVD armed guard etc is not included in the deficit since the predominant part of them stayed with the Soviet Armed Forces and were not subjected to demobilization and were constantly used as source of replacement for the front (NKO order No. 0242 of 05.04.42 , NKO order No. 0786 of 05.10.42). Those who were subject to demobilization and were fit for labor employment were attached to industry enterprises as civil employees. After criteria of physical fitness were softened in the autumn of 1942 almost all demobilized men were re-conscripted to the Armed Forces to positions of non-combat personnel (NKO order No.336 of 24.10.42, NKO order No. 0882 of 12.11.42). The real number of personnel transferred from the Soviet Armed forces to Soviet industry was 94 730 (Shabayev, Mikhalev 2002)
What is this about? It's known that in 1941-1942 a great mass of recruits (usually those of older ages with limited physical fitness or considered politically unreliable) were used to form labor or construction columns - semi-military units that performed various works under control of civilian organizations. Ivlev's formulates two points:
1) Most personnel from labor columns were used as reinforcement for the army after spring 1942
2) The smaller part that were demobilized and returned to civilian status were mostly conscripted again after medical reexamination after the autumn 1942

1). This statement doesn't relies on any stats or sources. The number of men in labor columns in March 1942 was 1 264 400 (Tschadenko's report to Stalin, 13.03.1942). On 3.4.1942 the GKO ordered to take 174 000 men from labor columns belonging to 18 ministries of the Soviet government plus all military fit men from columns belonging to other ministries (number unspecified) as reinforcement for the army. The NKO order No.0242 of 05.04.42 repeated that and also prescribed to take all military fit officers and NCOs. The remaining personnel was to be demobilized reclassified as employees working in civil organizations. From comparison of both numbers (1 264 400 and 174 000) it appears that more than a million men were to be returned to civilian status and released for work in civil economy and only a smaller part were used by the army. It curious that several months later in September 1942 the number of personnel assigned to labor columns became even higher - 1 321 000 (as reported by Tschadenko to Stalin on 10.09.1942).

2) Again no stats and no sources. NKO order only says that men transferred to industry with labor columns should be reexamined and those found to be fit for first-line military service should be conscripted. There is no word about people with limited fitness. Actually the number of personnel re-conscripted from civil economy is well known - 142 800 men (Krivosheev). From comparison with numbers above that doesn't look like predominant part to me.

Also Ivlev misses additional mobilization to labor columns from Autumn 1942 and on. For example on 14 October the GKO ordered mobilization of 350 000 recruits from Kazakhstan and Central Asia to labor columns as well as additional mobilization of Soviet Germans which brought the numbers even higher.
As for 94 730 number the Ivlev's source (Shabayev and Mikhalev) apparently talks about valuable specialists, while most personnel transferred to labor columns were simply physically unfit or politically unreliable performing unqualified work. These are different categories.

Also transfer to personnel to militarized organizations is completely forgotten. Meanwhile according to Krivosheev of about 490 000 conscripted women alone 70 000 were transferred to MPVO which is comparable to Ivev's 94 730. Contrary to what Ivlev says MPVO, fire guard, camp guard were not part Soviet armed forces and were not counted as such. Why those departures are ignored is not answered.

The bottom line: this discussion is lacking hard information and relies on some "I want to believe" thesis. At the same time it should be admitted that little is known about assignment of conscripted personnel to various civil occupations and this area needs more research.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#24

Post by Der Alte Fritz » 04 Jun 2017, 21:49

Similar argument advanced by Mark Harrison
https://www.academia.edu/33190310/Count ... 27_Million

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Re: 42 million dead?

#25

Post by per70 » 11 Jul 2017, 18:17

I've just read through "The Price of Victory- The Red Army's casualties in the Great Patriotic War" by Lopukhovsky and Kavalerchik.

In it, the authors claim the casualty figures provided by Krivosheev for 1941 are significantly understated.
To show this, they include - among other things - a case study of casualties for the Northwestern Front which is highly influenced by research done by Ivlev in his book "Military Archaeology". That book seem to place NWF casualties for 1941 at 651,199 vs Krivosheev's figure of 270,087.

Given the criticism directed at Ivlev in this thread against his article on total casualties, I was wondering about how his "Military Archaology"-book has been received in Russia and elsewhere. Is the research done in that book more highly regarded?

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Re: 42 million dead?

#26

Post by Art » 11 Jul 2017, 21:39

I didn't go into all details. Yet IMO the principal point which is missed by Ivlev is that we have the number of POWs captured by the German Army according to their own documents

Image

So AG North captured 56 000 prisoners belonging to the North and North-West Fronts and Baltic Fleet by the end of July 41. AG Center could also capture some number of prisoners (up to tens thousand probably) belonging to several divisions of the NWF. In general it doesn't look like Krivosheev's data (about 74 000 killed and missing in the NWF 22.6-9.7) are inconsistent with that. If the NWF lost almost 400 000 men by the end of July as Ivlev says then a natural question is where they all went to. Not to the German captivity clearly. I don't see any good answer to it.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#27

Post by Stiltzkin » 12 Jul 2017, 00:27

No military reports ever provided number of causalities by nationality
Directorate of the Commission of the Council of the Peoples Commissariat of the USSR for Repatriation Affairs formed in 1945 under Golikov, on CIA/MIA and subsequently POWs in the period of 41-45, the break down of 1,368,849 former prisoners was:

48% Russians
28% Ukrainians
7.5% Belorussians
2.24% Tatars
2% Uzbeks
1.75% Georgians
1.7% Cossacks
1.5% Armenian
1.5% Azeris
0.35% Moldovians
0.3% Khirgizians
0.3% Tadzhiks
0.3% Bashkirians
0.3% Jews
0.28% Kalmyks
0.26% Turkmenians
0,24% Latvians
0,2% Lithuanians
0.2% Estonians
0.14% Karelians
2.6% others

Now, we cannot know how well prisoners were able to adapt and if there was a difference in their survivability (jews would be treated harshly) or how they were actually "shuffled" in each individual unit.
If we assume that the Russians probably placed non ethnic Russian units in more "unfavourable" positions, this could be another statistical problem. Considering that from 41-42 the RKKA was pressed deep into their territory this would also mean that casualties would be higher for Russian soldiers during this period, which would result in a considerable fluctuation from 48-61%. I would say that 51-54% of all casualties probably fell on ethnic Russians during the war.
This data fits Krivosheevs distribution, if the Army was composed in such a way then casualties would be taken accordingly.
Why do the Former Soviet republics claim so much higher fatal military casualties ? Perhaps the numbers of the Former Soviet republics contain ethnic russians?
Because politics.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#28

Post by per70 » 13 Jul 2017, 16:08

Art wrote: In general it doesn't look like Krivosheev's data (about 74 000 killed and missing in the NWF 22.6-9.7) are inconsistent with that. If the NWF lost almost 400 000 men by the end of July as Ivlev says then a natural question is where they all went to. Not to the German captivity clearly. I don't see any good answer to it.
Thanks for the input. You raise a good point, and I can't provide a good answer to that conundrum either.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#29

Post by AriX » 14 May 2021, 14:45

In 1946 there were 159 million people, born prior to mid-1941, comparing to 196 million of Soviet population on that date. Minus 12 million whom would die by natural death by that time, and we have circa 26 million deaths due to war. Soviet and now russian official try to make it look like 2/3 of that number, 26 million, were be civillian casulties when it was visa versa in reality.

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Re: 42 million dead?

#30

Post by stg 44 » 14 May 2021, 18:40

AriX wrote:
14 May 2021, 14:45
In 1946 there were 159 million people, born prior to mid-1941, comparing to 196 million of Soviet population on that date. Minus 12 million whom would die by natural death by that time, and we have circa 26 million deaths due to war. Soviet and now russian official try to make it look like 2/3 of that number, 26 million, were be civillian casulties when it was visa versa in reality.
What makes you think 2/3rds of the dead were military?

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