Small nations in a big war. The military contribution of the peoples of the USSR to the victory over Germany. Which peoples participated in the Second World War?
During the Great Patriotic War, the sons and daughters of all republics and all peoples of the USSR fought shoulder to shoulder at the front. Each nation had its own heroes in this war.
Nations with the most heroes
During the Great Patriotic War, 7998 Russians, 2021 Ukrainians, 299 Belarusians became Heroes of the Soviet Union. The next largest number of heroes are Tatars - 161, Jews - 107, Kazakhs - 96, Georgians - 90, Armenians - 89.
Other peoples
Not far behind the Georgians and Armenians were the Uzbeks - 67 heroes, Mordvinians - 63, Chuvash - 45, Azerbaijanis - 43, Bashkirs - 38, Ossetians - 33.
9 heroes each came from the German (we are, of course, talking about the Volga Germans) and Estonian peoples, 8 each from the Karelians, Buryats and Mongols, Kalmyks, Kabardians. The Adygs gave the country 6 heroes, the Abkhaz - 4, the Yakuts - 2, the Moldovans - also 2, the Tuvans -1. And finally, representatives of repressed peoples, such as the Chechens and Crimean Tatars, fought no less bravely than the rest. 5 Chechens and 6 Crimean Tatars were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
About “inconvenient” nationalities
At the everyday level, there were practically no ethnic conflicts in the USSR, everyone lived peacefully side by side, and treated each other, if not like brothers, then like good neighbors. However, at the state level there were periods when some peoples were considered “wrong”. These are, first of all, repressed peoples, and Jews.
Anyone who is even slightly interested in the issue of the Crimean Tatars knows the name of Ametkhan Sultan, the legendary ace pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. Representatives of the Chechen people also performed feats. As is known, in 1942 the conscription of residents of the Chechen-Ingush Republic to the front was stopped, but by the end of the summer of this year, when the Nazis invaded the North Caucasus, it was decided to conscript volunteers from among the Chechens and Ingush to the front. 18.5 thousand volunteers showed up at recruiting stations. They fought to the death on the outskirts of Stalingrad as part of a separate Checheno-Ingush region
There is often an opinion about Jews that representatives of this ancient people First of all, they are capable of intellectual work and commerce, but the warriors they make are so-so. And that's not true. 107 Jews became Heroes of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. The merit of the Jews, for example, in organizing the partisan movement in Odessa is enormous.
From “natural” numbers - to percentages
7998 Russians became Heroes of the Soviet Union during the war. At first glance, this number is much larger than 6 - that is exactly how many Heroes of the Soviet Union are from the Circassians. However, if you look at the percentage of heroes to population, you get a completely different picture. The 1939 census showed that 99,591,520 Russians lived in the country. Adygov - 88115. And it turns out that the percentage of heroes per “capita” of the small Adyghe people is even slightly higher than that of the Russians - 0.0068 versus 0.0080. The “percentage of heroism” among Ukrainians is 0.0072, among Belarusians - 0.0056, among Uzbeks 0.0013, among Chechens - 0.0012, and so on. It is clear that the number of heroes in itself cannot be considered an exhaustive characteristic of the national spirit, but the ratio of the number of heroes and the total population says something about the people. If you look at these statistics using the example of the peoples of the USSR, it will become clear that during the war years, each of our peoples contributed their share to the overall victory, and singling out someone would be a blatant injustice
All of Europe fought against us
The very first strategic counter-offensive of Soviet troops in the Great Patriotic War revealed a very unpleasant circumstance for the USSR. Among the enemy troops captured near Moscow were many military units France, Poland, Holland, Finland, Austria, Norway and other countries. The output data of almost all major European companies was found on captured military equipment and shells. In general, as one could assume and as they thought in the Soviet Union, the European proletarians would never take up arms against the state of workers and peasants, that they would sabotage the production of weapons for Hitler.
But exactly the opposite happened. Our soldiers made a very characteristic discovery after the liberation of the Moscow region in the area of the historical Borodino Field - next to the French cemetery of 1812, they discovered fresh graves of Napoleon’s descendants. The Soviet 32nd Red Banner Rifle Division, Colonel V.I., fought here. Polosukhin, whose fighters could not even imagine that they were opposed "French allies".
A more or less complete picture of this battle was revealed only after the Victory. Chief of Staff of the German 4th Army G. Blumentritt published memoirs in which he wrote:
“The four battalions of French volunteers operating as part of the 4th Army turned out to be less resilient. At Borodin, Field Marshal von Kluge addressed them with a speech, recalling how, during the time of Napoleon, the French and Germans fought here side by side against a common enemy - Russia. The next day, the French boldly went into battle, but, unfortunately, they could not withstand either the powerful attack of the enemy or the severe frost and blizzard. They had never had to endure such trials before. The French legion was defeated, suffering heavy losses from enemy fire. A few days later he was taken to the rear and sent to the West..."
Here is an interesting archival document - a list of prisoners of war who surrendered to Soviet troops during the war. Let us remember that a prisoner of war is someone who fights in uniform with a weapon in his hands.
Hitler accepts the Wehrmacht parade, 1940 (megabook.ru)
So, Germans – 2 389 560, Hungarians – 513 767, Romanians – 187 370, Austrians – 156 682, Czechs And Slovaks – 69 977, Poles – 60 280, Italians – 48 957, French – 23 136, Croats – 21 822, Moldovans – 14 129, Jews – 10 173, Dutch – 4 729, Finns – 2 377, Belgians – 2 010, Luxembourgers – 1652, Danes – 457, Spaniards – 452, gypsies – 383, Norse – 101, Swedes – 72.
And these are only those who survived and were captured. In reality, significantly more Europeans fought against us.
The ancient Roman senator Cato the Elder went down in history for the fact that any of his public speaking On any topic, he always ended with the words: "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam", which literally means: “Otherwise, I believe that Carthage should be destroyed.” (Carthage is a city-state hostile to Rome.) I am not ready to completely become like Senator Cato, but I will use any occasion to mention once again: in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 USSR, with initial strength 190 million. man, did not fight with the 80 million Germans of that time. The Soviet Union practically fought from all over Europe, the number of which (with the exception of our allied England and partisan Serbia, which did not surrender to the Germans) was about 400 million. Human.
During the Great Patriotic War, 34,476.7 thousand people wore overcoats in the USSR, i.e. 17,8% population. And Germany mobilized into its armed forces as much 21% from the population. It would seem that the Germans were more tense in their military efforts than the USSR. But women served in the Red Army in large numbers, both voluntarily and by conscription. There were a lot of purely female units and units (anti-aircraft, aviation, etc.). During a period of desperate situation, the State Defense Committee decided (remaining, however, on paper) to create women's rifle formations, in which only those loading heavy artillery guns would be men.
And among the Germans, even at the moment of their agony, women not only did not serve in the army, but there were very few of them in production. Why is this so? Because in the USSR there was one man per three women, and in Germany it’s the other way around? No, that's not the point. In order to fight, you need not only soldiers, but also weapons and food. And their production also requires men, who cannot be replaced by women or teenagers. That's why the USSR was forced send women to the front instead of men.
The Germans did not have such a problem: all of Europe provided them with weapons and food. The French not only handed over all their tanks to the Germans, but also produced a huge amount of military equipment for them - from cars to optical rangefinders.
Czechs who have only one company "Skoda" produced more weapons than the entire pre-war Great Britain, built the entire fleet of German armored personnel carriers, a huge number of tanks, aircraft, small arms, artillery and ammunition.
The Poles built airplanes Polish Jews in Auschwitz they produced explosives, synthetic gasoline and rubber to kill Soviet citizens; the Swedes mined ore and supplied the Germans with components for military equipment (for example, bearings), the Norwegians supplied the Nazis with seafood, the Danes with oil... In short, all of Europe tried its best.
And she tried not only on the labor front. Only the elite troops of Nazi Germany - the SS troops - accepted into their ranks 400 thousand. “blond beasts” from other countries, but in total they joined Hitler’s army from all over Europe 1800 thousand. volunteers, forming 59 divisions, 23 brigades and several national regiments and legions.
The most elite of these divisions had not numbers, but proper names indicating national origin: “Valonia”, “Galicia”, “Bohemia and Moravia”, “Viking”, “Denemark”, “Gembez”, “Langemarck”, “Nordland” ", "Netherlands", "Charlemagne", etc.
Europeans served as volunteers not only in national, but also in German divisions. So, let's say, an elite German division "Greater Germany". It would seem that, at least because of the name, it should have been staffed only by Germans. However, the Frenchman who served in it Guy Sayer remembers that the day before Battle of Kursk in his infantry squad of 11 people there were 9 Germans, and besides him, a Czech also understood the German language poorly. And all this in addition to the official allies of Germany, whose armies burned and plundered the Soviet Union shoulder to shoulder - Italians, Romanian, Hungarians, Finns, Croats, Slovaks, besides Bulgarians, who at that time burned and plundered partisan Serbia. Even officially neutral Spaniards sent their “Blue Division” to Leningrad!
In order to evaluate the national composition of all the European bastards who, in the hope of easy prey, came to us to kill Soviet and Russian people, I will give a table of that part of the foreign volunteers who guessed in time to surrender to us:
Germans – 2 389 560, Hungarians – 513 767, Romanians – 187 370, Austrians – 156 682, Czechs And Slovaks – 69 977, Poles – 60 280, Italians – 48 957, French – 23 136, Croats – 21 822, Moldovans – 14 129, Jews – 10 173, Dutch – 4 729, Finns – 2 377, Belgians – 2 010, Luxembourgers – 1652, Danes – 457, Spaniards – 452, gypsies – 383, Norse – 101, Swedes – 72.
This table, first published at the end of 1990, should be repeated for the following reasons. After the reign of “democracy” on the territory of the USSR, the table was continuously “improved” in terms of “enlarging the rows”. As a result, in “serious” books by “professional historians” on the topic of war, say, in the statistical collection “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century” or in the reference book “The World of Russian History”, the data in this table are distorted. Some nationalities have disappeared from it.
The Jews disappeared first, which, as you can see from the original table, served Hitler as many as the Finns and the Dutch combined. But I, for example, don’t see why we should throw out the Jewish verses from this Hitler song.
By the way, the Poles today are trying to push Jews away from the position of “the main sufferers of the Second World War,” and there are more of them on the lists of prisoners than there are officially and actually Italians who fought with us.
But the presented table does not reflect the true quantitative and national composition of prisoners. First of all, it does not represent our domestic scum at all, who, either due to acquired idiocy, or because of cowardice and cowardice, served the Germans - from Bandera to Vlasov.
By the way, they were punished offensively easily. It would be good if a Vlasovite fell prisoner into the hands of front-line soldiers. Then, more often than not, he got what he deserved. But the traitors contrived to surrender to the rear units, dressed in civilian clothes, pretended to be Germans when surrendering, etc. In this case, the Soviet court literally almost patted them on the head.
At one time, domestic anti-Soviet activists published collections of their memoirs abroad. One of them describes the judicial “sufferings” of a Vlasovite who defended Berlin: he changed clothes... to the Soviet soldiers who captured him... he introduced himself as a Frenchman and thus got to the military tribunal. And then to read his boasting is insulting: “They gave me five years in distant camps - and that was lucky. In a hurry - they considered them to be small workers and peasants. Soldiers captured with weapons and officers were given a ten.” While being escorted to the camp, he fled to the West.
Five years for killing Soviet people and treason! What kind of punishment is this?! Well, at least 20, so that the mental wounds of widows and orphans will heal and it won’t be so offensive to look at these vile hari...
For the same reason they are not included in the lists of prisoners of war Crimean Tatars, who stormed Sevastopol for Manstein, Kalmyks etc.
Not listed Estonians, Latvians And Lithuanians, which had their own national divisions as part of Hitler’s troops, but were considered Soviet citizens and, in connection with this, served their meager terms in Gulag camps, and not in GUPVI camps. (GULAG - the main directorate of camps - was responsible for keeping criminals, and GUPVI - the main directorate for prisoners of war and internees - prisoners.) Meanwhile, not all prisoners ended up in GUPVI, since this department counted only those who ended up in its rear camps from front-line transfer points.
Estonian legionnaires of the Wehrmacht fought against the USSR with particular fury (ookaboo.com)
But since 1943, national divisions of Poles, Czechs, and Romanians began to be formed in the USSR to fight the Germans. And the prisoners of these nationalities were sent not to the GUPVI, but directly to the recruitment points of such formations - they fought together with the Germans, let them fight against them too! By the way, there were such 600 thousand. Even de Gaulle was sent to his army 1500 French.
Before the start of the war with the USSR Hitler appealed to Europeans to crusade against Bolshevism. Here's how they responded to it (data for June - October 1941, which does not take into account huge military contingents Italy, Hungary, Romania and other allies of Hitler). From Spanish volunteers ( 18000 people) the 250th Infantry Division was formed in the Wehrmacht. In July, the personnel took the oath to Hitler and left for the Soviet-German front. During September-October 1941, from French volunteers (approx. 3000 people) the 638th Infantry Regiment was formed. In October, the regiment was sent to Smolensk and then to Moscow. From Belgians in July 1941 the 373rd Valonian battalion was formed (approximately 850 people), transferred to the subordination of the 97th Infantry Division of the 17th Army of the Wehrmacht.
From Croatian Volunteers were formed by the 369th Wehrmacht Infantry Regiment and the Croatian Legion as part of the Italian troops. Approximately 2000 Swedes signed up to volunteer in Finland. Of these, approximately 850 people took part in the fighting near Hanko, as part of a Swedish volunteer battalion.
By the end of June 1941 294 Norwegians already served in the SS regiment "Nordland". After the start of the war with the USSR, the volunteer legion “Norway” was created in Norway ( 1200 Human). After taking the oath to Hitler, he was sent to Leningrad. By the end of June 1941, the SS Viking division had 216 Danes. After the start of the war with the USSR, the Danish Volunteer Corps began to form.
Ours stand apart in aiding fascism Polish comrades. Immediately after the end of the German-Polish war, the Polish nationalist Wladyslaw Gisbert-Studnicki came up with the idea of creating a Polish army fighting on the side of Germany. He developed a project for building a Polish 12-15 million pro-German state. Gisbert-Studnicki proposed a plan to send Polish troops to the eastern front. Later the idea of a Polish-German alliance and 35 thousand Polish army supported by the Sword and Plow organization, associated with the Home Army.
In the first months of the war against the USSR, Polish soldiers in the fascist army had the so-called status HiWi (volunteer helpers). Later, Hitler gave special permission for Poles to serve in the Wehrmacht. After this, it was categorically forbidden to use the name in relation to Poles HiWi, because the Nazis treated them as full-fledged soldiers. Every Pole between the ages of 16 and 50 could become a volunteer; they only had to undergo a preliminary medical examination.
Poles were called upon, along with other European nations, to stand “in defense of Western civilization from Soviet barbarism.” Here is a quote from a fascist leaflet in Polish: “The German armed forces are leading the decisive struggle to protect Europe from Bolshevism. Any honest helper in this fight will be greeted as an ally..."
The text of the oath of the Polish soldiers read: “I swear before God with this sacred oath that in the fight for the future of Europe in the ranks of the German Wehrmacht I will be absolutely obedient to the Supreme Commander Adolf Hitler, and as a brave soldier I am ready at any time to devote my strength to fulfill this oath...”
It is amazing that even the strictest guardian of the Aryan gene pool Himmler allowed to form units from Poles SS. The first sign was the Goral Legion of the Waffen-SS. Gorals are ethnic group within the Polish nation. In 1942, the Nazis convened the Goral Committee in Zakopane. Was appointed "Goralenführer" Vaclav Krzeptovsky.
He and his inner circle made a series of trips to cities and villages, urging them to fight the worst enemy of civilization - Judeo-Bolshevism. It was decided to create a Goral volunteer legion of the Waffen-SS, adapted for operations in mountainous terrain. Krzeptovsky managed to collect 410 Highlanders But after medical examination remained in the SS 300 Human.
Another Polish SS Legion was formed in mid-July 1944. They joined it 1500 volunteers of Polish nationality. In October the legion was based in Rzechow, in December near Tomaszow. In January 1945, the legion was divided into two groups (1st Lieutenant Machnik, 2nd Lieutenant Errling) and sent to participate in anti-partisan operations in the Tuchola forests. In February, both groups were destroyed by the Soviet army.
President of the Academy of Military Sciences, Army General Mahmut Gareev gave the following assessment of the participation of a number of European countries in the fight against fascism: During the war, all of Europe fought against us. Three hundred and fifty million people, regardless of whether they fought with weapons in their hands, or stood at the machine, producing weapons for the Wehrmacht, did one thing.
During World War II, 20 thousand members of the French Resistance died. And 200 thousand French fought against us. We also captured 60 thousand Poles. 2 million European volunteers fought for Hitler against the USSR.
In this regard, the invitation of military personnel from a number of countries looks at least strange NATO to take part in the parade on Red Square in honor of the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory, says Colonel Yuri Rubtsov, member of the International Association of Historians of the Second World War, professor at the Military Humanitarian Academy. – This insults the memory of our defenders of the Fatherland, who died at the hands of numerous "Hitler's European friends".
Useful conclusion
During the Second World War against the Soviet Union, which had an initial population of just over 190 million. people, a European coalition of more than 400 million. people, and when we were not Russians, but Soviet citizens, we defeated this coalition.
All of Europe fought against us A
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Pavel Pryanikov
During the Great Patriotic War, the experiment with the formation of national units failed. Some, like the Kalmyks, went over to the side of the Germans en masse. Others - the Central Asian units - turned out to be incapable of combat operations. Only the Tuvans and the indigenous peoples of the North showed themselves to be real soldiers.
In his famous speech after the Victory, Stalin proposed a toast to the victorious Russian people. This is perhaps the only example in Soviet history when toasts were publicly proclaimed in honor of a nation. Official propaganda preferred to see the collective winner (as opposed to the losers - “rootless cosmopolitans” or “German spies”) as an average: Soviet. There were reasons for such an attitude towards the “victor nations”.
The history of military affairs in Muscovy, Russia and the early USSR testifies not only to the presence of national units in our army, but also to the deliberate encouragement of this practice by the authorities. The existence of such units has always been based on the principle of “divide and conquer” and the practice of competent use in military affairs of the characteristics and traditional skills of a particular people. The Reds brought this practice to perfection in the Civil War: up to 65 thousand people from national formations, primarily Latvians, Hungarians, Czechs, Chinese, Finns.
However, in the 30s, new war tactics neutralized the advantages of national units. WITH light hand For the military strategists of that time, it was not the keen eye, the abilities of a tracker or the ability to rotate a saber that came to the fore, but the technical equipment of the warrior, his versatility. In addition, military machines had reached a stage of development at which the “man with a spear” (and the small nations of all European countries, including the USSR, were secretly represented as such) could no longer oppose anything to them. Therefore, the unified soldier at that time was recognized as the only true model for all the armies of Europe.
In the Soviet Union, the refusal to form national units was legislatively enshrined on March 7, 1938 by the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On national units and formations of the Red Army.” However, by that time their actual number did not exceed a dozen battalions - Latvian, mountain, etc.
The Nazis were the first to return national units to the army. Thanks to the successes of the 1939-1940 campaign, the ranks of the Germans were replenished not only with hundreds of thousands of volunteers from the defeated countries, but also with dozens of divisions that the puppet regimes of the occupied territories wished to join the German army. The SS troops alone recruited a total of 400 thousand “European volunteers” into their staff, and in total about 1.9 million “Allied troops” participated in the war on Hitler’s side. Even the most exotic: for example, the military archives of the USSR indicate that among Nazi prisoners of war there were 3,608 Mongols, 10,173 Jews, 12,918 Chinese and even 383 gypsies.
The USSR could not boast not only of a comparable number of allies, but also of foreign volunteers. De jure, only two countries officially offered us the help of their national armies - Mexico and Tuva. However, Stalin, according to Molotov’s memoirs, suspected the Mexicans of being “soft” and refused their services. But with Tuva, which was considered an independent state until 1944, everything turned out just fine.
(Tuvan Stalin - Bayan-Badorkhu writes a letter to the fraternal Russian people)
In 1941, the population of Tuva was about 80 thousand people, the country, under the leadership of local commissars, led a semi-feudal way of life, and even half of the residents of the capital - Kyzyl - adjusted to the migration of livestock, regularly leaving the city for the herds to mountain pastures. But, despite the poverty and sparse population, the republic, just a few days after the start of the war, decided on fraternal assistance from the USSR. During 1941-42, more than 40 thousand horses, as well as about 1 million heads of cattle, were sent to the front from Tuva. And in September 1943, a cavalry squadron of 206 people was formed in the republic.
It was a classic national unit: under its own command and even in national clothes(later, at the beginning of 1944, the Tuvans were nevertheless dressed in Soviet military uniform). True, the Soviet command, already on the territory of the USSR, asked the Tuvans to send “objects of Buddhist cult” back to their homeland.
They were brought to the city of Kovrov, settled in separate barracks and began to be taught modern military tactics, as well as the Russian language. In December 1943, Tuvans arrived on the front line, near the village of Snegirevka in the Smolensk region. However, after a week of deliberation, the Soviet command nevertheless decided not to send the Tuvans to the front as a separate unit and as auxiliary units, but to join them in the 31st Guards Kuban-Black Sea Cavalry Regiment of the 8th Guards Division named after Morozov of the 6th Cavalry Corps of the 13th Army 1st Ukrainian Front.
In the regiment, the Tuvans were entrusted with the task of intimidating the enemy, and they coped with it perfectly. So, on January 31, 1944, in the first battle near Durazhno, cavalrymen jumped out on small shaggy horses and with sabers to the advanced German units. A little later, a captured German officer recalled that the spectacle had a demoralizing effect on his soldiers, who on a subconscious level perceived “these barbarians” as the hordes of Attila.
After this battle, the Germans gave them the name der Schwarze Tod - Black Death. The horror of the Germans was also connected with the fact that the Tuvans, committed to their own ideas about military rules, did not take the enemy prisoner as a matter of principle.
In March 1944, the Soviet command unexpectedly decided to send the Tuvans, who had shown themselves valiantly in several battles, back home. Why is still unknown. Soviet officers who fought side by side with the Tuvans assured that the reason was precisely those “own military rules.”
However, most likely, the real reason for sending the Tuvans home was Stalin’s fear of any national units in Soviet Army. The memory of their role in the revolution and Civil War was still fresh, and the hypothetical possibility that they could turn back the weapons frightened Stalin more than the exposure of the fronts. The example of the Polish army under the command of Anders, formed on the territory of the USSR from Polish citizens and Poles deported from the western borders of the country, showed that such formations quickly begin to “pump rights”. Or, worse, openly betray the Motherland.
On November 13, 1941, the State Defense Committee decided to form national volunteer cavalry divisions in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kalmykia, Bashkiria, Checheno-Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, as well as in the Cossack regions of the Don and the North Caucasus. It is interesting that all these connections had to be maintained at the expense of local and republican budgets, as well as special funds, into which the citizens of these republics again contributed.
(Turkmen go to beat Hitler)
The example of the Kalmyk units is indicative here. From June 1941 to April 1942, more than 18 thousand volunteers were enrolled in them. Some of them were sent to the 56th Army, while others formed the 189th Separate Kalmyk Regiment. However, they did not really manage to fight. In the fall of 1942, the commander of the German 16th Motorized Division, Major General Heinritz, formed the first Kalmyk cavalry squadron in Elista. By November 1942, about 2,000 Kalmyks were already fighting on the side of the Germans in the North Caucasus region. There were even more of them in the auxiliary German units. Of course, observing a very active transition of the local population to the side of the enemy, the State Defense Committee decided to shove the Kalmyks into different parts, where they would be under the supervision of the “elder brother”.
Things were no better with other national units. Of the 19 cavalry “national divisions” that should have been created according to the decision of November 13, 1941, only six were formed: Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek, the aforementioned Kalmyk, Bashkir and Kabardino-Balkarian. The State Defense Committee honestly tried to fill out the missing 13 divisions and send them to the front, but that was not the case. For example, conscripts from Central Asia did not know the Russian language, were not very well trained, and did not show the “proper military spirit.” Their training as soldiers ended up lasting several years. At the very least, by the summer of 1943, 7 more divisions (5 Uzbek and 2 Turkmen) were trained and sent to the front. However, these units later preferred to be used in the rear - for guarding airfields, warehouses, escorting captured Germans, etc. By this time, the question of forming Chechen-Ingush, Kabardino-Balkarian and additional Cossack units disappeared: the example of their fellow tribesmen , who decided to serve the Germans, did not inspire the Supreme Commander-in-Chief too much. And in the rear they spoiled a lot of blood. For example, according to the department of combating banditry of the NKVD of the USSR, 109 anti-Soviet gangs operated in the Stavropol Territory, 54 in Checheno-Ingushetia, 47 in Kabardino-Balkaria, 12 in Kalmykia. For the most part, deserters joined these gangs, who in the same Stavropol Territory there were more than 18 thousand people, and in the North Caucasus about 63 thousand. The total number of deserters and persons who evaded service, according to the department of combating banditry of the NKVD of the USSR, as of January 1, 1945 was approximately 1.6 million people .
Large losses of personnel in national units also played a role. Thus, the Azerbaijani 77th Mountain Rifle, 416th and 233rd Rifle Divisions, as well as the 392nd Georgian Rifle Division, were formed twice. After the reorganization in Transcaucasia, their national composition blurred from 70-80% Georgians and Azerbaijanis to 40-50%. Often, due to such changes, national units generally lost their original names. For example, the 87th Turkmen separate rifle brigade became the 76th rifle division, and the 100th Kazakh rifle brigade became the 1st rifle division.
(A special specialization for Central Asian units was convoying prisoners)
And most of the exemplary national formations that proudly carried given name through the entire war, it can only be “tied to the terrain” with a stretch. For example, in the very first formed national unit, the 201st Latvian Rifle Division, Latvians made up 51%, Russians - 26%, Jews - 17%, Poles - 3%, other nationalities - 6% (while the division was 95% composed of citizens of Latvia). By 1944, the share of Latvians in the division had decreased to 39%. In fact, the only national formation that did not undergo any transformations during the war years (in numbers, national composition, self-name) was the 88th separate Chinese Rifle Brigade, created on the Far Eastern Front in August 1942 by directive of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR. However, it had to fight only three years after its formation - against Japan, from August 9 to September 2, 1945.
The northern peoples of the USSR proved themselves to be much more successful - if only because, due to their small numbers, neither a division nor even a regiment could be formed from them. Yakuts, Nenets or Evenks were often assigned to combined arms formations, but even there they were actually treated as separate combat units, albeit with five people per division. By a special decree of the State Defense Committee, the small peoples of the North were not drafted into the active army, but already in the first days of the war hundreds of volunteers from among them appeared. So, during 1942, more than 200 Nanais, 30 Orochs, and about 80 Evenks went to the front. In total, more than 3 thousand natives of Siberia and the North fought in the active army. At the same time, the Soviet command allowed only these peoples to form branches according to the clan principle. A squad or even a platoon could consist of only Kims, Onekos or Digorovs.
These people, like the majority in the Uzbek or Kyrgyz units, knew almost no Russian. They could not march in formation and were weak in political preparation. But in return, almost all the volunteers from among the small nations had one undeniable advantage over other soldiers in our army: they knew how to merge with nature and out of ten shots they hit a squirrel in the eye at least nine times. For this they were forgiven for their external and internal inconsistency with the image of a Soviet soldier, as well as for the small wooden idols that they wore under their deerskin uniforms. Yes, yes, a number of commanders allowed some representatives northern peoples such weakness was their own military uniform: as a rule, these were high boots, hats and sheepskin coats made of reindeer skins. The famous sniper, Nanai Torim Beldy even sewed shoulder straps onto his robe from deerskin.
The names of snipers from among these peoples were well known not only in the USSR, but also in Germany. For example, for the destruction of the Nanai Maxim Passar, the German command promised 100 thousand Reichsmarks. From July 21, 1942 until his death in January 1943, he destroyed 236 fascists. And his department, made up of the peoples of the North, killed 3,175 Germans in September-October 1942 alone.
The Stalinist leadership nevertheless made sporadic attempts to form national units from representatives of European peoples. But it was political motives rather than military ones that pushed him to this: it was important for the USSR to show the whole world that not all conquered or collaborating peoples with Hitler shared fascist views. And if the formation of the Polish army on the territory of the USSR actually failed, then the formation of other “European formations” turned out a little better. As part of the military units of the Soviet Army, the 1st and 2nd armies of the Polish Army, the Czechoslovak Army Corps, and the French Normandy-Niemen air regiment fought with the Germans. However, they (except for “Normandie-Niemen”) consisted mainly of USSR citizens of Polish or Czech origin, and the combat tasks assigned to them were minimal: demining areas after the Germans retreated, logistics support, and clearing territories. Or ostentatious events - for example, the ceremonial entry of Polish units into liberated from the Germans hometown. In addition, these units could not even formally be considered Soviet. For example, the personnel of the Czech Army Corps were equipped in Czechoslovak military uniforms, had Czechoslovak military ranks and served in military regulations Czechoslovak army. By organizational issues The battalion was subordinate to the Czechoslovak government in exile.
(Czech legionnaires march through the Ural town of Buzuluk, 1942)
Even the formation of units from Yugoslavia, the closest and most sincere ally of the USSR during the war, on the territory of the USSR was phantasmagoric in nature. Serbian anti-fascist Obradovic, who fought the Germans in a partisan detachment in his homeland, recalled: “We learned that a Yugoslav brigade had been formed in the USSR. We in Yugoslavia could not understand why there were so many Yugoslavs in the USSR. Only in 1945 did we realize that the Yugoslav brigade consisted of soldiers from the Croatian regiment captured at Stalingrad. In the Soviet camp, a little more than 1 thousand people were selected from it, led by commander Mesic, then Yugoslav political emigrants from the Comintern were added there, and the formation was led by Soviet officers and state security officers. In particular, the young NKVD General Zhukov.”
A number of studies are devoted to the history of the most distinguished national divisions and brigades (50). Great scientific and public interest evoke the memoirs of their veterans (51), which have still not lost their educational value, although historians now have wide access to the archives.
In addition to national military formations, other reserves needed by the front were also prepared in large numbers. All this together provided the army with an inexhaustible source of reinforcements. The power of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War had, among other things, a national basis. Brotherhood; one fighting family, a fraternal fighting alliance of the peoples of the USSR - such definitions were often used by historians to characterize interethnic relations in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War (52).
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army became even more multinational. This was required by the nature and conditions of the armed struggle against the enemy. Mobilizations took place in all regions of the USSR, with the exception of the Baltic republics, the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. According to our observations, soldiers of at least twenty nationalities served in an ordinary rifle division. In such a multinational state as the Soviet Union, it could not have been any other way.
Depending on the scale of combat losses and the number of reinforcements received, the national composition of each military unit invariably changed. Regardless of this, warriors of Russian nationality, with rare exceptions, constituted their main core; representatives of all other peoples of the USSR fought shoulder to shoulder with them. A.P. Artemyev, who studied this problem, came to the conclusion that the proportion of soldiers of each nationality corresponded to its specific gravity in the total population of the USSR according to the 1939 census (53) As Soviet territory was liberated from the occupiers, the proportion of soldiers from the Western republics of the USSR began to increase in the Red Army.
The power of the USSR Armed Forces largely depended on the cohesion of soldiers of different nationalities. Therefore, strengthening the friendship and brotherhood of peoples both in the country as a whole, and in each labor or military collective as a unit of society individually, has become one of the main tasks of the government, the political leadership of the country, the command and political agencies of the army and navy. In the fall of 1 9 4 1, a decision was made to create a front-line seal for soldiers
non-Russian nationality - front-line, army and division newspapers. They were published in almost all languages of the union and some autonomous republics. By the end of the war, there were 110 (54) of them on the fronts, fleets, military districts and reserve units. Newspapers at that time did a lot to unite soldiers of different nationalities. According to the calculations of S.I. Semakin, for example, in the newspaper "Pravda" in 1941 there were 52 materials about the military cooperation and heroism of the peoples of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, in 1942 - 97, in 1943 - about 170, in 1944 g.- 1 1 7 (5 5) .
The Commonwealth of the Peoples of the USSR passed a severe test of strength in territory occupied by the enemy, where, as is known, partisans and underground fighters operated with the active support of the population. The people's avengers, as noted in historical works (56), diverted large enemy forces to themselves, and in a number of regions, especially in Belarus, controlled a significant part of the territory, creating extensive partisan zones and regions. Soviet historians were unanimous that the nationwide partisan movement was based on the unbreakable friendship of the peoples of the USSR. Thus, in one of the early works on the history of the partisan movement in Belarus it was said: “Shoulder to shoulder with the partisans - the sons of the Belarusian people, Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Jews, Latvians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Armenians, Uzbeks, Moldovans, Tatars, heroically fought against the fascist invaders in Belarus, Azerbaijanis, as well as representatives of the peoples of Europe - Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, French, Hungarians, Germans, Romanians and others. At the same time, thousands of Belarusians took an active part in the partisan movement of Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Moldovan and other peoples subjected to fascist occupation (57).
One of the important factors of victory in the Great Patriotic War was the patriotism of the peoples of the USSR, which was most often interpreted as Soviet patriotism. Considering patriotism as one of the factors of victory, Soviet historians, unlike their foreign opponents, resolutely defended the thesis of the organic compatibility of patriotism and internationalism in general, and the conditions of the Soviet state in particular.
The heroism of Soviet soldiers of different nationalities in battles against the Nazi invaders was reflected in a large number of works, which, in our opinion, constitute an entire scientific direction. Over the course of four post-war decades (stack
called "perestroika", on the contrary, is associated with the process of deheroization of the struggle of the peoples of the USSR) the theme of the people's feat in defending the Fatherland occupied one of the leading places in historical science. Various publishing houses across the country published special series of books and brochures dedicated directly to the heroism of Soviet soldiers. These were, for example, in the Military Publishing House of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, the series “Heroes of the Great Patriotic War”, “Contemporary Heroes”, “Heroes and Feats”, “The Heroic Past of Our Motherland”, “Front-line Soldiers Tell”, etc.; in the publishing house of political literature - “Pages of the history of the Soviet Motherland”, “Heroes of the Soviet Motherland”, “When they were twenty...”; publishing house "Soviet Russia" - "Podvig"; publishing house Central Committee DOSAAF - “For the honor and glory of the Motherland”, “They were heroic”; in the publishing house "Young Guard" - "Your heroes, Komsomol!" "Guards of the Lenin Komsomol", "Honour, courage, courage", "Young heroes". Along with the central literature, a lot of literature about the exploits of Soviet soldiers, partisans and underground fighters was published in republican, regional and regional publishing houses.
Literature about people awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was especially widely published. Among them were sons and daughters of all the peoples of the USSR, including 8182 Russians, 2072 Ukrainians, 3 1 1 Belarusians, 1 6 1 Tatars, 108 Jews, 96 Kazakhs, 91 Georgians, 90 Armenians, 69 Uzbeks, 61 Mordvins, 44 Chuvash, 43 Azerbaijanis, 39 Bashki r , 32 Ossetians, 18 Mari, 18 Turkmen, 15 Lithuanians, 14 Tajiks, 13 Latvians, 12 Kyrgyz, 10 Komi, 10 Udmurts, 9 Estonians, 9 Karelians, 8 Kalmyks, 7 Kabardians, 6 Adygeis, 5 Abkhazians, 3 Yakuts and representatives many other nationalities. There are 86 women (58) among the Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Victory in the Great Patriotic War was achieved thanks to the mass heroism of the sons and daughters of all the peoples of the USSR. Among those awarded orders and medals on November 1, 1947, there were soldiers of 193 nationalities (59).
Sons different nations The USSR repeated the immortal feat of the infantrymen A.K. Pankratov, V.V. Vasilkovsky and A.M. Matrosov more than 300 times during the Great Patriotic War, and the hero N.F. Gastello more than 350 times. The names of the Russian D.M. Karbyshev and the Tatar Musa Jalil became a symbol of the unbending will of perseverance in the struggle. The Victory Banner was hoisted over the Reichstag by the Russian M.A. Egorov and the Georgian M.V. Kantaria. Regiments and divisions formed in different republics of the USSR were awarded orders over 10,900 times (60).
Hundreds of articles, essays, and books have been published about the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Appeal to their exploits is a continuation of the centuries-old tradition of Russian historical thought, which originates in the legends, epics and chronicles of the peoples of the USSR. One of her remarkable achievements is a fundamental work in two volumes, “Heroes of the Soviet Union,” which contains short biographies based on documentary sources
Almost seven years have passed since then, during which the publication of literature about the heroes of the Great Patriotic War has practically
ceased, the deheroization of the national struggle against the Nazi invaders began, as noted above. The exception is the book about the legendary exploits of Soviet soldiers “On the Edge of the Possible” (62), published with funds from the transnational company Hermes-Soyuz in a relatively small circulation (10 thousand copies ).
Ivan Ivanovich Kozhedub, air marshal, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, wrote: “It is fundamentally important to emphasize that the constellation of heroes who committed air and fiery rams was multinational. Belarusians Boris Kovkhan and Nestor Bibin, Jews Lev Radiger fought in the same ranks with the Russians and Ukrainians and Gennady Mikityansky, Georgians Ivan Gabunia and David Jabaridzv, Armenian Mikhail Galustyan, Azerbaijani Vladimir Bagirov, Moldavian Stefan Rimsha, Pole Pyotr Zhilinsky, Chuvash Nikifor Ignatiev and other representatives of the fraternal family of Soviet peoples." Now everyone wants to remember this. Further, I.I. Kozhedub continued: “It is unacceptable to forget that internationalism, which is now being attacked by destructive corrosion, was one of the decisive factors of our Victory. Let’s say, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, the fearless pilot Akhmet Khan Sultan, who personally shot down 30 enemy aircraft and died in In 1971, when testing new technology, he was the son of a Dagestani (Lak) and a Tatar. When asked whose hero he was, he proudly answered: “I am not a Tatar hero and not a Lak one!” (63).
In terms of scale, intensity, and ferocity of hostilities, the Great Patriotic War had no equal in the history of mankind. Its inevitable consequence was enormous loss of life, including millions of wounded and sick people in need of medical care. Soviet state took decisive measures to organize their treatment and prevent epidemics at the front and in the rear. The need for donor blood has increased more than ever.
During the war, the Soviet health authorities and the military medical service of the Red Army formed more than 6 thousand hospitals (64), equipped required quantity military ambulance trains and river transport for the evacuation of the wounded. Almost half of the hospital beds were deployed by civil health authorities (65), which in the history of wars on a national scale were entrusted with the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers evacuated to the rear of the country.
All the peoples of the USSR came to the aid of the wounded and sick defenders of the Fatherland. In the second half of 1941, a mass patriotic movement gained momentum, thanks to which two funds were created: the health fund for defenders of the Motherland and the fund for helping the wounded and disabled of war. Even before this, a mass donor movement began to gain strength.
This problem took its rightful place in the works of historians before the perestroika period. Such an interesting aspect as national assistance to wounded and sick soldiers, the attention of historians
attracted, perhaps, most often. It was reflected in publications (66) and candidate dissertations (67) on the history of the CPSU and public organizations, however, very few special works have been devoted to this topic (68). Nationwide assistance to wounded and sick soldiers has become a traditional subject of many works on the history of the union and autonomous republics, individual regions and regions of the USSR (69).
From the works of Soviet historians it follows that assistance to wounded and sick soldiers and disabled people during the war was truly international. This corresponded to the nature of social relations of that time. During the war, 5.5 million residents of the USSR became active donors (70). They were everywhere where there was a need for donor blood, the use of which, along with advanced treatment methods and material assistance to the wounded, made it possible to save hundreds and hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers on the battlefield from imminent death, reduce the time of treatment and return them to combat duty or to work. Donors gave 1.7 million liters of blood for transfusion to wounded soldiers and commanders of the Red Army (71).
Hospitals and other medical institutions were located in places where there was basic support for them. material resources, favorable natural and other conditions. For example, in the Astrakhan district (in
that time - component Stalingrad region) 39 hospitals were organized, in Tajikistan - 29, in Georgia - 72 (72). The most suitable buildings for medical purposes were allocated for hospitals. Home front workers donated the necessary equipment, inventory, furniture, bedding, underwear, gowns, towels, dishes, and shoes to military medical institutions free of charge. Collective farmers created a special “Health Fund for Red Army Soldiers.” More than 7 million soldiers returned from hospitals to the active army (73).
The worldview of the peoples of the USSR was characterized, in the words of a famous poet, by “a sense of a united family.” During the days of the Great Patriotic War, it manifested itself especially acutely, primarily in relation to those evacuated from the western republics and regions of the country, of whom already in 1941 there were 18 million people (74). In the places where the evacuees arrived, they found shelter and warmth. Soviet historians have devoted many heart-rending pages to this problem. They showed that the scale of work on the ground to receive and accommodate evacuees cannot be compared with anything that has ever happened in the history of Russia or any other state.
Information of this kind is contained in most works on the history of territories and regions, union and autonomous republics, and regional organizations of the CPSU. In each of them we're talking about about the fate, as a rule, of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people. For example, in the Perm region there were 268 thousand people (75), in the Penza region - 124,300 people, including 54,200 children (76), in the Kazakh SSR - about 1 million people (77), in the Uzbek SSR - more than 1 million . people, including 200,000 thousand children (78).
The local population, as confirmed by historical sources, showed fraternal concern for the fate of the evacuees. At the same time special attention was given to orphans. Many of them found shelter in orphanages or with families at the place of evacuation. Residents of Bralin raise one, and sometimes several orphans. Thus, an Uzbek gardener from the Osh region, Imin-Akhun Akhmedov, adopted 13 children. A blacksmith from Tashkent, Shaakhmed Shamakhudov, and his wife Bakhri adopted and raised 16 orphans, including Russians, Uzbeks, Chuvash, Tatars, Jews, and Gypsies (79).
Patriotism, a sense of high responsibility for the fate of the Motherland, friendship and fraternal unity of the peoples of the USSR gave rise to
During the Great Patriotic War, mass movements whose goal was to provide all possible assistance to the front. People took part in them of different ages And social status. They were united by one thing - the desire to help the Red Army defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. For example, the creation of the Motherland Defense Fund became widespread. This movement arose first after the war and quickly spread throughout the country. People of different nationalities donated to a special account State Bank USSR cash, valuables, government bonds, made contributions from wages. In large quantities from the population came precious metals- platinum, gold, silver. From their personal reserves, collective farmers contributed grain, meat, livestock, butter, milk, eggs, wool, furs, fruits, and vegetables to the defense fund. They often donated crops above the plan, the so-called “defense hectares” with grown crops, to the defense fund.
Significant revenues came from subbotniks and Sundays - voluntary labor of workers and employees in their free time from their main work. The population allocated huge funds for the construction of tank columns, squadrons of combat aircraft, artillery pieces, armored trains, warships and other formidable military equipment. Subscription for government military loans was successful.
Such popular achievements, of course, could not help but attract the closest attention of historians. They became the core subjects in essays on the history of local organizations of the CPSU, of which about a hundred were published by the beginning of the 80s (80). These subjects were covered in more detail in works on the history of individual regions - republics, territories, regions, as well as the corresponding organizations of the CPSU or Komsomol during the war years
Research devoted to the commonwealth of the peoples of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War clearly proved that it was the union of the peoples of the USSR that was one of the most important factors that ensured the victory of the USSR over the fascist aggressor. This conclusion, which seemed very trivial ten years ago, today, in our days, takes on new meaning. The active participation of all the peoples of the USSR in the fight against the fascist aggressor, the mass heroism of people of different nationalities, the selfless assistance to the front from people living thousands of kilometers from the line of fire, confirmed the viability and strength of that unique multinational state that was the USSR.
The Union of Peoples of the USSR saved the country from Nazi enslavement, dismemberment, and the physical destruction of millions of people. Unfortunately, in our days this truth is being proven from the opposite: the collapse and destruction of the Soviet Union led the peoples of our country to a national tragedy, the scale of which is comparable to a heavy military defeat.
The historiography of the military commonwealth of the peoples of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War quite rightly emphasized the positive role that the commonwealth of the peoples of the USSR played during the Second World War. At the same time, the works we reviewed were characterized by a certain “one-dimensionality” due to the fact that researchers could not go beyond the official concept. Thus, historians were forced to avoid the issue of the deportation of entire peoples during the Great Patriotic War; about the reasons for the cooperation of part of the population of some occupied territories (for example, Western Ukraine) with the Nazis; that the combat effectiveness of some national military formations was significantly lower than the combat effectiveness of the rest of the Red Army.
Unfortunately, in recent years no research has appeared in which the problem we are highlighting would be revealed in all its complexity and inconsistency, taking into account the factors that have now become known and the opportunities that have opened up for working in archives.
References
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Over the past couple of days, I have seen several skirmishes between “Soviet” and “Russian” people in my feed about who “defeated fascism.”
As a categorical opponent of the dinarism of humanitarianism, I decided to suppress my emotions and turned to the primary sources.
- Krivosheev. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century. Table 121 "Irretrievable losses"
- All-Union Population Census of 1939. "National composition of the population in the republics of the USSR"
The population of the USSR in 1939 was 170,557,093 people.
The number of irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War - 8,668,400 people
Disclaimer:
1. Only the 20 largest nationalities of the USSR in 1939 were taken into account.
The peoples included in the table (162,883,937 people) cover 95.50% of the population of the USSR in 1939.
The losses included in the table (8,415,500 people) cover 97.08% of the losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War.
2. The Balts, Moldovans-Romanians, Poles are not included in the 20 - due to the movement of borders in 1939.
3. The Germans are not included in the top 20, you understand why.
4. There may be errors regarding “Nations of Dagestan”, because I’m not sure what was meant by this in those years.
5. 1939 and 1941-45 are not the same thing, but, I think, everything is within the statistical error.
6. I remind you that these are losses military personnel called for service. Those. We consider the contribution only to military operations.
7. There are errors in connection with the German occupation of significant territories of the USSR in the very first months of the war, and as a consequence of the impossibility of full conscription from their territories, i.e. the figures for losses of Ukrainians and Belarusians should be higher.
| №№ | Nationality | Number of people in the USSR in 1939 | Number of military personnel killed | % of the population of the USSR in 1939 | % of the total number of military personnel killed | % of dead military personnel of the total number of a given nationality |
| 1 | Russians | 99.591.520 | 5.756.000 | 58,39% | 66,40% | 5,78% |
| 2 | Ukrainians | 28.111.007 | 1.377.400 | 16,48% | 15,89% | 4,90% |
| 3 | Belarusians | 5.275.393 | 252.900 | 3,09% | 2,92% | 4,79% |
| 4 | Uzbekov | 4.845.140 | 117.900 | 2,84% | 1,36% | 2,43% |
| 5 | Tatar | 4.313.488 | 187.700 | 2,53% | 2,17% | 4,35% |
| 6 | Kazakhs | 3.100.949 | 125.500 | 1,82% | 1,45% | 4,05% |
| 7 | Jews | 3.028.538 | 142.500 | 1,78% | 1,64% | 4,71% |
| 8 | Azerbaijanis | 2.275.678 | 58.400 | 1,33% | 0,67% | 2,57% |
| 9 | Georgian | 2.249.636 | 79.500 | 1,32% | 0,92% | 3,53% |
| 10 | Armenians | 2.152.860 | 83.700 | 1,26% | 0,97% | 3,89% |
| 11 | Chuvash | 1.369.574 | 63.300 | 0,80% | 0,73% | 4,62% |
| 12 | Tajikov | 1.229.170 | 22.900 | 0,72% | 0.26% | 3,37% |
| 13 | Kirgizov | 884.615 | 26.600 | 0,51% | 0,31% | 3,01% |
| 14 | Peoples of Dagestan | 857.499 | 11.100 | 0,50% | 0,13% | 1,29% |
| 15 | Bashkir | 843.648 | 31.700 | 0,49% | 0,37% | 3,76% |
| 16 | Turkmen | 812.404 | 21.300 | 0,48% | 0,25% | 2,62% |
| 17 | Udmurtov | 606.326 | 23.200 | 0,36% | 0,27% | 3,83% |
| 18 | Chechen/Ingush | 500.088 | 2.300 | 0,29% | 0,03% | 0,46% |
| 19 | Maritsev | 481.587 | 20.900 | 0,28% | 0,24% | 4,34% |
| 20 | Ossetian | 354.818 | 10.700 | 0,21% | 0,12% | 3,02% |
The average irretrievable loss for all peoples of the USSR is 5.08% of the total population (as of 1939).
The average irrecoverable losses for all peoples of the USSR, excluding Russian losses, are 4.1%.
Let everyone draw their own conclusions, mine personally are:
1. Indeed, the Russian people suffered more combat losses in the Second World War than any other people of the USSR (40% higher than the average for all other peoples).
2. The contribution of other peoples is also very significant; every third Soviet soldier who died was not Russian by nationality.
3. For those who like to talk about “heroes of the Tashkent front” - see line No. 7 of the table.
4. The unexpectedly low “contribution” to the losses of the Uzbeks and Turkmens, it seems to me, is explained by the fact that Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are the places where cotton grows, i.e. main component for the production of gunpowder. They didn't call. In addition, Central Asians were en masse called up to the “labor front”, where they also died quite a lot, if anyone is interested, you can read about UZTM (Ural Heavy Engineering Plant aka Uzbek, here is your grave)