#1 - JRL 7232
ACCORDING TO LATEST DATA, USSR LOST 27 MILLION PEOPLE IN GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

MOSCOW, June 20, 2003. /from a RIA Novosti correspondent/--According to the latest data of Russian scientists, the Soviet Union lost 27 million people in the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany.

The Institute of Socio-political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences has prepared a book giving specified information on human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War with the use of the latest data from German scientists.

According to Professor Leonid Rybakovsky, the author of the book, a special research group was formed in 1989. The results of the research have shown that the Soviet Union lost about 27 million people in the Great Patriotic War.

These figures represent real facts, the professor said.

The losses of the Soviet Union, 14 per cent of the population, are incomparable with the losses of other countries, Rybakovsky noted. Austria lost 5 per cent of the population during the war, Italy - less than 1 per cent, Great Britain - 0.8 per cent and the US less than 0.2 per cent at all fronts.

Judging by the data from Russian and German scientists, the Germans captured about 4 million Soviet soldiers and officers, some 10 per cent of Soviet citizens were mobilised during the war.

As for Frenchmen, the Nazis captured almost the whole of their 2-million-strong army.

Only 20 per cent of captured Soviet soldiers survived.

The Soviet Union also captured about 4 million German soldiers and officers, Rybakovsky said. However, according to specified data, 75 per cent of them returned from Soviet captivity.

"The closer I study the figures, the more I am convinced that it was not an honest war between the two armies but extermination of the Soviet population by Germany. Otherwise, the Soviet Union would not have suffered such great losses," the scientists concluded.