THE PRICE OF VICTORY : THE RED ARMY'S CASUALTIES IN THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

The Red Army's casualties during the Second World War and the casualties sustained by the German army they fought are a key element in any assessment of the conflict on the Eastern Front. Since the war ended over seventy years ago, the statistics have been a source of bitter controversy, of claim and counterclaim, as each generation of historians has struggled to uncover the truth. This contentious issue is the subject of this absorbing book.

The figures reveal much about the way the war was fought, and they demonstrate the enormous human price the Soviet Union paid for its victory. That is why the statistics have been so strongly contested. Distortion and falsification by official historians have obscured the facts because the issue has been so heavily politicized.

Using recently declassified information from the Russian archives, the authors focus in forensic detail on the way the figures were recorded and compiled and seek to explain why, so many years after the war, the full truth about the subject is still far from our reach.

Boris Kavalerchik is a mechanical engineer from the USSR who served as an officer in the Soviet armed forces reserve before emigrating to the United States. He has made a special study of the opening campaign of the Second World War on the Eastern Front, focusing in particular on the performance of the Soviet tank arm during the German advance. In Russian he has published a monograph and many articles on the subject. In English he has published 'Once Again About the T-34' in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies and, with Lev Lopukhovsky, The Price of Victory: The Red Army’s Casualties in the Great Patriotic War.



After a distinguished career as an officer in the Soviet army, including command of a regiment in the Soviet Strategic Missile forces in the rank of colonel, Lev Lopukhovsky transferred to the Frunze Military Academy to teach tactics. Since retiring from the military he has become a professor in the Russian Federation’s Academy of Military Sciences and one of the leading historians of the Soviet forces during the Second World War. In addition to many articles he has written on the subject, he has published controversial studies of the battles of Prokorovka and Viaz’ma and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.