Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Soviet Union lost approximately 27 million people in World War II, including both military and civilian deaths from all war-related causes. The post-Soviet Russian government's official figure, based on a 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, is 26.6 million. Some Russian scholars put the total at over 40 million.
The Krivosheev study, published in 1993 by Russia's Ministry of Defense, put Soviet military dead and missing at 8,668,400. This figure includes 5,226,800 killed in action, 1,102,800 who died of wounds in field hospitals, 555,500 non-combat deaths, and 1,283,200 who died as prisoners of war.
Western scholars estimate that 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in German captivity, representing 57.5 percent of roughly 5.7 million captured. Krivosheev disputed this figure, putting POW deaths at approximately 1.28 million. Viktor Zemskov estimated total POW dead at 2.3 million.
A 1995 Russian Defense Ministry study put the civilian death toll in German-occupied regions at 13.7 million, including 7.4 million killed by direct intentional violence, 4.1 million who died of famine, and 2.1 million forced laborers who died in Germany. In 2020, historian Mikhail Meltyukhov stated that 15.9-17.4 million civilians were killed on Soviet territory by Germany and its allies.
Joseph Stalin stated in March 1946 that Soviet war losses were 7 million dead. This remained the official figure until Nikita Khrushchev raised it to 20 million in November 1961. During Gorbachev's Glasnost period, the figure was revised again to "almost 27 million" in a May 1990 speech.
Estimates range from 21.7 million to over 43 million because the underlying records are incomplete, contested, and were subject to political censorship during the Soviet era. Field reports from 1941-1942 were often missing because surrounded divisions could not report casualties. Scholars disagree on whether to count POWs, militia, partisans, forced laborers, and those who died of famine and disease in non-occupied territory.