The total war dead in the USSR includes about 1 million victims of Stalin 's regime . The number of deaths in the Gulag labor camps increased as a result of wartime overcrowding and food shortages . The Stalin regime deported the entire populations of ethnic minorities considered to be potentially disloyal . Since 1990 Russian scholars have been given access to the Soviet-era archives and have published data on the numbers of people executed and those who died in Gulag labor camps and prisons . The Russian scholar Viktor Zemskov puts the death toll from 1941 – 1945 at about 1 million based on data from the Soviet archives . The Soviet-era archive figures on the Gulag labor camps has been the subject of a vigorous academic debate outside Russia since their publication in 1991 . J. Arch Getty and Stephen G. Wheatcroft maintain that Soviet-era figures more accurately detail the victims of the Gulag labor camp system in the Stalin era . Robert Conquest and Steven Rosefielde have disputed the accuracy of the data from the Soviet archives , maintaining that the demographic data and testimonials by survivors of the Gulag labor camps indicate a higher death toll . Rosefielde posits that the release of the Soviet Archive figures is disinformation generated by the modern KGB . Rosefielde maintains that the data from the Soviet archives is incomplete ; for example , he pointed out that the figures do not include the 22,000 victims of the Katyn massacre . Rosefielde 's demographic analysis puts the number of excess deaths due to Soviet repression at 2,183,000 in 1939 – 40 and 5,458,000 from 1941 – 1945 . Michael Haynes and Rumy Husun accept the figures from the Soviet archives as being an accurate tally of Stalin 's victims , they maintain that the demographic data depicts an underdeveloped Soviet economy and the losses in World War Two rather than indicating a higher death toll in the Gulag labor camps
Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
World War II casualties