An estimated 27 million Soviet soldiers died fighting Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1945.
Some 36 percent of respondents blamed
the Soviet Union’s devastating wartime losses on
Germany’s sudden attack, while 24 percent said that the Nazis simply had
“military superiority.”
Another 12 percent blamed wartime leaders who were content to sacrifice troops to the cause, while ten percent blamed the incompetence of the Soviet command. One in ten blamed the “brutality”
of Nazi forces, while eight percent struggled to answer.
The survey was carried out among 1,600
people in 137 cities and towns in 48 Russian regions.
