Russian war dead

[HagarTheHorrible]

What did the Russians do with their war dead ?

 

I'm curious because I was listening to a radio program about a Russian volunteer group, near Lenningrad, who go out at weekends, find old battlefields, and retrieve bodies of fallen soldiers, it appears without great difficulty. It almost seems as if soldiers, in many instances were just left where they fell with very little effort after the war to go back and carry out methodical searches. Do they have war cemeteries like we do in the west ?

[Feathered_IV]

I think common graves were often used, if the aftermath of Stalingrad is anything to go by. Proletariat solidarity and all that. Many who were lost in marshes and whatnot seemed to just vanish, then reappear decades after.

[BlackSix]

It almost seems as if soldiers, in many instances were just left where they fell with very little effort after the war to go back and carry out methodical searches.

It's true. Hundreds of thousands of soviet soldiers remain not buried in the forests, swamps and fields and their fate remains unknown for the relatives.

[Finkeren]

It wasn't just a Soviet thing. The same was true of thousands of German soldiers who fell at or near the front line especially in the last two years of the war.

[79_vRAF_Friendly_flyer]

The Russians had hideously huge losses in a fairly short timespan. With a war raging I guess they did not have the resources to give them all a proper burial.

[LLv34_Flanker]

S!

 

 And on the other hand for STAVKA soldiers were nothing but an expendable almost endless resource. Grandfather told Soviets did no effort whatsoever to collect their dead from the front lines or even help their wounded lying there. Usually they were put in a mass grave with only some kind of a marking. 

[MiloMorai]

There was an interesting program on PBS the other night. During the American Civil War, Confederate dead were left on the field or put in mass graves.

[Finkeren]

And on the other hand for STAVKA soldiers were nothing but an expendable almost endless resource.

I'm pretty sure neither STAVKA nor any other army high command in WW2 concerned themselves with details such as how to bury fallen soldiers. They propably had other things on their mind.