title: Fighters Like No Others
abstract: From 1941 to 1945, close to 35 million Soviet citizens served in the ranks of the Red Army. Almost 7 million of them died, about a third of all Soviet casualties in the war and 5 million were taken prisoner, half of whom died in captivity. 1 About 800,000 Soviet citizens fought in the ranks of the partisans, while 1.5 million are thought to have fought, at one point or another, on the German side. In 1945, over 8 million Red Army soldiers were awaiting demobilization, while the Soviet state also