WS MoreOrLess: Soviet World War Deaths

Summary

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More or Less (BBC Radio 4): Soviet World War Deaths

Date: December 13, 2014
Host: Ruth Alexander
Guests: Professor Mike Haynes (University of Wolverhampton), Professor Mark Harrison (University of Warwick), Matthew Crabb (Author and China specialist)
Episode Focus: Assessing the accuracy of viral statistics about Soviet losses in World War II, and exploring the reliability of economic statistics—specifically relating to China and the United States.

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Episode Overview

This episode of "More or Less" investigates two major topics:

1. Soviet Male Mortality from the 1923 Birth Cohort during World War II: Scrutinizing the claim that 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 died during the war.
2. China Overtaking the U.S. in GDP: Discussing the significance and the underlying reliability of such economic statistics.

Throughout, presenter Ruth Alexander and expert guests adopt an analytical, myth-busting tone, debunking widely-shared statistics and examining the complexities behind the numbers.

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1. Did 80% of Soviet Males Born in 1923 Die in World War II?

Background of the Claim

• Listener Alexandre Dileg noticed a dramatic statistic online: "Almost 80% of males born in the Soviet Union in 1923 did not survive World War II"—a number widely repeated but lacking a clear source. (00:41)

Breaking Down the Demographics

• Total births in 1923:

  "In 1923, the approximate number of people born was around about 7 million. So you'd have roughly 3 1/2 million males and 3 1/2 million females."
  — Professor Mike Haynes (01:30)

The Tough Early Years

• High infant and child mortality, followed by events like the 1932-33 famine and Stalin's Great Terror, had already thinned the cohort before the war began:

  "Between a fifth and a quarter of babies born in 1923 were dead by their first birthday... by the time they were nine, they came into the period of the next major Soviet famine. And when they were 14, they were hit by the Great Terror, in which Stalin had a million people executed and millions more were sent off to the Gulag."
  — Professor Mark Harrison (01:52)

Actual War-Related Mortality

• Once at military age (18 in 1941), a substantial but not overwhelming fraction died during the war:

  "Probably somewhere between a third and 40% of all those people who were called up were killed in the war. Now, that's quite a high percentage, but it also shows us that the majority of people who were called up did manage to survive."
  — Professor Mike Haynes (02:54)

The Final Numbers & Myth Busting

• Claim Busted: It's not 80% but closer to two thirds—a massive toll, but overstated online. Critically, not all deaths were due to warfare.

  "It's not correct, it's somewhat overstated. I think the true figure would be nearer two thirds. Two thirds of this cohort were dead by the time the war was over. I think the only misleading thing about the line on the Internet, the deeply misleading thing, is it implies that all these people were killed in the war and that's not the case."
  — Professor Mark Harrison (03:39)

• Excess Soviet mortality:

  "What we mustn't do under any circumstances is diminish the catastrophic nature of the Second World War and the population losses in the Soviet union, around about 27 million is the estimate of what's called excess mortality. And there's a margin of error there. And to put that figure into perspective, the margin of error in the Soviet data is probably greater than all the wartime losses in Britain."
  — Professor Mike Haynes (04:26)

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2. China Overtaking the U.S. in GDP: The Numbers Behind the Headlines

The News Report

• Addressing headlines that "China will overtake the US as the world's largest economy by the end of the year...when adjusted for purchasing power parity." (00:24, 04:49)

Is It a Big Deal? Context Matters

• "Every time China's overtaken a country in terms of the size of its GDP, I just think, well, so what? Who cares? It's just a number... if you look at it in terms of per capita spending power, then China is still a long way behind most of the so-called developed nations."
  — Matthew Crabb (05:19)

• "China's GDP per capita is roughly $7,000 compared to $53,000 in the U.S., so even if China makes more money in a year, there's a lot more spare money in America to spend on things like giant televisions and aircraft carriers."
  — Ruth Alexander (06:05)

Questions of Data Accuracy

• China’s economic statistics are difficult to interpret and possibly unreliable—even for the Chinese government:

  "There's very often in the past been people who have leveled the argument at the Chinese government that they hide away all the worst statistics from the rest of us. And I don't think that's necessarily true all the time, particularly in regard to economics, because I think one of the problems the Chinese government faces for itself is gathering accurate data... distortions that happen at local village, provincial levels, these become amplified as they go up the chain in the statistical gathering process."
  — Matthew Crabb (06:49)

• Notable, sometimes absurd data inconsistencies:

  "One has only to look at the story around the GDP figures in China, whereby year on year, the GDP figures for each province grew faster than the national total, which logically, mathematically, couldn't possibly be. Part of that was corruption to be sure, but part of it was also inflation of figures being exacerbated merely by the sheer size of the country and the rate at which it's growing."
  — Matthew Crabb (06:49)

Memorable Cautionary Tale

• In 2005, a data adjustment led to confusion in the retail sector, resulting in potentially disastrous business plans:

  "My conclusion was that the real retail market at that time was slightly above half the value of the official government figure. Anybody building a business plan for their China expedition based on a set of retail sales figures that were twice the size of the actual real market was obviously going to be problematic."
  — Matthew Crabb (08:10)

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• Demystifying internet statistics about Soviet war dead.
• Contextualizing GDP:

  "It's just a number... China is still a long way behind most of the so-called developed nations." — Matthew Crabb (05:19)

• On statistical distortion:

  "GDP figures for each province grew faster than the national total, which logically, mathematically, couldn't possibly be." — Matthew Crabb (06:49)

• Perspective on Soviet losses:

  "The margin of error in the Soviet data is probably greater than all the wartime losses in Britain." — Mike Haynes (04:26)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Introduction and viral statistic (Soviet WW2 death claim): 00:19–01:30
• Historical and demographic context (Soviet mortality): 01:30–03:39
• Busting the 80% myth & deeper context: 03:39–04:49
• China’s GDP headline and discussion: 04:49–06:05
• Reliability of China’s economic numbers: 06:05–08:59

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Summary Takeaways

• The claim that “almost 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 died in World War II” is not correct—about two thirds of the cohort had died by 1946, but many deaths were due to pre-war factors like disease, famine and repression as well as war.
• China's economy may soon be, or has just become, the world's largest by purchasing power, but per person it's still far behind the US, and the numbers themselves are deeply unreliable—sometimes dramatically so.
• The episode emphasizes the importance of context, skepticism, and nuance when interpreting large, dramatic statistics.

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Transcript

[Ruth Alexander]

This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

[BBC Announcer]

Thank you for downloading from the BBC. For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts

[Ruth Alexander]

hello. Welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander.

[Narrator]

China is poised to overtake the US as the world's largest economy, way ahead of schedule. The IMF predicts that by the end of the year, China's gdp, adjusted to the country's relatively low cost of living, will be $17.6 trillion, topping the U.S.

[Ruth Alexander]

a recent news report, but is it correct? We'll be taking a look at China's economy later in the program, but our first item comes after one of our listeners, Alexandre Dileg, contacted us with a number he'd seen on Twitter. It's a claim that almost 80% of the males born in the Soviet Union in 1923 did not survive World War II. We looked online and saw that this is something that's repeated fairly regularly, most notably on the website buzzfeed, although we haven't been able to track down the original source. But we asked two academics to have a look into this for us. The first thing we wanted to know is how many males were born in the Soviet Union in 1923. Professor Mike Haynes from the University of WolverHampton in the UK has written a book about the history of death in 20th century Russia.

[Professor Mike Haynes]

In 1923, the approximate number of people born was around about 7 million. So you'd have roughly 3 1/2 million males and 3 1/2 million females.

[Ruth Alexander]

3 1/2 million males. There's our number. Now, one thing to take into account when looking at the claim is that 1923 was a rotten time to be born in the Soviet Union. Here's Mark Harrison, who's an economics professor at the University of Warwick in the uk.

[Professor Mark Harrison]

Rates of infant mortality at this time were shockingly high. Between a fifth and a quarter of babies born in 1923 were dead by their first birthday. Now, it doesn't stop when you're one. There's also childhood mortality to take into account because of accidents, infectious diseases. So probably between the ages of 1 and 5, at least as many children died as died in the first year of life. Plus, by the time they were nine, they came into the period of the next major Soviet famine. And when they were 14, they were hit by the Great Terror, in which Stalin had a million people executed and millions more were sent off to the Gulag.

[Ruth Alexander]

So Even before Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, a significant amount of the boys born in 1923 had already died by the time 1941 came. That group of boys were aged 18. One way of discovering how many of those boys died in the war is to look at the data for military casualties, which was revealed by Soviet historians in the 1980s. Here's Mike Haynes.

[Professor Mike Haynes]

When it comes to deaths, well, probably somewhere between a third and 40% of all those people who were called up were killed in the war. Now, that's quite a high percentage, but it also shows us that the majority of people who were called up did manage to survive. Now, there is a margin for error, but the margin for error doesn't appear to be an age specific one. So it's not the case that they were undercounting all the 18 or 19 year olds.

[Ruth Alexander]

So we've heard the evidence. Now let's have the answer. Did almost 80% of the males born in the Soviet Union in 1923 not survive World War II? Well, here's Mark Harrison, who got the answer by looking at figures compiled in a book released in 1993 by three Russian demographers.

[Professor Mark Harrison]

It's not correct, it's somewhat overstated. I think the true figure would be nearer two thirds. Two thirds of this cohort were dead by the time the war was over. I think the only misleading thing about the line on the Internet, the deeply misleading thing, is it implies that all these people were killed in the war and that's not the case. This is just a poor country in which lots and lots of babies and young men died anyway. And then of the ones that were left, there was then this extra burden of war casualties. But in fact, the war was not the most important source of mortality between 1923 and 1946.

[Ruth Alexander]

So 8% of the males born in 1923 hadn't died by the end of the war. Two thirds had. That's still a lot of young males dead. Mike Haynes says census data gives the same result.

[Professor Mike Haynes]

What we mustn't do under any circumstances is diminish the catastrophic nature of the Second World War and the population losses in the Soviet union, around about 27 million is the estimate of what's called excess mortality. And there's a margin of error there. And to put that figure into perspective, the margin of error in the Soviet data is probably greater than all the wartime losses in Britain. So that's a measure of how many people died.

[Ruth Alexander]

Mike Haines, you're listening to More or Less on the BBC. World Service and I'm Ruth Alexander, the International monetary fund. The IMF says that China's total output may reach $17.6 trillion, which would be slightly higher than the 17.4 trillion figure it estimates for the US when calculated by purchasing parity power, that basically factors in the relative price levels of the two countries. But is this a big deal? Well, no. According to Matthew Crabb, author and China

[Matthew Crabb]

specialist, every time China's overtaken a country in terms of the size of its gdp, I just think, well, so what? Who cares? It's just a number. Again, if you look at it in terms of per capita spending power, then China is still a long way behind most of the so called developed nations. And in many ways a country that has 1.36 billion people should eventually be the world's biggest economy, all things being right. And I think this fixation on the GDP figures continually deflects people from really looking at what they need to understand about China, which is the more nuanced figures that particularly businesses active in China need to understand about not just their markets, but about consumers and how their attitudes are changing and all this sort of thing.

[Ruth Alexander]

As Matthew Crabb points out, if you look at gross domestic product per capita, the value of all goods and services produced by a country divided by its population, then China's still way behind the United States. China's GDP per capita is roughly $7,000 compared to $53,000 in the U.S. so even if China makes more money in a year, there's a lot more spare money in America to spend on things like giant televisions and aircraft carriers. But how easy is it to accurately measure the size of the Chinese economy or even just parts of it? Well, as you might expect from a man who's written a book called Myth Busting China's Numbers, Matthew Crabb argues that you shouldn't of the figures.

[Matthew Crabb]

There's very often in the past been people who have leveled the argument at the Chinese government that they hides away all the worst statistics from the rest of us. And I don't think that's necessarily true all the time, particularly in regard to economics, because I think one of the problems the Chinese government faces is for itself is gathering accurate data so that they can do their own budgetary planning, economic tweaking and so on. And I think one of the key things that has to be understood is that distortions that happen at local village, provincial levels, these become amplified as they go up the chain in the statistical gathering process. And those distortions have often been pretty big and One only has to look at the story around the GDP figures in China, whereby year on year, the GDP figures for each province grew faster than the national total, which logically, mathematically, couldn't possibly be. Part of that was corruption to sure, but part of it was also inflation of figures being exacerbated merely by the sheer size of the country and the rate at which it's growing. And I think, again, the expectations from outside China that such a big country that's growing so fast should have such accurate data, I think is, again, a bit of a fallacy.

[Ruth Alexander]

What makes the GDP figures important is that companies base investment decisions on them. Matthew Crabb has a cautionary tale.

[Matthew Crabb]

In 2005, the Chinese government readjusted its GDP figures and therefore everything underneath it, including retail sales. But they didn't adjust back the historical figures and everybody was trying to understand what's going on. The consensus amongst the research community at the time was that nobody really understood what the real size of the retail market in China was. So I went through each of the sectors to try and calculate what the real size of each of those would be and how fast they're growing and therefore what the real size of the retail market is. My conclusion was that the real retail market at that time was slightly above half the value of the official government figure. Anybody building a business plan for their China expedition based on a set of retail sales figures that were twice the size of the actual real market was obviously going to be problematic.

[Ruth Alexander]

Matthew Crabb there. That's all for this week. Thank you very much for listening. If you have any numbers you want investigating, please do email us at more or lessbc.co.uk you can also listen to other editions of More or Less by going to our website, bbcworldservice.com more or less.

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