Few World War II Veterans in Post-Soviet Countries Remain Alive Now and Almost None will Be by Next Round Anniversary in 2035

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 7 – In the Russian Federation, approximately 7,000 veterans of the USSR’s armed forces remain alive. The youngest are in their 90s. In most of the former Soviet states, there are at most a few dozen; and by the time of the next round anniversary in 2035, there is unlikely to be anyone left in any of these countries.

    Obviously, anniversaries can be and are marked even if there is no one left who lived through them. But the shift from marking anniversaries where veterans are still around to commemorating them when there are none can be difficult; and some are already asking “Will There be a 90th Anniversary of the Great Fatherland War?”

    This question is being posed most often in Central Asia where the numbers of veterans is extremely small (stanradar.com/news/full/57361-budet-li-90-letie-velikoj-pobedy.html) and least often in the Russian Federation where Moscow counts as World War II veterans those who worked in the rear or were in the Leningrad blockade, thus adding some 300,000 to this category.

    The passing of the generation of veterans of World War II in the post-Soviet states is most profound in Central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan, there are only 32 left of the 360,000 who fought in the Red Army 80 years ago. In Kazakhstan, there are 111 of the 1.3 million who did so; in Tajikistan, 17 of the 300,000; in Turkmenistan, the government doesn’t keep track; and in Uzbekistan, 82 (asiaplustj.info/ru/news/centralasia/20250507/veterani-vov-v-tsentralnoi-azii-skolko-ostalos-i-kakie-viplati-poluchat).

    Few if any of the Central Asian veterans alive now will be alive in a decade; and the share of the 7,000 plus Russian veterans will be vanishingly small as well. That will give some governments even more opportunities to rewrite history; but beyond everything else, the commemoration will change – and that change will shift the relations of these countries as well.