Civilian Casualties
Because the Soviet records during the war were incomplete, the ultimate number of casualties during the siege is disputed.
About 1.4 million people were rescued by military evacuation from the besieged city of Leningrad in two years between September 1941 and November 1943.
Another 1.2 million civilians perished in the city. After the war, The Soviet government reported about 670,000 registered deaths from 1941 to January 1944, explained as resulting mostly from starvation, stress and exposure. Some independent studies suggest a much higher death toll of between 700,000 and 1.5 million, with most estimates putting civilian losses at around 1.1 to 1.3 million. Many of these victims, estimated at being at least half a million, were buried in the Piskarevskoye Cemetery. The true numbers are at least twice those of Soviet war-time reports, while the 1939 census provides more reliable statistical data for comparative research.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians unregistered with the city authorities—who lived in the city before the war, or had become refugees there—perished in the Nazi siege without any record at all. About half a million people, both military and civilians from Latvia, Estonia, Pskov and Novgorod fled from the advancing Nazis and came to Leningrad at the beginning of the war. The flow of refugees to the city stopped with the beginning of the siege. Then during the siege part of the civilian population was evacuated from Leningrad, although many died in the process. Unregistered people died under numerous air-raids and from starvation and cold while trying to escape from besieged Leningrad. Their bodies were never buried or counted under the severe circumstances of constant air-bombings and other attacks by the Nazi forces.
The total number of human losses during the 29 months of the siege of Leningrad is estimated as 1.5 million, both civilian and military.
Only 700,000 people were left alive of 3.5 million pre-war population. Among those left in the siege were soldiers, workers, surviving children and women. Of the 700,000 surviving people about 300,000 were soldiers who came from other parts of the country to help the besieged city of Leningrad.
By the end of the siege, Leningrad had become an empty "ghost-city" with thousands of ruined and abandoned homes.
Read more about this topic: Effect Of The Siege Of Leningrad On The City