The monograph is devoted to Soviet and modern Russian historiography of the scale and forms of repression and loss of the population of the USSR in 1937-1945. Significant attention is paid to methodological aspects and scientific and organizational forms of the formation of the system of historical knowledge, the author's periodization of the development of historiography of the problem is proposed and justified. It analyzes historians' understanding of the demographic losses suffered by Soviet society as a result of mass political repression, ethnic deportations, as well as during the Great Patriotic War.