Profiles

This chapter paints a collective portrait of those who deserted from the Red Army across the frontline to the Germans. It investigates their age, ethnicity, social class, and gender. It concludes that defectors from the Red Army were broadly representative of the Soviet population at large. While minority nationalities, older men, and the lower social orders were over-represented, the largest group were Russians and 40 per cent were 30 years or younger. Every ethnicity, class, and age group in Soviet society thus contained defectors. The one exception is gender. While there were a significant number of women serving in the Red Army, defectors were nearly exclusively male.