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I can imagine that after World War 2 the ratio of women versus men changed drastically.
During World War 2, Soviet casualties amounted to over 20,000,000, and as military casualties were almost all men I would think there were a lot more women in the Soviet Union than men.
Is there any recorded information on this subject? If not, is there any other country that has data available on this subject, e.g. Germany?
According to this article the ratio rose from 1.10 to about 1.54 (ratio of men/women fell from 0.91 to about 0.65) between 1941 and 1946 in the draft-age group (people born around 1887 to 1927), which was the most affected by the war losses.
Other age groups were less affected, so I'd say that the overall ratio would be around 1.3-1.25 (0.75-0.8 men/women).
The Soviet population in 1941 was 196,716,000. In 1946, it was 170,548,000.[1] That's a difference of 26,168,000 people. According to a study published by the Russian Academy of Science[2], there were 12,300,000 births and 11,900,000 natural deaths during war, so the populational decrease must be entirely attributed to war deaths. Considering 400,000 births in excess of natural deaths, the war deaths must have been around 26,600,000, which is the number accepted by the Russian government. Of these casualties, 8,700,000 were military casualties[3].
The upper limit of the female/male proportion, so, would be the case that all 26,600,000 casualties were masculine. In such a case, the proportion would be, if we accept a prewar proportion of 1.05/1, given by the following:
A. Prewar population: Females 103,276,000 - males 93,440,000
B. Births: Females 6,150,000 - males 6,150,000
C. Natural deaths: Females - 6,100,000 - males 5,800,000
D. War deaths: Males - 26,600,000
E. Postwar population (A+B-C-D) - Females 103,326,000 - males 67,190,000
or around 1.54 female per male.
The lower limit, on the other hand, would be
A. Prewar population: Females 103,276,000 - males 93,440,000
B. Births: Females 6,150,000 - males 6,150,000
C. Natural deaths: Females - 6,100,000 - males 5,800,000
D. War civilian deaths: Females 9,200,000 - males - 8,700,000
E. War military deaths: Males 8,700,000
F. Postwar population (A+B-C-D-E) - Females 94,126,000 - males 76,390,000
or around 1.23 female per male.
The actual figures would be somewhere in the middle, as at least some subcategories of war civilian deaths (for instance, deaths of forced laborers) would be predominantly male, and not proportional to the sex ratio of the population.
[1] Data is from Wikipedia page on Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union, where they are attributed to Andreev, E.M., et al., Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922-1991. Moscow, Nauka, 1993. ISBN 5-02-013479-1. Due to Wikipedia's basic unreliability, it would be necessary to check the source to see if the numbers match; unfortunately I don't read Russian.
[2] Again I am quoting from Wikipedia. The study is Andreev, EM; Darski, LE; Kharkova, TL (11 September 2002). "Population dynamics: consequences of regular and irregular changes". In Lutz, Wolfgang; Scherbov, Sergei; Volkov, Andrei. Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union Before 1991 Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-85320-5. I couldn't find it online, so the same caveats apply, perhaps less sternly, as the source is in English.
[3]Wikipedia attributes this information to Krivosheev, G. F. (1997). Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. Greenhill Books. ISBN 978-1-85367-280-4.
