Based on the census of 1959, the study examines the phenomenon of post-war widowhood, including the socio-demographic portrait of widows in Sverdlovsk, as well as the characteristics of families headed by widows. The article is based on information from survey forms preserved in the archive and transcribed into a database that includes two tables: “Population of the city of Sverdlovsk. 1959» (4,715 entries) and “Family of the city of Sverdlovsk. 1959» (2,079 entries). To assess the level and frequency of widowhood, general and special coefficients were used to determine the impact of military losses on the family structure of the city, characterised by the archaisation of family and marriage relations as a result of the spread of intra-family consolidation strategies (an increase in the number of extended families). The transformation of single-parent families into typical social organisation was also considered. The unprecedented military losses of the male population during the Great Patriotic War exacerbated the gender imbalance that began to take shape at the end of the 19th century and particularly manifested during the First World War and the Civil War. The 1940s-1950s differ from the 1920s in that this is the time of the completion of the demographic transition, characterised by a change in the model of family and marriage behaviour, a tendency towards family nuclearisation.