Execution in Katyn official documents. Katyn

On April 16, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights will issue a final verdict on the so-called Katyn case. One of the Polish radio stations, citing the plaintiffs' lawyer, Mr. Kaminsky, reports that the ECtHR session will be held in an open form, and therefore the whole world will finally know about the true truth regarding Katyn. In principle, one can especially not even guess about what the court's verdict will be. One can only guess what mine he will lay under the further development of the Russian Federation and the attitude of the international community towards it. By the way, Russia admits at the state level that the execution of Polish officers was the work of the NKVD servicemen acting on the orders of Stalin and Beria, as even President Medvedev once said.

The essence of the question is to accuse the Soviet authorities of the 40s of the fact that, according to their orders, on the territory of the Smolensk region alone, about 4.5 thousand were shot, and according to another - 20 thousand Polish military personnel. At the same time, if such a verdict is adopted (which can no longer be doubted), then, as often happens, the blame will automatically migrate to modern Russia.

Recall that the first talk about the tragedy in the Katyn forest was started in 1943 by the Nazi occupation troops. Then the German soldiers discovered (this word could, in principle, be written in quotation marks) near Smolensk in the Katyn region and the Gnezdovo station, a mass grave of Polish (specifically Polish) officers. This was immediately presented as a fact of the mass extermination of Polish prisoners by representatives of the NKVD. At the same time, the Germans stated that they had conducted a thorough investigation and found that the execution took place in the spring of 1940, which once again proves the “Stalin trace” in this case. The NKVD allegedly specifically used Walter and Browning pistols with German-made Gecko bullets for mass executions in order to cast a shadow on the “most humane” Nazi army in the world. The Soviet Union, for obvious reasons, subjected all the conclusions of the German commission to complete obstruction.

However, in 1944, when the Soviet troops drove the Nazis out of the territory of the Smolensk region, Moscow was already investigating this fact. According to the conclusions of the Moscow commission, which included public figures, military experts, doctors of medical sciences and even representatives of the clergy, it turned out that, together with the Poles, the bodies of several hundred more Soviet soldiers and officers were buried in the huge graves of the Katyn Forest. The Soviet commission pointed out that the murders of thousands of prisoners of war were committed by the Nazis in the autumn of 1941. Of course, the conclusions of the Soviet commission of 1944 also cannot be taken unequivocally, but our task is to approach the consideration of the so-called Katyn issue from an objective point of view, based on facts, and not unfounded accusations. This story has too many pitfalls, but trying to ignore them means trying to disassociate yourself from Russian history.

The point of view of the commission of the 1944 model on the Katyn tragedy in the Soviet Union persisted for several decades, until in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev handed over the so-called “new materials” on the Katyn case to the hands of Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski, after which the whole world started talking about the crimes of Stalinism for Polish officers. What were these "new materials"? They were based on secret documents allegedly signed by I.V. Stalin, L.P. Beria and other high-ranking statesmen of the Soviet state. Even during the transfer of these documents into the hands of M.S. Gorbachev himself, experts said that he was in no hurry to draw conclusions from these materials, because these documents do not provide direct evidence of the executions of Poles by the NKVD units and need to be verified for authenticity. However, Mr. Gorbachev did not wait for the completion of the examination of documents and further conclusions of the commission on this difficult case, and decided to make public the "terrible secret" about the atrocities of the Soviet regime.

In this regard, the first inconsistency arises, indicating that it is too early to put an end to the Katyn issue. Why did these secret documents surface in February 1990? But even before that, at least twice they could have been made public.

The first publicity of the execution of Polish officers by the hands of Soviet Chekists could have appeared even during the famous XX Congress of the Central Committee of the CPSU, when the personality cult of I.V. Stalin was debunked by N.S. Khrushchev. In principle, in 1956, Khrushchev could not only condemn Stalin’s crimes on the territory of the USSR, but also receive huge foreign policy dividends from “disclosing the Katyn secret”, because shortly before that, the commission of the American Congress also dealt with the Katyn case. But Khrushchev did not take advantage of this opportunity. And could you use it? Were these "documents" available at the time? And to say that he knew nothing about the real situation in the early 40s with Polish prisoners of war is naive ...

Publicity could take place in the initial period of Gorbachev's tenure in power, but, for some reason, did not take place. Why did it take place in February 1990? Perhaps the secret lies in the fact that all these “new materials”, about which, strangely, nothing was known until 1990, were simply fabricated, and such systematic falsification was carried out precisely at the end of the 80s, when the Soviet Union already set a course for rapprochement with the West. Real "historical bombs" were needed.

By the way, such a point of view can be questioned as much as you like, but there are the results of a documentary examination of those very “new materials” of the Katyn case. It turned out that the documents on which there are signatures of Stalin and other persons demanding that the cases of Polish prisoners of war be considered in a special order were printed on one typewriter, and the sheets with the final signature of Beria on another. In addition, on one of the extracts of the final decision adopted at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March 1940, in a strange way, there was a seal with the attributes and name of the CPSU. It is strange, because the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself appeared only in 1952. Such inconsistencies were also announced during the so-called Round Table on the Katyn issue, organized in the State Duma in 2010.

But the inconsistencies in the Katyn tragedy, in which recently they see only the evidence of the guilt of the NKVD officers, do not end there. In the materials of the cases that have already been transferred to the Polish side, and this is more than fifty volumes, there are several documents that cast doubt on the date of the mass execution near Katyn - April-May 1940. These documents are letters from Polish servicemen, which were dated in the summer and autumn of 1941 - the time when Hitler's troops were already in charge of Smolensk land.

If you believe that the NKVD decided to deliberately shoot the Poles with German and German bullets, then why did this even need to be done? After all, in Moscow at that time they still could not know in any way that in a little over a year fascist Germany would attack the Soviet Union ...

The German commission, which worked at the site of the tragedy, established that the hands of the executed were tied with special German-made cotton laces. All this again suggests that the far-sighted NKVD officers already knew then that Germany would attack the USSR and, apparently, they ordered not only Brownings in Berlin, but also these strings in order to cast a shadow on Germany.
The same commission found a large amount of foliage in the mass (spontaneous) graves near Katyn, which clearly could not fall off the trees in April, but this indirectly confirms that the massacres of Polish and Soviet prisoners of war could have been committed precisely in the autumn of 1941.

It turns out that in the Katyn case there are a large number of questions that still do not find unambiguous answers, if you are firmly convinced that the execution was the work of the NKVD. In fact, the entire evidence base declaring the Soviet Union guilty is based on those very documents, the authenticity of which is clearly in doubt. The appearance of these documents in 1990 only indicates that the Katyn case was actually being prepared as another blow to the integrity of the USSR, which at that time was already experiencing enormous difficulties.

Now it is worth turning to the so-called eyewitness accounts. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, on the territory located 400-500 meters from the place where mass executions were subsequently carried out, the so-called government dacha was located. According to the testimony of the employees of this dacha, such famous people as Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Shvernik liked to come here on vacation. The documents, which were “declassified” in the 1990s, directly state that these visits took place when mass executions of Polish officers took place in the forest near Kozy Gory (the former name of Katyn). It turns out that high-ranking officials went to rest at the site of a giant cemetery ... They could simply not know about its existence - an argument that is difficult to take seriously. If the executions took place precisely in April-May 1940 in the immediate vicinity of that same government dacha, then it turns out that the NKVD decided to violate the unshakable instructions on the order of executions. This instruction clearly states that mass executions should be carried out in places located no closer than 10 km from cities - at night. And here - 400 meters and not even from the city, but from the place where the political elite came to go fishing and breathe fresh air. It is hard to imagine how Klim Voroshilov was fishing when bulldozers were working a few hundred meters from him, burying thousands of corpses in the ground. At the same time, they buried it slightly. It was established that the bodies of some of the executed were barely covered with sand, and therefore the infernal smell of numerous corpses must have spread through the forest. This is how the government dacha ... All this looks somehow a little intelligible, taking into account the thoroughness of the NKVD approach to such cases.

In 1991, the former head of the NKVD department, P. Soprunenko, stated that in March 1940 he held in his hands a paper with a Politburo resolution signed by Joseph Stalin on the execution of Polish officers. This is another reason to doubt the case file, since it is known for certain that Comrade Soprunenko could not hold such a document in his hands in any way, since his powers did not extend so far. It is difficult to assume that L. Beria himself “gave him a hold” on this document in March 1940, because just a month before that, ex-People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov, who had been arrested, had been shot on charges of attempting to commit a coup d'état. Did Beria really feel so free that he could walk around the offices with secret decisions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union and give them "to hold in their hands" to anyone he wanted ... Naive thoughts ...

As Vyacheslav Shved says in the comments to his book The Secret of Katyn, the falsification of historical materials took place at different times and in different countries. One of the clearest examples of fraud in the United States is the accusation of Oswald that he single-handedly decided to kill President Kennedy. Only more than 40 years later it turned out that a multi-stage conspiracy with a large number of actors was planned against John F. Kennedy.

It is quite possible that they are also trying to present the Katyn tragedy in a way that is beneficial to certain political circles. Instead of conducting a truly objective investigation and complete declassification of documentary data, the information war continues around the massacre of Polish and Soviet military personnel, which deals another blow to Russia's authority.

In this regard, it is interesting to pay attention to the recent decision of the Tver Court on the suit of E.Ya. Dzhugashvili, who defends the honor and dignity of his grandfather I.V. Stalin's grandson demands that the State Duma remove the phrase from the parliamentary statement that the Katyn execution took place on the direct orders of I.V. Stalin. I note that this is the second such lawsuit against the State Duma by Stalin's grandson (the first one was dismissed by the court).

Despite the fact that the Tverskoy Court dismissed the second claim, its decision cannot be called unequivocal. In her final ruling, Judge Fedosova stated that “Stalin was one of the leaders of the USSR during the Katyn tragedy in September 1941". With these words alone, the Tverskoy Court, obviously not wanting it, managed to emphasize that all the documents in the case of the executed Polish officers are possibly a gross falsification, which has yet to be seriously studied, and then based on it, real independent conclusions can be drawn. This once again shows that no matter what decision the ECtHR makes, it will clearly not be based on all the historical facts of the tragedy, which still causes conflicting feelings.

Undoubtedly, the execution of thousands of Polish officers is a huge national tragedy for Poland, and this tragedy in Russia is understood by most people and shares Polish grief. And at the same time, we must not forget that in addition to Polish officers, tens of millions of other people perished in that great war, whose descendants also dream of a worthy attitude to the memory of their dead ancestors from the state and the public. You can exaggerate the Katyn tragedy as much as you like, but at the same time you don’t need to deliberately keep silent about the thousands and thousands of other victims of the Second World War, about how today nationalist movements are actively raising their heads in the Baltic countries, to which Poland for some reason has a very warm attitude. History, as you know, does not know the subjunctive mood, so history must be treated objectively. At each historical stage in the development of any state, there is a very controversial period, and if all these historical disputes are used to escalate new conflicts, this will lead to a grandiose catastrophe that will simply crush civilization.

Katyn massacre - massacres of Polish citizens (mainly captured officers of the Polish army), carried out in the spring of 1940 by the NKVD of the USSR. As evidenced by documents published in 1992, the executions were carried out by decision of the troika of the NKVD of the USSR in accordance with the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940. According to published archival documents, a total of 21,857 Polish prisoners were shot.

During the partition of Poland, the Red Army captured up to half a million Polish citizens. Most of them were soon released, and 130,242 people ended up in NKVD camps, including both members of the Polish army and others whom the leadership of the Soviet Union considered "suspicious" because of their desire to restore Poland's independence. The servicemen of the Polish army were divided: the highest officers were concentrated in three camps: Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky.

And on March 3, 1940, the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, proposed to the Politburo of the Central Committee to destroy all these people, since "They are all sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, full of hatred for the Soviet system." In fact, according to the ideology that existed in the USSR at that time, all nobles and representatives of wealthy circles were declared class enemies and were subject to destruction. Therefore, the death sentence was signed for the entire officer corps of the Polish army, which was soon carried out.

Then the war between the USSR and Germany began, and Polish units began to form in the USSR. Then the question arose about the officers who were in these camps. Soviet officials responded vaguely and evasively. And in 1943, the Germans found the burial places of the "missing" Polish officers in the Katyn forest. The USSR accused the Germans of lying and after the liberation of this area, a Soviet commission headed by N. N. Burdenko worked in the Katyn forest. The conclusions of this commission were predictable: they blamed the Germans for everything.

In the future, Katyn has repeatedly become the subject of international scandals and high-profile accusations. In the early 90s, documents were published that confirmed that the execution in Katyn was carried out by decision of the top Soviet leadership. And on November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation, by its decision, recognized the guilt of the USSR in the Katyn massacre. Seems like enough has been said. But it's too early to make a point. Until a full assessment of these atrocities is given, until all the executioners and their victims are named, until the Stalinist legacy is overcome, until then we will not be able to say that the case of the execution in the Katyn Forest, which took place in the spring of 1940, is closed.

Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940, which determined the fate of the Poles. It states that “cases of 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landlords, policemen, intelligence agents, gendarmes, siegemen and jailers who are in the camps of prisoners of war, as well as cases of 11 arrested and in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus 000 members of various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, manufacturers, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution.

The remains of General M. Smoravinsky.

Representatives of the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish Red Cross inspect the corpses removed for identification.

The delegation of the Polish Red Cross examines the documents found on the corpses.

Identity card of the chaplain (military priest) Zelkovsky, who was killed in Katyn.

Members of the International Commission interview the local population.

Local resident Parfen Gavrilovich Kiselev talks with a delegation of the Polish Red Cross.

N. N. Burdenko

Commission headed by N.N. Burdenko.

Executioners who "distinguished themselves" during the Katyn execution.

Chief Katyn executioner: V. I. Blokhin.

Hands tied with rope.

A memorandum from Beria to Stalin, with a proposal to destroy the Polish officers. On it are the paintings of all members of the Politburo.

Polish prisoners of war.

The international commission examines the corpses.

Note from the head of the KGB Shelepin to N.S. Khrushchev, which says: “Any unforeseen accident can lead to the disclosure of the operation, with all the consequences undesirable for our state. Moreover, regarding those shot in the Katyn forest, there is an official version: all the Poles liquidated there are considered to be destroyed by the German invaders. Based on the foregoing, it seems appropriate to destroy all records of the executed Polish officers.

Polish order on the found remains.

Captured British and Americans are present at the autopsy, which is performed by a German doctor.

Excavated common grave.

The bodies were piled up.

The remains of a major of the Polish army (Brigade named after Pilsudski).

A place in the Katyn forest where burials were discovered.

Adapted from http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_ %D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB

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The small village near Smolensk Katyn went down in history as a symbol of the massacre in the spring of 1940 of Polish soldiers held in various Soviet concentration camps and prisons. The secret action of the NKVD to eliminate Polish officers in the Katyn forest began on April 8.

German troops cross the German-Polish border. September 1, 1939

On April 13, 1943, the Berlin radio reported that the German occupation authorities had discovered mass graves of executed Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. The Germans blamed the Soviet authorities for the killings, the Soviet government claimed that the Poles were killed by the Germans. For many years in the USSR, the Katyn tragedy was hushed up, and only in 1992 did the Russian authorities publish documents showing that Stalin had given the order for the murder. (Secret papers from the special archive of the CPSU about Katyn surfaced in 1992, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin proposed to the Constitutional Court that these documents be included in the "case of the CPSU").

In the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1953, the Katyn execution is described as “the mass execution of Polish officers of war by the Nazi invaders, committed in the autumn of 1941 on the Soviet territory temporarily occupied by Nazi troops”, supporters of this version, despite documentary evidence of Soviet “authorship”, still sure that's the way it was.

A bit of history: how it all happened

At the end of August 1939, the USSR and Germany signed a non-aggression pact, equipped with a secret protocol on the division of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between Moscow and Berlin. A week later, Germany entered Poland, and after another 17 days, the Red Army crossed the Soviet-Polish border. As stipulated in the agreements, Poland was divided between the USSR and Germany. On August 31, mobilization began in Poland. The Polish army desperately resisted, all the newspapers of the world went around the photograph, in which the Polish cavalry rushed to attack German tanks.

The forces were unequal, and on September 9 the German units reached the suburbs of Warsaw. On the same day, Molotov sent a message of congratulations to Schulenberg: “I have received your message that German troops have entered Warsaw. Please convey my congratulations and greetings to the government of the German Empire."

After the first news of the Red Army crossing the Polish border, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Poland, Marshal Rydz-Smigly, gave the order: “Do not engage in battles with the Soviets, resist only if they try to disarm our units that came into contact with the Soviet troops. Continue fighting against the Germans. Surrounded cities must fight. In the event that Soviet troops come up, negotiate with them in order to achieve the withdrawal of our garrisons to Romania and Hungary.

As a result of the defeat of almost a million-strong Polish army in September-October 1939, the Nazi troops captured more than 18,000 officers and 400,000 soldiers. Part of the Polish army was able to leave for Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia. The other part surrendered to the Red Army, which carried out the so-called operation to liberate Western Ukraine and Belarus. Different sources give different numbers of Polish prisoners of war on the territory of the USSR; in 1939, at a session of the Supreme Soviet, Molotov reported 250,000 Polish prisoners.

Polish prisoners of war were kept in prisons and camps, the most famous of them - Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky. Almost all the prisoners of these camps were exterminated.

On September 18, 1939, a German-Soviet communiqué was published in Pravda: “In order to avoid all sorts of unfounded rumors about the tasks of the Soviet and German troops operating in Poland, the government of the USSR and the government of Germany declare that the actions of these troops do not pursue any goal which runs counter to the interests of Germany or the Soviet Union and contradicts the spirit and letter of the non-aggression pact concluded between Germany and the USSR. The task of these troops, on the contrary, is to restore order and tranquility in Poland, disturbed by the collapse of the Polish state, and to help the people of Poland reorganize the conditions of their state existence.

Heinz Guderian (center) and Semyon Krivoshein (right) at the joint Soviet-German military parade. Brest-Litovsk. 1939

In honor of the victory over Poland, joint Soviet-German military parades were held in Grodno, Brest, Pinsk and other cities. In Brest, the parade was hosted by Guderian and brigade commander Krivoshein, in Grodno, along with the German general, corps commander Chuikov.

The population joyfully greeted the Soviet troops - for almost 20 years Belarusians and Ukrainians were part of Poland, where they were subjected to forced Polonization (Belarusian and Ukrainian schools were closed, Orthodox churches were turned into churches, the best lands were taken from local peasants, transferring them to the Poles). However, with the Soviet army and Soviet power came the Stalinist order. Mass repressions began against the new "enemies of the people" from among the local residents of the western regions.

From November 1939 until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, until June 20, 1940, trains with deportees went to the east, to "remote regions of the USSR". Officers of the Polish army from Starobelsky (Voroshilovgrad region), Ostashkovsky (Stolbny Island, Lake Seliger) and Kozelsky (Smolensk region) camps were originally supposed to be handed over to the Germans, but the opinion in the leadership of the USSR won the opinion that the prisoners should be destroyed. The authorities rightly judged: if these people were free, they would certainly become organizers and activists of anti-fascist and anti-communist resistance. The sanction for destruction was given in 1940 by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the verdict was directly pronounced by the Special Conference of the NKVD of the USSR.

"Ministry of Truth" at work

The first indications of the disappearance of approximately 15 thousand Polish prisoners of war appeared in the early autumn of 1941. In the USSR, the formation of the Polish army began, the main part of which was recruited from former prisoners of war - after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the Polish government in exile in London, an amnesty was declared for them. At the same time, it was found that among the arriving recruits there were no former prisoners of the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps.

The command of the Polish army repeatedly turned to the Soviet authorities with requests about their fate, but no definite answers were given to these requests. On April 13, 1943, the Germans announced that 12,000 corpses of Polish servicemen were found in the Katyn forest - officers captured by the Soviets in September 1939 and killed by the NKVD. (Further studies did not confirm this figure - the corpses in Katyn were found almost three times less).

On April 15, Moscow radio broadcast a "TASS Statement" in which the blame was placed on the Germans. On April 17, the same text was published in Pravda with the addition of the presence of ancient burials in those places: “In their clumsy and hastily concocted nonsense about the numerous graves allegedly discovered by the Germans near Smolensk, the Goebbels liars mention the village of Gnezdovaya, but they are silent about that it is near the village of Gnezdovaya that there are archaeological excavations of the historical “Gnezdovo burial ground”.

The place of execution of Polish officers in the Katyn forest was one and a half kilometers from the NKVD dacha (a comfortable cottage with a garage and a sauna), where the authorities from the center rested.

Expertise

For the first time, the Katyn graves were opened and examined in the spring of 1943 by the German doctor Gerhard Butz, who headed the forensic laboratory of the Army Group Center. In the same spring, the burials in the Katyn Forest were examined by a commission of the Polish Red Cross. On April 28-30, an international commission consisting of 12 experts from European countries worked in Katyn. After the liberation of Smolensk in Katyn in January 1944, the Soviet “Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of War by the Nazi Invaders in the Katyn Forest” arrived, headed by Burdenko.

The conclusions of Dr. Butz and the international commission directly blamed the USSR. The Polish Commission of the Red Cross was more cautious, but the facts recorded in its report also implied the fault of the USSR. The Burdenko Commission, of course, blamed the Germans for everything.

François Naville, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Geneva, who headed the international commission of 12 experts that examined the Katyn burials in the spring of 1943, was ready to appear in Nuremberg in 1946 as a defense witness. After the meeting on Katyn, he stated that he and his colleagues did not receive "gold, money, gifts, awards, valuables" from anyone, and all conclusions were made by them objectively and without any pressure. Subsequently, Professor Naville wrote: “If a country that finds itself between two powerful neighbors learns about the destruction of almost 10,000 of its officers, prisoners of war, whose only fault was that they defended their homeland, if this country tries to find out how everything happened, a decent person will not can accept a reward for going to the place and trying to lift the edge of the veil that concealed, and still hides, the circumstances under which this action was carried out, caused by disgusting cowardice, contrary to the customs of war.

In 1973, a member of the international commission of 1943, Professor Palmeri testified: “None of the twelve members of our commission had any doubts, there was not a single reservation. The conclusion is irrefutable. It was willingly signed by Prof. Markov (Sofia), and prof. Gaek (Prague). It should not be surprising that they subsequently withdrew their testimony. Maybe I would have done the same if Naples had been "liberated" by the Soviet Army... No, there was no pressure on us from the German side. Crime is the work of Soviet hands, there can be no two opinions. To this day, in front of my eyes - Polish officers on their knees, with their arms twisted behind them, kicking their legs into the grave after being shot in the back of the head ... "

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Other news

The “case of the Katyn massacre” will dominate Russian-Polish relations for a very long time, cause serious passions among historians, and even ordinary citizens.

In Russia itself, adherence to one or another version of the “Katyn massacre” determines a person’s belonging to one or another political camp.

Establishing the truth in the Katyn story requires a cool head and prudence, but our contemporaries often have neither one nor the other.

Relations between Russia and Poland have not been smooth and good neighborly for centuries. The collapse of the Russian Empire, which allowed Poland to regain its state independence, did not change the situation in any way. New Poland immediately entered into an armed conflict with the RSFSR, in which it succeeded. By 1921, the Poles managed not only to take control of the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, but also to capture up to 200,000 Soviet soldiers.

They do not like to talk about the further fate of prisoners in modern Poland. Meanwhile, according to various estimates, from 80 to 140 thousand Soviet prisoners of war died in captivity from the horrific conditions of detention and bullying of the Poles.

Unfriendly relations between the Soviet Union and Poland ended in September 1939, when, after the German attack on Poland, the Red Army occupied the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, reaching the so-called "Curzon Line" - the border, which was to become the line of separation of the Soviet and Polish states according to offer British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon.

Polish prisoners taken by the Red Army. Photo: Public Domain

Missing

It should be noted that this liberation campaign of the Red Army in September 1939 was launched at the moment when the Polish government left the country, and the Polish army was defeated by the Nazis.

In the territories occupied by Soviet troops, up to half a million Poles were captured, most of whom were soon released. About 130 thousand people remained in the NKVD camps, recognized by the Soviet authorities as representing a danger.

However, by October 3, 1939, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to disband the privates and non-commissioned officers of the Polish army who lived in the territories that had ceded to the Soviet Union. Ordinary and non-commissioned officers who lived in Western and Central Poland returned to these territories, controlled by German troops.

As a result, a little less than 42,000 soldiers and officers of the Polish army, policemen, and gendarmes remained in the Soviet camps, who were regarded as "hardened enemies of the Soviet regime."

Most of these enemies, from 26 to 28 thousand people, were employed in the construction of roads, and then sent to Siberia for special settlements. Many of them would later join the “Anders Army” that was being formed in the USSR, while the other part would become the founders of the Polish Army.

The fate of approximately 14,700 Polish officers and gendarmes held in the Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky camps remained unclear.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the question of these Poles hung in the air.

The cunning plan of Dr. Goebbels

The Nazis were the first to break the silence, in April 1943 they informed the world about the "unprecedented crime of the Bolsheviks" - the execution of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest.

The German investigation began in February 1943, based on the testimony of local residents who witnessed how, in March-April 1940, NKVD officers brought captured Poles to the Katyn Forest, who were never seen alive again.

The Nazis assembled an international commission, consisting of doctors from the countries under their control, as well as Switzerland, after which they exhumed the corpses in mass graves. In total, the remains of more than 4,000 Poles were recovered from eight mass graves, who, according to the conclusions of the German commission, were killed no later than May 1940. Evidence of this was declared that the dead had no things that could indicate a later date of death. The Hitler commission also considered it proved that the executions were carried out according to the scheme adopted by the NKVD.

The start of Hitler's investigation of the "Katyn massacre" coincided with the end of the Battle of Stalingrad - the Nazis needed an excuse to divert attention from their military catastrophe. It was for this that the investigation of the "bloody crime of the Bolsheviks" was started.

Calculation at Joseph Goebbels was not only to cause, as they say now, damage to the image of the USSR. The news of the destruction of Polish officers by the NKVD was bound to cause a break in relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London.

Employees of the UNKVD of the USSR in the Smolensk region, witnesses and / or participants in the Katyn massacre in the spring of 1940. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

And since official London stood behind the Polish government in exile, the Nazis cherished the hope of quarreling not only the Poles and Russians, but also Churchill co Stalin.

The plan of the Nazis was partly justified. Head of the Polish government in exile Wladyslaw Sikorsky really went into a rage, severed relations with Moscow and demanded a similar step from Churchill. However, on July 4, 1943, Sikorsky died in a plane crash near Gibraltar. Later, a version will appear in Poland that the death of Sikorsky was the work of the British themselves, who did not want to quarrel with Stalin.

The guilt of the Nazis in Nuremberg could not be proved

In October 1943, when the territory of the Smolensk region came under the control of Soviet troops, a Soviet commission began to work on the spot to investigate the circumstances of the Katyn massacre. The official investigation was launched in January 1944 by the "Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of War by the Nazi Invaders in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk)," which was headed by chief surgeon of the Red Army Nikolai Burdenko.

The commission came to the following conclusion: the Polish officers who were in special camps on the territory of the Smolensk region were not evacuated in the summer of 1941 due to the rapid advance of the Germans. The captured Poles ended up in the hands of the Nazis, who carried out the massacre in the Katyn Forest. To prove this version, the "Burdenko Commission" cited the results of an examination, which testified that the Poles were shot from German weapons. In addition, Soviet investigators found belongings and objects from the dead, indicating that the Poles were alive at least until the summer of 1941.

The guilt of the Nazis was also confirmed by local residents, who testified that they saw how the Nazis brought the Poles to the Katyn forest in 1941.

In February 1946, the "Katyn massacre" became one of the episodes considered by the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Soviet side, blaming the Nazis for the execution, nevertheless failed to prove its case in court. Adherents of the “NKVD crime” version are inclined to consider such a verdict in their favor, but their opponents categorically disagree with them.

Photos and personal belongings of those shot near Katyn. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Package number 1

Over the next 40 years, no new arguments were presented by the parties, and everyone remained in their previous positions, depending on their political views.

A change in the Soviet position occurred in 1989, when documents were allegedly found in the Soviet archives, indicating that the execution of the Poles was carried out by the NKVD with the personal sanction of Stalin.

On April 13, 1990, a TASS statement was released in which the Soviet Union admitted guilt for the execution, declaring it "one of the grave crimes of Stalinism."

The main evidence of the guilt of the USSR is now considered to be the so-called “packet number 1”, which was stored in the secret Special folder of the Archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Meanwhile, the researchers draw attention to the fact that the documents from the "package number 1" have a huge number of inconsistencies, allowing them to be considered fake. A lot of such documents, allegedly testifying to the crimes of Stalinism, appeared at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, but most of them were exposed as fakes.

For 14 years from 1990 to 2004, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office investigated the "Katyn massacre" and eventually came to the conclusion that the Soviet leaders were guilty of the death of Polish officers. During the investigation, the surviving witnesses who testified in 1944 were again interrogated, and they stated that their testimonies were false, given under pressure from the NKVD.

However, supporters of the “guilt of the Nazis” version reasonably note that the investigation of the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office was carried out in years when the thesis about “Soviet guilt for Katyn” was supported by the leaders of the Russian Federation, and therefore, it is not necessary to talk about an impartial investigation.

Excavations in Katyn. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

"Katyn-2010" "hang" on Putin?

The situation has not changed today. Insofar as Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in one form or another, they expressed support for the version of “the guilt of Stalin and the NKVD”, their opponents believe that an objective consideration of the “Katyn case” in modern Russia is impossible.

In November 2010, the State Duma adopted a statement “On the Katyn tragedy and its victims”, in which it recognizes the Katyn massacre as a crime committed on the direct orders of Stalin and other Soviet leaders, and expresses sympathy for the Polish people.

Despite this, the ranks of opponents of this version are not shrinking. Opponents of the State Duma's decision of 2010 believe that it was caused not so much by objective facts as by political expediency, by the desire to improve relations with Poland through this step.

International Memorial to the Victims of Political Repressions. Brotherly grave. Photo: www.russianlook.com

Moreover, this happened six months after the topic of Katyn received a new sound in Russian-Polish relations.

On the morning of April 10, 2010, the Tu-154M aircraft, on board of which was Polish President Lech Kaczynski, as well as 88 more political, public and military figures of this country, at the Smolensk airport. The Polish delegation flew to the mourning events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Katyn tragedy.

Despite the fact that the investigation showed that the main cause of the plane crash was the erroneous decision of the pilots to land in bad weather, caused by pressure from high-ranking officials on the crew, there are still many in Poland who are convinced that the Russians deliberately destroyed the Polish elite.

No one can guarantee that in half a century another “special folder” will not suddenly pop up, which will contain documents allegedly indicating that the plane of the President of Poland was destroyed by FSB agents on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

In the case of the “Katyn massacre”, all the “i” are still not dotted. Perhaps the next generation of Russian and Polish researchers, free from political bias, will be able to establish the truth.

On March 5, 1940, the USSR authorities decided to apply the highest form of punishment to Polish prisoners of war - execution. It marked the beginning of the Katyn tragedy, one of the main stumbling blocks in Russian-Polish relations.

Missing Officers

On August 8, 1941, against the backdrop of the outbreak of war with Germany, Stalin enters into diplomatic relations with his newfound ally - the Polish government in exile. Within the framework of the new treaty, all Polish prisoners of war, especially the prisoners of 1939 on the territory of the Soviet Union, were granted amnesty and the right to free movement throughout the territory of the Union. The formation of Anders' army began. Nevertheless, the Polish government did not count about 15,000 officers, who, according to the documents, were supposed to be in the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Yukhnovsky camps. To all the accusations of the Polish General Sikorsky and General Anders of violating the amnesty agreement, Stalin replied that all the prisoners were released, but they could have escaped to Manchuria.

Subsequently, one of Anders’s subordinates described his anxiety: “Despite the ‘amnesty’, the firm promise of Stalin himself to return the prisoners of war to us, despite his assurances that the prisoners from Starobelsk, Kozelsk and Ostashkov were found and released, we did not receive a single call for help from prisoners of war from the aforementioned camps. Questioning thousands of colleagues returning from camps and prisons, we have never heard any reliable confirmation of the whereabouts of the prisoners taken out of those three camps. He also owned the words uttered a few years later: “It was only in the spring of 1943 that a terrible secret was revealed to the world, the world heard a word from which horror still breathes: Katyn.”

dramatization

As you know, the Katyn burial was discovered by the Germans in 1943, when these areas were under occupation. It was the Nazis who contributed to the "promotion" of the Katyn case. Many specialists were involved, the exhumation was carefully carried out, they even led excursions there for local residents. An unexpected discovery in the occupied territory gave rise to a version of a deliberate staging, which was supposed to play the role of propaganda against the USSR during World War II. This became an important argument in accusing the German side. Moreover, there were many Jews on the list of those identified.

Attracted attention and details. V.V. Kolturovich from Daugavpils described his conversation with a woman who, together with her fellow villagers, went to look at the opened graves: “I asked her: “Vera, what did people say to each other, examining the graves?” The answer was: "Our negligent slobs can't do that - it's too neat a job." Indeed, the ditches were perfectly dug under the cord, the corpses were stacked in perfect piles. The argument, of course, is ambiguous, but do not forget that according to the documents, the execution of such a huge number of people was carried out in the shortest possible time. The performers should have simply not had enough time for this.

double charge

At the famous Nuremberg trials on July 1-3, 1946, the Katyn shooting was blamed on Germany and appeared in the indictment of the International Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, section III "War crimes", about the cruel treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of other countries. Friedrich Ahlens, commander of the 537th regiment, was declared the main organizer of the execution. He also acted as a witness in the retaliatory accusation against the USSR. The Tribunal did not uphold the Soviet accusation, and the Katyn episode is missing from the Tribunal's verdict. All over the world, this was perceived as a "tacit admission" of the USSR of its guilt.

The preparation and course of the Nuremberg trials were accompanied by at least two events that compromised the USSR. On March 30, 1946, the Polish prosecutor Roman Martin died, who allegedly had documents proving the guilt of the NKVD. The Soviet prosecutor Nikolai Zorya also fell victim, who suddenly died right in Nuremberg in his hotel room. The day before, he told his immediate superior, Prosecutor General Gorshenin, that he had discovered inaccuracies in the Katyn documents, and that he could not speak with them. The next morning he "shot himself." There were rumors among the Soviet delegation that Stalin ordered "to bury him like a dog!".

After Gorbachev admitted the guilt of the USSR, Vladimir Abarinov, a researcher on the Katyn issue, in his work cites the following monologue by the daughter of an NKVD officer: “I'll tell you this. The order about the Polish officers came directly from Stalin. My father told me that he saw a genuine document with a Stalinist signature, what was he to do? Bring yourself under arrest? Or shoot yourself? Father was made a scapegoat for decisions made by others."

Party of Lavrenty Beria

The Katyn massacre cannot be blamed on just one person. Nevertheless, the greatest role in this, according to archival documents, was played by Lavrenty Beria, "Stalin's right hand." Another daughter of the leader, Svetlana Alliluyeva, noted the extraordinary influence that this "scoundrel" had on her father. In her memoirs, she said that one word from Beria and a couple of forged documents was enough to determine the fate of future victims. The Katyn massacre was no exception. On March 3, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria suggested that Stalin consider the cases of Polish officers "in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." Reason: "All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, full of hatred for the Soviet system." Two days later, the Politburo issued a resolution on the transfer of prisoners of war and the preparation of execution.

There is a theory about the forgery of Beria's Notes. Linguistic analyzes give different results, the official version does not deny the involvement of Beria. However, statements about the forgery of the “note” are still being announced.

Deceived hopes

At the beginning of 1940, the most optimistic moods hovered among the Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet camps. Kozelsky, Yukhnovsky camps were no exception. The convoy treated foreign prisoners of war somewhat softer than its own fellow citizens. It was announced that the prisoners would be handed over to neutral countries. In the worst case, the Poles believed, they would be handed over to the Germans. Meanwhile, NKVD officers arrived from Moscow and set to work.

Before being sent, the prisoners, who sincerely believed they were being sent to safety, were vaccinated against typhoid and cholera, apparently to calm them down. Everyone received a dry ration. But in Smolensk, everyone was ordered to prepare for the exit: “From 12 o’clock we have been standing in Smolensk on a siding. April 9 getting up in prison cars and getting ready to leave. We are transported somewhere in cars, what's next? Transportation in the boxes "crow" (scary). We were brought somewhere in the forest, it looks like a summer cottage ... ”, - this is the last entry in the diary of Major Solsky, who is resting today in the Katyn forest. The diary was found during the exhumation.

The reverse side of recognition

On February 22, 1990, the head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, V. Falin, informed Gorbachev about new archival documents found that confirm the guilt of the NKVD in the Katyn massacre. Falin suggested urgently forming a new position of the Soviet leadership in relation to this matter and informing the President of the Polish Republic Vladimir Jaruzelsky about new discoveries in the terrible tragedy.

On April 13, 1990, TASS published an official statement admitting the guilt of the Soviet Union in the Katyn tragedy. Jaruzelsky received from Mikhail Gorbachev lists of prisoners to be transported from three camps: Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk. The main military prosecutor's office opened a case on the fact of the Katyn tragedy. The question arose of what to do with the surviving participants in the Katyn tragedy.

Here is what Valentin Alekseevich Aleksandrov, a senior official of the Central Committee of the CPSU, said to Nicholas Bethell: “We do not rule out the possibility of a judicial investigation or even a trial. But you must understand that Soviet public opinion does not entirely support Gorbachev's policy towards Katyn. We in the Central Committee have received many letters from organizations of veterans in which we are asked why we defame the names of those who only did their duty towards the enemies of socialism. As a result, the investigation against those found guilty was terminated due to their death or lack of evidence.

unresolved issue

The Katyn issue became the main stumbling block between Poland and Russia. When a new investigation into the Katyn tragedy began under Gorbachev, the Polish authorities hoped for an admission of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, the total number of which was about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the question of the role of genocide in the Katyn tragedy. Nevertheless, following the results of the case in 2004, it was announced that the death of 1803 officers had been established, of which 22 were identified.

The genocide against the Poles was completely denied by the Soviet leadership. Prosecutor General Savenkov commented on this as follows: “during the preliminary investigation, on the initiative of the Polish side, the version of genocide was checked, and my firm statement is that there are no grounds to talk about this legal phenomenon.” The Polish government was dissatisfied with the results of the investigation. In March 2005, in response to a statement by the RF GVP, the Polish Sejm demanded that the Katyn events be recognized as an act of genocide. Deputies of the Polish parliament sent a resolution to the Russian authorities, in which they demanded that Russia "recognize the killing of Polish prisoners of war as genocide" based on Stalin's personal dislike for the Poles because of the defeat in the 1920 war. In 2006, the relatives of the deceased Polish officers filed a lawsuit with the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, in order to achieve recognition of Russia in the genocide. An end to this sore point for Russian-Polish relations has not yet been made.