Katyn victims. Who shot the Polish officers? Falsification of archival documents

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. According to documents published in 1992, the executions were carried out by decision of the troika of the NKVD of the USSR in accordance with the decision 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 the 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 officers, 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, with regard to 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 question of the perpetrators of the death of the Polish military---------but------prisoners in Katyn (more precisely, in the tract of Kozy Gory) has been discussed for more than 70 years. More than once turned to this topic and "LG". There are also official estimates of the authorities. But there are still many dark places. Professor of the Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU), Doctor of Historical Sciences Alexei PLOTNIKOV shares his vision of the situation.

- Alexey Yuryevich, what was the total number of Polish prisoners of war?

There are several sources, there are discrepancies between them. According to various estimates, 450-480 thousand Polish soldiers were captured by the Germans in 1939. In the USSR, there were 120-150 thousand of them. The data given by a number of experts - primarily Polish - about the internment of 180 or even 220-250 thousand Poles are not documented. It should be emphasized that at first these people - from a legal point of view - were in the position of internees. This is explained by the fact that there was no war between the Soviet Union and Poland. But after the Polish government-in-exile declared war on the Soviet Union on December 18, 1939 (the so-called Angers Declaration) due to the transfer of Vilna and the Vilna region to Lithuania, the internees automatically turned into prisoners of war. In other words, legally, and after that, in fact, they were made prisoners of war by their own government in exile.

How were their fates?

Differently. Natives of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, privates and sergeants, were sent home even before the emigrant government declared war on the USSR. How many there were is not known exactly. Then the USSR and Germany concluded an agreement according to which all prisoners of war who were drafted into the Polish army from the territory that had seceded to the USSR, but taken prisoner by the Germans, were transferred to the Soviet Union, and vice versa. As a result of the exchange in October and November 1939, the USSR was transferred about 25 thousand prisoners of war - citizens of the former Poland, natives of the territories that had ceded to the Soviet Union, and Germany - more than 40 thousand. Most of them, privates and sergeants, were sent home. The officers were not released. They also detained members of the border service, police and punitive structures - those who were suspected of involvement in sabotage and espionage activities against the USSR. Indeed, in the 1920s and 1930s, Polish intelligence was very active in the western regions of the Soviet Union.
By the beginning of 1940, no more than 30 thousand Polish prisoners of war remained in the USSR. Of these, about 10 thousand are officers. They were distributed to specially created camps. There were 4,500 Polish prisoners of war in the Kozelsk camp (in 1940, Western, now Kaluga region), 6,300 in Ostashkovsky (Kalinin, now Tver region), and 3,800 in Starobelsk camp (Voroshilovgrad, now Lugansk region). At the same time, the captured officers were kept mainly in the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps. Ostashkovsky was predominantly "soldier", officers - no more than 400 people. Some of the Poles were in camps in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. These are the original numbers.

On July 30, 1941, the Kremlin and the Sikorsky government signed a political agreement and an additional protocol to it. He provided for the granting of amnesty to all Polish prisoners of war. Those allegedly turned out to be 391,545 people. How does this compare with the numbers you cited?

Indeed, about 390,000 Poles fell under the amnesty in August 1941. There is no contradiction here, since along with prisoners of war, civilians were also interned in 1939-1940. This is a separate issue. We are talking about prisoners of war - former Polish soldiers of the Polish Army.

- Where and how many, besides Katyn, were Polish prisoners of war shot during the Great Patriotic War?

It is unlikely that anyone will call. If only because some of the archival documents are still classified. I will only say about two burials not far from Katyn (Kozy Gory). The first was in Serebryanka (Dubrovenka) near Krasny Bor, the second - not yet documented - to the west of the village of Katyn. Information about him is contained in the memoirs of the daughter of one of the dead Poles Shchiradlovskaya-Petsy.

Your opponents claim that the Polish prisoners of war in Katyn were shot on the orders of Stalin. Why don't you agree with them?

Supporters of the Polish (it would be more honest to say - Goebbels) version do not explain, but ignore or frankly hush up facts that are inconvenient for themselves.
I will list the main ones. First of all, it has been proved: German-made cartridge cases of 6.35 and 7.65 mm caliber (GECO, as well as RWS) were found at the place of execution. This indicates that the Poles were killed with German pistols. The Red Army and the NKVD troops did not have weapons of such calibers. Attempts by the Polish side to prove the purchase of such pistols in Germany specifically for the execution of Polish prisoners of war are untenable. The NKVD bodies used their regular weapons. These are revolvers, and the officers have TT pistols. Both are caliber 7.62 mm.
In addition, and this is also documented, the hands of some of the executed were tied with paper twine. In the USSR, this was not produced then, but it was produced in Europe, including Germany.
Another important fact: documents on the execution of the sentence were not found in the archives, just as the sentence of execution itself was not found, without which no execution is possible in principle.
Finally, documents were found on individual corpses. Moreover, both by the Germans during the exhumation in February-May 1943, and by the Burdenko commission in 1944: officer certificates, passports, and other identification cards. This also speaks of the non-involvement of the USSR in the execution. The NKVD would not have left such evidence - it was strictly forbidden by the relevant instructions. There would be no newspapers printed in the spring of 1940, and they were "found" by the Germans in large numbers in the burial places. In the fall of 1941, the Germans themselves could leave documents with the executed: then, according to their ideas, they had nothing to fear. Back in 1940, the Nazis, without hiding, destroyed several thousand representatives of the Polish elite. For example, in the Palmyra forest near Warsaw. It is noteworthy that the Polish authorities rarely remember these victims.

- So they won’t be able to declare them victims of the NKVD.

Will not work. The Polish version is untenable for a number of reasons. It is known that the Poles were seen alive in 1940-1941 by many witnesses.
Archival documents have also been preserved on the transfer of cases of Polish prisoners of war to the Special Meeting (OSO) of the NKVD of the USSR, which had no right to sentence to death - it could condemn a maximum of eight years in the camps. In addition, mass executions of foreign prisoners of war, especially officers, have never been carried out in the USSR at all. Especially out of court without formalizing the relevant procedures prescribed by law. This is stubbornly ignored by Warsaw. And one more thing. Until the autumn of 1941, there was no technical possibility in the Kozy Gory tract to shoot several thousand people unnoticed. This tract is located 17 kilometers from Smolensk, not far from the Gnezdovo station, and until the war itself it remained an open resting place for the townspeople. There were pioneer camps, a dacha of the NKVD, burned down by the Germans during their retreat in 1943. It was located 700 meters from the busy Vitebsk highway. And the burials themselves are located 200 meters from the highway. It was the Germans who surrounded this place with barbed wire and set up guards.

- Mass graves in Mednoy, Tver region... There is no complete clarity here either, is there?

Tver (more precisely, the village of Mednoye near Tver) is the second point on the "Katyn map", where Polish prisoners of war were allegedly buried. Recently, the local community has been talking about this in full voice. Everyone is tired of the lies that the Poles and some of our fellow citizens are spreading. It is believed that Polish prisoners of war, previously held in the Ostashkov camp, are buried in Medny. Let me remind you that there were no more than 400 officers out of a total of 6,300 Polish prisoners of war. The Polish side categorically asserts that all of them lie in Medny. This contradicts the data contained in the memorandums of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. They were sent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in connection with the consideration in 2010-2013 of the “Case of Yanovets and Others v. Russia”. The memorandums of the Ministry of Justice - and they reflect our official position - clearly state that during the exhumation carried out in 1991 in Medny, the remains of only 243 Polish soldiers were found. Of these, 16 people were identified (identified by tokens).

- To put it mildly, significant discrepancies.

We must say frankly: there is a frank and unprincipled manipulation. Despite this, the Poles erected a memorial in Medny, hung out signs with the names of 6,300 Poles allegedly shot and buried there. The figures I have named allow us to imagine the scale of cynicism and falsification that the Poles have resorted to and continue to resort to. It is sad that they have like-minded people in our country. Let's not speculate about their motives. But they have no arguments! This is the Jesuitism and shamelessness of the position of today's Warsaw: to reject and ignore inconvenient facts and to speak of their position as the only true and not subject to doubt.

- There is a lot of controversy in this respect in the so-called "Katyn No. 3" - Kyiv Bykovna.

In 2012, in Bykivnia, the then presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Komorowski and Yanukovych, opened a memorial in memory of the 3,500 Polish officers allegedly shot there (I draw your attention: again, it was officers). However, this has not been confirmed by anything. There are not even milestone lists that are in the "Katyn case". It is unfoundedly stated that 3,500 Polish officers were kept in the prisons of Western Ukraine. And allegedly they were all shot in Bykovna.
The method of conducting a discussion on the part of opponents is shocking. We are used to giving facts and arguments. And we are called figures taken from the ceiling, not documented, and pass them off as indisputable evidence.

Have you personally discussed with those domestic historians who adhere to the Polish position?

Would be glad! We are always open for discussion. But our opponents avoid discussions and contacts. They operate on the principle of "a scorpion under a stone." He usually sits out for a long time, and at some point he crawls out, bites and hides again.

At the beginning of the year, the Polish Sejm received a bill from Deputy Zelinsky. He proposed that July 12 be declared the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the August 1945 raid. In Poland, it is called Malaya Katyn or New Katyn. The feeling that the Poles bake their "Katyn" like pancakes...

This once again confirms that « Katyn" as such has long been a tool and at the same time a "source" of the information war against Russia. For some reason we underestimate it. But in vain.
On July 9, the Polish Sejm adopted the law proposed by Zelinsky on the "Day of Remembrance on July 12". So now official Warsaw has another “anti-Russian bogey”…
The history of "Malaya Katyn" is as follows. In July 1945, a military and KGB operation was carried out against bandit formations that committed murders and sabotage in the rear of the 1st Belorussian Front. During the operation, more than seven thousand armed people were detained. Approximately 600 of them turned out to be associated with the Home Army (AK). The Polish side claims that everyone was immediately shot. In Warsaw, they refer to one document - a cipher telegram from the head of Smersh Viktor Abakumov to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Lavrenty Beria No. 25212 dated July 21, 1945. It allegedly refers to the elimination of anti-Soviet formations and contains a "proposal to shoot" the 592 Poles mentioned. But in the USSR, I repeat once again, such extrajudicial executions have never been carried out - especially foreign prisoners of war.
At that time, the employees of the Smersh GUKR NPO of the USSR did not have any legal grounds for the execution of the Poles. Order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 0061 of February 6, 1945, which introduced the right to shoot bandits and saboteurs captured at the crime scene at the final stage of the war in the front line, became invalid after the end of hostilities. It was officially canceled even before the start of the "August operation". This alone calls into question the reliability of the encryption given by the Poles.
The indiscriminate, “equalizing” nature of the mass execution of all 592 arrested “Akovites” without exception, and only to them, raises great doubts. The usual practice of law enforcement agencies of the USSR at that time was the division of those arrested according to contingents, categories and other criteria with the individual application of appropriate measures.
It is noteworthy that the given encryption was compiled with a gross violation of the norms of official subordination. GUKR "Smersh" was not subordinate to the NKVD of the USSR and for this reason its chief, Colonel-General Viktor Abakumov, who reported directly to Stalin, in principle should not have asked for "instructions" from the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Especially - instructions about the execution.
A recent examination of the "cipher telegram" clearly shows that we are dealing with a fake. At least because part of the document is printed on one typewriter, and part on another. The publication of the data of this examination, I hope, will put an end to the Polish myth-making on these events. However, there is no doubt that the "Small", "New" and other Katyns will be followed by others. The Polish falsifiers of history have lost their sense of reality and are unlikely to stop.

- What can be said about the so-called grave No. 9, discovered in Katyn in the spring of 2000?

Indeed, in 2000, during the construction of a transformer station in Katyn, a previously unknown burial was discovered. Based on uniforms and other signs, it was established that there were Polish servicemen there. At least two hundred remains. Poland responded to the message about the discovery of a new grave by saying that the wife of the then President of Poland Kwasniewski arrived in Katyn and laid flowers. But the Polish side did not respond to the proposal to conduct joint exhumation work. Since then, “grave No. 9” has been a figure of “silent silence” for the Polish media.

- What, there are "other" Poles?

It's a paradox, but official Warsaw does not need the remains of "unverified" compatriots. She only needs the “correct” burials, which confirm the Polish version of the execution by the “evil NKVD”. Indeed, during the exhumation of the "unknown grave" - ​​there is almost no doubt - the next evidence pointing to German performers will be discovered. To complete the picture, it is necessary to say about the actions of our authorities. Instead of initiating an exhumation, they classified all the materials. For the sixteenth year now, Russian researchers have not been allowed to "grave No. 9". But I am sure that the truth will prevail sooner or later.

- To summarize the conversation, what issues are among the unresolved?

Most of it I have already said. The main thing is that the collected facts and evidence confirming the guilt of the Germans in the execution of the Poles in Katyn are ignored by Warsaw and somehow “shamefully” hushed up by our authorities. It's time to finally understand that the Polish side in the "Katyn issue" has long been not only biased, but also incapable of negotiating. Warsaw does not accept and will not accept any "uncomfortable" arguments. The Poles will continue to call white black. They have driven themselves into the Katyn impasse, from which they cannot and do not want to get out. Russia must show political will here.

How was the myth of the Katyn tragedy created?

The 20th Congress had devastating consequences not only within the USSR, but also for the entire world communist movement, because Moscow lost its role as a cementing ideological center, and each of the people's democracies (with the exception of the PRC and Albania) began to look for its own path to socialism, and under this actually took the path of eliminating the dictatorship of the proletariat and restoring capitalism.

The first serious international reaction to Khrushchev's "secret" report was the anti-Soviet demonstrations in Poznan, the historical center of Wielkopolska chauvinism, that followed shortly after the death of the leader of the Polish communists Bolesław Bierut. Soon, the turmoil began to spread to other cities in Poland and even spread to other Eastern European countries, to a greater extent - Hungary, to a lesser extent - Bulgaria. In the end, the Polish anti-Sovietists, under the smoke screen of “the fight against Stalin’s personality cult,” managed not only to free the right-wing nationalist deviator Vladislav Gomulka and his associates from prison, but also to bring them to power.

And although Khrushchev tried at first to somehow oppose, in the end, he was forced to accept the Polish demands in order to defuse the current situation, which was ready to get out of control. These demands contained such unpleasant moments as the unconditional recognition of the new leadership, the dissolution of collective farms, some liberalization of the economy, guarantees of freedom of speech, meetings and demonstrations, the abolition of censorship, and, most importantly, the official recognition of the vile Nazi lie about the involvement of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the Katyn execution of Polish prisoners of war. officers. In the heat of giving such guarantees, Khrushchev recalled the Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, a Pole by origin, who served as Minister of Defense of Poland, and all Soviet military and political advisers.

Perhaps the most unpleasant for Khrushchev was the demand to recognize the involvement of his party in the Katyn massacre, but he agreed to this only in connection with the promise of V. Gomulka to put on the trail of Stepan Bandera, the worst enemy of the Soviet government, the head of the paramilitary formations of Ukrainian nationalists who fought against the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War and continued their terrorist activities in the Lviv region until the 50s of the twentieth century.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), headed by S. Bandera, relied on cooperation with the intelligence services of the USA, England, Germany, on permanent contacts with various underground circles and groups in Ukraine. To do this, its emissaries penetrated there illegally, with the goal of creating an underground network and transporting anti-Soviet and nationalist literature.

It is possible that during his unofficial visit to Moscow in February 1959, Gomulka reported that his secret services had discovered Bandera in Munich, and hurried with the recognition of "Katyn's guilt." One way or another, but on the instructions of Khrushchev on October 15, 1959, the KGB officer Bogdan Stashinsky finally eliminates Bandera in Munich, and the trial that took place over Stashinsky in Karlsruhe (Germany) considers it possible to determine the killer with a relatively mild punishment - only a few years in prison, since the main blame will be placed on the organizers of the crime - the Khrushchev leadership.

Fulfilling his obligation, Khrushchev, an experienced ripper of secret archives, gives appropriate orders to the KGB chairman Shelepin, who moved to this chair a year ago from the post of first secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee, and he begins feverishly “working” on creating a material justification for the Hitlerite version of the Katyn myth.

First of all, Shelepin starts a “special folder” “On the involvement of the CPSU (this one puncture already speaks of the fact of gross falsification - until 1952 the CPSU was called the CPSU (b) - L.B.) to the Katyn execution, where, as he believes, should be stored four main documents: a) lists of executed Polish officers; b) Beria's report to Stalin; c) Resolution of the Central Committee of the Party of March 5, 1940; d) Shelepin's letter to Khrushchev (the motherland must know its "heroes"!)

It was this “special folder”, created by Khrushchev on the order of the new Polish leadership, that spurred on all the anti-people forces of the PPR, inspired by Pope John Paul II (former Archbishop of Krakow and Cardinal of Poland), as well as Assistant to US President Jimmy Carter for National Security, permanent director " research center called the "Stalin Institute" at the University of California, a Pole by birth, Zbigniew Brzezinski to more and more brazen ideological diversions.

In the end, after another three decades, the story of the visit of the leader of Poland to the Soviet Union repeated itself, only this time in April 1990 the President of the Republic of Poland V. Jaruzelsky arrived in the USSR with an official state visit demanding repentance for the "Katyn atrocity" and forced Gorbachev to make the following statement: “Recently, documents have been found (meaning Khrushchev’s “special folder” - L.B.), which indirectly but convincingly indicate that thousands of Polish citizens who died in the Smolensk forests exactly half a century ago, became victims of Beria and his henchmen. The graves of Polish officers are next to the graves of Soviet people who fell from the same evil hand.

If we take into account that the "special folder" is a fake, then Gorbachev's statement was not worth a penny. Having achieved from the mediocre Gorbachev leadership in April 1990 a shameful public repentance for Hitler's sins, that is, the publication of the TASS Report that “the Soviet side, expressing deep regret over the Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism ”, counter-revolutionaries of all stripes safely took advantage of this explosion of the “Khrushchev time bomb” - false documents about Katyn - for their base subversive purposes.

The leader of the notorious "Solidarity" Lech Walesa was the first to "respond" to Gorbachev's "repentance" (they put a finger in his mouth - he bit his hand - L.B.). He proposed to resolve other important problems: to reconsider the assessments of post-war Polish-Soviet relations, including the role of the Polish National Liberation Committee created in July 1944, the treaties concluded with the USSR, because they were allegedly based on criminal principles, to punish those responsible for the genocide, to allow free access to the burial places of Polish officers, and most importantly, of course, to compensate for material damage to the families and relatives of the victims. On April 28, 1990, a representative of the government spoke in the Sejm of Poland with information that negotiations with the government of the USSR on the issue of monetary compensation were already underway and that at the moment it was important to compile a list of all those claiming such payments (according to official data, there were up to 800 thousand).

And the vile action of Khrushchev-Gorbachev ended with the dispersal of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the dissolution of the military union of the Warsaw Pact countries, and the liquidation of the Eastern European socialist camp. Moreover, it was believed: the West would dissolve NATO in response, but - “figs to you”: NATO is doing “drang nah Osten”, brazenly absorbing the countries of the former Eastern European socialist camp.

However, back to the kitchen of creating a “special folder”. A. Shelepin began by breaking the seal and entering the sealed room, where records were kept for 21,857 prisoners and internees of Polish nationality since September 1939. In a letter to Khrushchev dated March 3, 1959, justifying the uselessness of this archival material by the fact that "all accounting records are of neither operational interest nor historical value," the newly minted "chekist" comes to the conclusion: "Based on the foregoing, it seems appropriate destroy all accounting files on persons (attention!!!), shot in 1940 for the said operation. So there were "lists of executed Polish officers" in Katyn. Subsequently, the son of Lavrenty Beria reasonably remarks: “During Jaruzelsky’s official visit to Moscow, Gorbachev handed him only copies of the lists of the former Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD of the USSR found in Soviet archives. The copies contain the names of Polish citizens, who were in 1939 - 1940 in the Kozelsky, Ostashkovsky and Starobelsky camps of the NKVD. None of these documents talk about the participation of the NKVD does not go to the execution of prisoners of war».

The second "document" from the Khrushchev-Shelepin "special folder" was not at all difficult to fabricate, since there was a detailed digital report by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L. Beria

I.V. Stalin "About the Polish prisoners of war". Shelepin had only one thing left to do - to come up with and print out the “operative part”, where Beria allegedly demands execution for all prisoners of war from the camps and prisoners held in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus “without summoning those arrested and without bringing charges” - the benefit of typewriters in the former NKVD The USSR has not yet been decommissioned. However, Shelepin did not dare to forge Beria's signature, leaving this "document" in a cheap anonymous letter. But his “operative part”, copied word for word, will fall into the next “document”, which the “literate” Shelepin will call in his letter to Khrushchev “Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU (?) of March 5, 1940”, and this lapsus calami, this the typo in the “letter” still sticks out like an awl from a bag (and, indeed, how can “archival documents” be corrected, even if they were invented two decades after the event? - L.B.).

True, this main “document” itself on the involvement of the party is designated as “an extract from the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee. Decision dated 5.03.40.” (The Central Committee of which party? In all party documents, without exception, the entire abbreviation was always indicated in full - Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - L.B.). Most surprising of all, this “document” was left unsigned. And on this anonymous letter, instead of a signature, there are only two words - "Secretary of the Central Committee." And that's it!

This is how Khrushchev paid the Polish leadership for the head of his worst personal enemy Stepan Bandera, who spoiled him a lot of blood when Nikita Sergeevich was the first leader of Ukraine.

Khrushchev did not understand another thing: that the price he had to pay Poland for this, in general, irrelevant by that time, terrorist attack was immeasurably higher - in fact, it was equal to the revision of the decisions of the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences on the post-war structure of the statehood of Poland and other Eastern European countries .

Nevertheless, the false “special folder” fabricated by Khrushchev and Shelepin, covered with archival dust, waited in the wings three decades later. Gorbachev, the enemy of the Soviet people, pecked at her, as we have already seen. The ardent enemy of the Soviet people, Yeltsin, also pecked at her. The latter tried to use the Katyn fakes at the meetings of the Constitutional Court of the RSFSR, dedicated to the “case of the CPSU” initiated by him. These fakes were presented by the notorious "figures" of the Yeltsin era - Shakhrai and Makarov. However, even the accommodating Constitutional Court could not recognize these fakes as genuine documents and did not mention them anywhere in its decisions. Khrushchev and Shelepin did a dirty job!

A paradoxical position on the Katyn "case" was taken by Sergo Beria. His book “My father is Lavrenty Beria” was signed for publication on April 18, 1994, and the “documents” from the “special folder” were, as we already know, made public in January 1993. It is unlikely that Beria's son was not aware of this, although he makes a similar appearance. But his "awl from the bag" is an almost exact reproduction of the figure of Khrushchev's number of prisoners of war shot in Katyn - 21 thousand 857 (Khrushchev) and 20 thousand 857 (S. Beria).

In his attempt to whitewash his father, he recognizes the “fact” of the Katyn massacre by the Soviet side, but at the same time he blames the “system” and agrees that his father was allegedly ordered to hand over the captured Polish officers of the Red Army within a week, and the execution itself was allegedly entrusted hold the leadership of the People’s Commissariat of Defense, that is, Klim Voroshilov, and adds that “this is the truth that is carefully hidden to this day ... The fact remains: the father refused to participate in the crime, although he knew that saving these 20 thousand 857 lives was already unable to ... I know for sure that my father motivated his fundamental disagreement with the execution of Polish officers in writing. Where are these documents?

The late Sergo Lavrentievich correctly stated that these documents do not exist. Because there never was. Instead of proving the inconsistency of recognizing the involvement of the Soviet side in the Hitlerite-Goebbels provocation in the "Katyn case" and exposing Khrushchev's cheap stuff, Sergo Beria saw this as a selfish chance to take revenge on the party, which, in his words, "always knew how to put a hand to dirty things and at an opportunity to shift the responsibility to anyone, but not to the top party leadership. That is, Sergo Beria also contributed to the big lie about Katyn, as we see.

A careful reading of the “Report of the head of the NKVD Lavrenty Beria” draws attention to the following absurdity: the “Report” gives digital calculations about 14 thousand 700 people who are in the prisoner of war camps from among the former Polish officers, officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes , siegemen and jailers (hence - Gorbachev's figure - "about 15 thousand executed Polish officers" - L.B.), as well as about 11 thousand people arrested and in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus - members of various counter-revolutionary and sabotage organizations , former landowners, manufacturers and defectors.

In total, therefore, 25 thousand 700. The same figure also appears in the allegedly mentioned above “Extract from the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee”, since it was rewritten into a fake document without proper critical reflection. But in this regard, it is difficult to understand Shelepin's statement that 21,857 records were kept in the "secret sealed room" and that all 21,857 Polish officers were shot.

First, as we have seen, not all of them were officers. According to Lavrenty Beria's estimates, in general there were only a little over 4 thousand army officers proper (generals, colonels and lieutenant colonels - 295, majors and captains - 2080, lieutenants, second lieutenants and cornets - 604). This is in the camps for prisoners of war, and in the prisons of former Polish prisoners of war there were 1207. In total, therefore - 4 thousand 186 people. In the "Big Encyclopedic Dictionary" of the 1998 edition, it is written that: "In the spring of 1940, the NKVD destroyed over 4 thousand Polish officers in Katyn." And then: "Executions on the territory of Katyn were carried out during the occupation of the Smolensk region by Nazi troops."

So who, in the end, carried out these ill-fated executions - the Nazis, the NKVD, or, as the son of Lavrenty Beria claims, parts of the regular Red Army?

Secondly, there is a clear discrepancy between the number of “shot” - 21 thousand 857 and the number of people who were “ordered” to be shot - 25 thousand 700. It is permissible to ask how it could happen that 3843 Polish officers turned out to be unaccounted for, which department fed them during their lifetime, on what means did they live? And who dared to spare them if the "bloodthirsty" "secretary of the Central Committee" ordered to shoot all the "officers" to the last?

And the last. In the materials fabricated in 1959 on the Katyn case, it is stated that the “troika” was the court for the unfortunate. Khrushchev “forgot” that, in accordance with the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of November 17, 1938, “On Arrests, Prosecutorial Supervision and Investigation,” judicial “troikas” were liquidated. This happened a year and a half before the Katyn massacre, which was incriminated to the Soviet authorities.

The truth about Katyn

After the shamefully failed campaign against Warsaw, undertaken by Tukhachevsky, obsessed with the Trotskyist idea of ​​​​a world revolutionary fire, the western lands of Ukraine and Belarus were ceded to bourgeois Poland from Soviet Russia under the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921, and this soon led to the forcible Polonization of the population so unexpectedly acquired for free territories: to the closure of Ukrainian and Belarusian schools; to the transformation of Orthodox churches into Catholic churches; to the expropriation of fertile lands from the peasants and their transfer to the Polish landowners; to lawlessness and arbitrariness; to persecution on national and religious grounds; to the brutal suppression of any manifestations of popular discontent.

That is why Western Ukrainians and Byelorussians, having drunk on bourgeois Greater Poland lawlessness, longing for Bolshevik social justice and genuine freedom, as their liberators and deliverers, as relatives, met the Red Army when it came to their region on September 17, 1939, and all its actions to liberate the Western Ukraine and Western Belarus lasted 12 days.

Polish military units and formations of troops, with almost no resistance, surrendered. The Polish government of Kozlovsky, who fled to Romania on the eve of the capture of Warsaw by Hitler, actually betrayed his people, and the new Polish government in exile, headed by General V. Sikorsky, was formed in London on September 30, 1939, i.e. two weeks after the national catastrophe.

By the time of the perfidious attack of fascist Germany on the USSR, 389 thousand 382 Poles were kept in Soviet prisons, camps and places of exile. From London, the fate of Polish prisoners of war, who were used mainly for road construction work, was very closely followed, so that if they were shot by the Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940, as the false Goebbels propaganda trumpeted to the whole world, it would be timely known through diplomatic channels and would cause a great international outcry.

In addition, Sikorsky, seeking rapprochement with I.V. Stalin, sought to present himself in the best possible light, played the role of a friend of the Soviet Union, which again excludes the possibility of a "massacre" "perpetrated" by the Bolsheviks over Polish prisoners of war in the spring of 1940. Nothing indicates the presence of a historical situation that could be an incentive for such an action by the Soviet side.

At the same time, the Germans had such an incentive in August - September 1941 after the Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan Maisky, signed a friendship treaty between the two governments with the Poles on July 30, 1941, according to which General Sikorsky was to form from prisoners of war compatriots in the Russian army under the command of a prisoner of war Polish General Anders to participate in hostilities against Germany. This was the incentive for Hitler to liquidate Poles as enemies of the German nation, who, as he knew, had already been amnestied by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 12, 1941 - 389 thousand 41 Poles, including future victims of Nazi atrocities, shot in the Katyn forest.

The process of formation of the National Polish Army under the command of General Anders was in full swing in the Soviet Union, and in quantitative terms it reached 76 thousand 110 people in six months.

However, as it turned out later, Anders received instructions from Sikorsky: "In no case should Russia be helped, but use the situation to the maximum advantage for the Polish nation." At the same time, Sikorsky convinces Churchill of the expediency of transferring Anders' army to the Middle East, about which the British Prime Minister writes to I.V. Stalin, and the leader gives his go-ahead, not only for the evacuation to Iran of the Anders army itself, but also for family members of military personnel in the amount of 43 thousand 755 people. It was clear to both Stalin and Hitler that Sikorsky was playing a double game. As tensions increased between Stalin and Sikorsky, there was a thaw between Hitler and Sikorsky. The Soviet-Polish "friendship" ended with a frank anti-Soviet statement by the head of the Polish government in exile on February 25, 1943, which said that it did not want to recognize the historical rights of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples to unite in their national states. In other words, there was the fact of the brazen claims of the Polish émigré government to the Soviet lands - Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. In response to this statement, I.V. Stalin formed from the Poles loyal to the Soviet Union, the Tadeusz Kosciuszko division of 15 thousand people. In October 1943, she was already fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Red Army.

For Hitler, this statement was a signal to take revenge for the Leipzig process he lost to the communists in the case of the Reichstag fire, and he intensifies the activities of the police and the Gestapo of the Smolensk region to organize the Katyn provocation.

Already on April 15, the German Information Bureau reported on the Berlin radio that the German occupation authorities had discovered in Katyn, near Smolensk, the graves of 11,000 Polish officers shot by Jewish commissars. The next day, the Soviet Information Bureau exposed the bloody machinations of the Nazi executioners, and on April 19, the Pravda newspaper wrote in an editorial: “The Nazis invent some kind of Jewish commissars who allegedly participated in the murder of 11,000 Polish officers. It is not difficult for experienced masters of provocation to come up with several names of people who never existed. Such “commissars” as Lev Rybak, Avraam Borisovich, Pavel Brodninsky, Chaim Finberg, named by the German information bureau, were simply invented by the Nazi swindlers, since there were no such “commissars” either in the Smolensk branch of the GPU, or in general in the NKVD bodies and No".

On April 28, 1943, Pravda published a “note of the Soviet government on the decision to break off relations with the Polish government”, which, in particular, stated that “this hostile campaign against the Soviet state was undertaken by the Polish government in order to use the Hitlerite slanderous fake to put pressure on the Soviet government in order to wrest territorial concessions from it at the expense of the interests of Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belarus and Soviet Lithuania.

Immediately after the expulsion of the Nazi invaders from Smolensk (September 25, 1943), I.V. Stalin sends a special commission to the crime scene to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution of Polish officers of war by the Nazi invaders in the Katyn forest. The commission included: a member of the Extraordinary State Commission (the ChGK was investigating the atrocities of the Nazis in the occupied territories of the USSR and scrupulously calculated the damage caused by them - L.B.), academician N. N. Burdenko (chairman of the Special Commission for Katyn), members of the ChGK: academician Alexei Tolstoy and Metropolitan Nikolai, Chairman of the All-Slavic Committee, Lieutenant General A.S. Gundorov, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies S.A. Kolesnikov, People's Commissar of Education of the USSR, Academician V.P. Potemkin, head of the Main Military Sanitary Directorate of the Red Army, Colonel-General E.I. Smirnov, Chairman of the Smolensk Regional Executive Committee R.E. Melnikov. To fulfill the task assigned to it, the commission attracted the best forensic experts in the country: the chief forensic expert of the People's Commissariat of Health of the USSR, director of the Research Institute of Forensic Medicine V.I. Prozorovsky, head. Department of Forensic Medicine of the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute V.M. Smolyaninov, senior researchers of the Research Institute of Forensic Medicine P.S. Semenovsky and M.D. Shvaikov, chief pathologist of the front, major of the medical service, professor D.N. Vyropayeva.

Day and night, tirelessly, for four months, the authoritative commission conscientiously investigated the details of the Katyn case. On January 26, 1944, the most convincing report of a special commission was published in all the central newspapers, which did not leave a stone unturned from the Hitler myth of Katyn and revealed to the whole world a true picture of the atrocities of the Nazi invaders against Polish prisoners of war officers.

However, in the midst of the Cold War, the US Congress again makes an attempt to revive the Katyn issue, even creating the so-called. “A commission to investigate the Katyn case, headed by Congressman Madden.

On March 3, 1952, Pravda published a note to the US State Department dated February 29, 1952, which, in particular, stated: thus generally recognized Hitlerite criminals (it is characteristic that a special "Katyn" commission of the US Congress was created simultaneously with the approval of the appropriation of $ 100 million for sabotage and espionage activities in Poland - L.B.).

The note was accompanied by the re-published in Pravda on March 3, 1952, the full text of the message of the Burdenko commission, which collected extensive material obtained as a result of a detailed study of the corpses recovered from the graves and those documents and material evidence that were found on the corpses and in the graves. At the same time, the Burdenko special commission interviewed numerous witnesses from the local population, whose testimony accurately established the time and circumstances of the crimes committed by the German invaders.

First of all, the message gives information about what constitutes the Katyn forest.

“For a long time, the Katyn forest has been a favorite place where the people of Smolensk usually spent their holidays. The local population grazed cattle in the Katyn forest and procured fuel for themselves. There were no prohibitions or restrictions on access to the Katyn Forest.

Back in the summer of 1941, the pioneer camp of Promstrakhkassa was located in this forest, which was closed only in July 1941 with the capture of Smolensk by the German invaders, the forest began to be guarded by reinforced patrols, in many places there were inscriptions warning that persons entering the forest without a special pass were subject to shooting on the spot.

Particularly strictly guarded was that part of the Katyn forest, which was called the "Goat Mountains", as well as the territory on the banks of the Dnieper, where at a distance of 700 meters from the discovered graves of Polish prisoners of war there was a summer house - a rest house of the Smolensk department of the NKVD. Upon the arrival of the Germans, a German military institution was located in this dacha, hiding under the code name “Headquarters of the 537th construction battalion” (which also appeared in the documents of the Nuremberg trials - L.B.).

From the testimony of the peasant Kiselyov, born in 1870: “The officer stated that, according to the information available to the Gestapo, the NKVD officers shot Polish officers in 1940 at the Kozy Gory section, and asked me what evidence I could give about this. I replied that I had never heard of the NKVD carrying out executions in the Kozy Gory, and it was hardly possible at all, I explained to the officer, since the Goat Gory is a completely open crowded place and if they were shot there, then about This would be known to the entire population of nearby villages ... ".

Kiselyov and others told how false testimony was literally knocked out of them with rubber truncheons and threats of execution, which later appeared in a book superbly published by the German Foreign Ministry, in which materials fabricated by the Germans on the Katyn case were placed. In addition to Kiselyov, Godezov (aka Godunov), Silverstov, Andreev, Zhigulev, Krivozertsev, Zakharov were named as witnesses in this book.

The Burdenko Commission found that Godezov and Silverstov died in 1943, before the liberation of the Smolensk region by the Red Army. Andreev, Zhigulev and Krivozertsev left with the Germans. The last of the “witnesses” named by the Germans, Zakharov, who worked under the Germans as a headman in the village of Novye Batek, told the Burdenko commission that he was first beaten until he lost consciousness, and then, when he came to, the officer demanded to sign the protocol of interrogation, and he, faint-hearted, under the influence of beatings and threats of execution, he gave false testimony and signed the protocol.

The Nazi command understood that for such a large-scale provocation "witnesses" were clearly not enough. And it distributed among the inhabitants of Smolensk and the surrounding villages an "Appeal to the population", which was published in the newspaper "New Way" published by the Germans in Smolensk (No. 35 (157) of May 6, 1943): committed by the Bolsheviks in 1940 over captured Polish officers and priests (? - this is something new - L.B.) in the Goat Mountains forest, near the Gnezdovo - Katyn highway. Who observed the vehicles from Gnezdovo to Goat Mountains or who saw or heard the executions? Who knows the residents who can tell about it? Every report will be rewarded."

To the credit of Soviet citizens, no one pecked at the reward for giving the false testimony needed by the Germans in the Katyn case.

Of the documents discovered by forensic experts relating to the second half of 1940 and the spring - summer of 1941, the following deserve special attention:

1. On corpse No. 92.
Letter from Warsaw addressed to the Red Cross in the Central Bank of Prisoners of War - Moscow, st. Kuibysheva, 12. The letter is written in Russian. In this letter, Sofya Zygon asks for the whereabouts of her husband, Tomasz Zygon. The letter is dated 12.09. 1940. On the envelope there is a stamp - “Warsaw. 09.1940" and a stamp - "Moscow, post office, expedition 9, 8.10. 1940”, as well as a resolution in red ink “Uch. set up a camp and send for delivery - 11/15/40. (Signature is illegible).

2. On corpse #4
Postcard, order No. 0112 from Tarnopol with a postmark "Tarnopol 12. 11.40" The handwriting and address are discolored.

3. On corpse No. 101.
Receipt No. 10293 dated 19.12.39, issued by the Kozelsky camp about the acceptance of a gold watch from Lewandovsky Eduard Adamovich. On the back of the receipt there is an entry dated March 14, 1941 about the sale of this watch to Yuvelirtorg.

4. On corpse no. 53.
Unsent postcard in Polish with the address: Warsaw, Bagatela 15, apt. 47, Irina Kuchinskaya. Dated June 20, 1941.

It must be said that in preparation for their provocation, the German occupation authorities used up to 500 Russian prisoners of war to work on digging graves in the Katyn forest, extracting documents and material evidence incriminating them, who, after doing this work, were shot by the Germans.

From the report of the “Special Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of War by the Nazi Invaders in the Katyn Forest”: “The conclusions from the testimonies and forensic medical examination about the execution of Polish prisoners of war by the Germans in the autumn of 1941 are fully confirmed by material evidence and documents extracted from the Katyn graves.

This is the truth about Katyn. The irrefutable truth of the fact.

A source of information- http://www.stalin.su/book.php?action=header&id=17 (From the book: Lev Balayan. Stalin and Khrushchev- http://www.stalin.su/book.php?text=author)

The place was not chosen by chance, there is fertile sandy soil, which means that it will not be so difficult for soldiers to bury corpses in the ground. However, the graves were not always dug by soldiers, sometimes they were dug by the condemned themselves, realizing the doom of their situation. Now there is a forest here, but earlier, during the executions, there were almost no trees, pines were planted only later, so that they would tear and destroy the remains of the bodies with their roots in the ground.

The burial itself is divided into 2 parts: Polish and Russian. The Polish memorial was made by designers on a special project. At the entrance he meets a small wagon, it was in such short railway wagons that people went to exile. 30 or even 50 people were placed in this car for shipment.

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At both ends of the car there were three tiers of bunks, and in the middle there was a stove for heating. In summer, instead of a toilet for prisoners, there was just a hole in the floor, and in winter, an ordinary bucket, which was poured either at the stations, or directly “overboard”, having previously broken the boards in the back of the car.

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The prisoners were fed mainly with herring, because it was very salty and did not rot. In fact, this was one salt, from which one really wanted to drink, and water was practically not given to the repressed.

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In a confined space, people got sick, fought each other for the best places, and even killed each other. The corpses were filmed only at stops, and often people traveled for several hours in the car next to the corpses. This is despite the fact that the windows were not in every such car. This car is now a gift to the Katyn memorial from the Moscow Railway.
After entering the territory of the complex, the road "forks" to the right - the Polish military cemetery, and to the left - the Soviet one.

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Memorial stone at the entrance.

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A little history of the execution of the Poles in Katyn. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany entered the territory of Poland; on September 17, 1939, the Red Army also entered Polish lands "in order to protect the rights of the Ukrainian and Belarusian population." Germany was then at war with Poland, and the USSR did not officially declare war on the Poles. According to the secret "non-aggression pact", the USSR was to keep the Polish army on its territory until the war between Germany and Poland ended.
However, in the USSR, internment performed its function poorly and released most of the ordinary soldiers after disarmament, but mostly Polish officers remained in captivity.
It should also be noted that in November 1939 the Polish government in exile officially declared war on the USSR. The reason for this was the transfer of the city of Vilnius to Lithuania. In this regard, the status of Polish officers who were on the territory of the USSR was changed: they turned from internees into prisoners of war. However, letters from them to relatives continued to arrive regularly until the spring of 1940. Of certain importance is the fact that, according to the Geneva Convention, it was forbidden to force prisoners of war to work. And this condition was met.
On March 31, 1940, Polish prisoners of war began to be taken out of the camps in batches of 200-300 people. But where were they taken? Opinions on this issue differ.

Plan of the Polish cemetery.

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As in any mystery, there are several versions of what happened next. According to the German version, on March 5, 1940, Lavrenty Beria wrote a letter to Stalin, in which he proposed "to consider the cases of former Polish officers arrested in the amount of 11,000 in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." On the same day, the note was signed by I. V. Stalin, comrades Kalinin, Kaganovich, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, and approved by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKB (b).

The prisoners were taken to the city of Kalinin, to Kharkov, to the Katyn forest. In Kalinin, they were shot in the buildings of the NKVD and buried in a cemetery near the village of Mednoe. In Kharkov, executions were also carried out in the basements of the regional department of the NKVD.

At the entrance to the Polish part there are copies of the Polish border pillars of 1939 and an inscription in Polish Polish military cemetery Katyn.

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So, according to the German version, the prisoners were put into prison cars and taken to the Gnezdovo station, located west of Smolensk. In the cellars of this station, immediately after the arrival of the train, Polish generals were shot.
The rest of the prisoners at the station were loaded into buses with closed windows and taken to the rest house of the NKVD in the forest. The time was calculated in such a way that they would arrive there in the evening.

At the dacha they were searched, confiscated piercing and cutting objects, watches and locked in the cells located in the building. Then, one by one, they were taken to a room where an NKVD officer sat and checked the full name and year of birth of the convict. After that, the officer was led to a basement with walls lined with soundproofing material. The executioner took a German pistol "Walter" and fired a shot in the back of the head. The corpse was taken out into the street and thrown into the back of a truck. The executions lasted all night, during which time 200-300 corpses were recruited in the back. In the morning they were taken to the Katyn forest, dumped into the already dug graves.

The most honorary order among the Poles is Militari Virtuti or the Order of Military Valor.

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Often the NKVD officers changed tactics and, having completed the search of prisoners of war at the NKVD dacha, took them to the previously excavated graves. They were taken out of the bus one by one, their hands were tied with German paper twine, and they were led to the moat. The executioner fired a shot in the back of the head again from the same "Walter". Sometimes prisoners, those who panicked, pulled up their uniforms and covered their faces with them, tightened a noose around their neck, tying their hands with the other end of the twine. In some cases, the space between the face and clothes was filled with sawdust in order to deliver the greatest torment to the doomed. Actively resisting prisoners were stabbed with a bayonet. Leading to the moat, they shot in the back of the head in the same way.

This cross shows the dates symbolic for Poland in 1939. On September 1, Nazi troops entered its territory, and on September 17, the Red Army.

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The fact that the prisoners were shot with German weapons is considered one of the proofs of the Germans' guilt in the tragedy. But supporters of the German version answer them that Walther pistols were imported from Germany by the Soviet Union before the war, and until 1933 German 7.65 caliber bullets were also imported. However, the fact of the discovery in the graves of German paper twine, which was not imported and was not produced on the territory of the USSR, has not yet found an explanation within the German theory. In addition, photographs of 7.65 caliber bullet casings taken by the Germans show rust. According to A. Wasserman, this indicates that they are made of steel. The brass bullets imported before 1933 could not rust. But steel bullets of this caliber in Germany began to be produced only at the beginning of 1941!

On the territory of the Polish cemetery there are 8 execution pits, these are the places where the bodies of the executed Poles were massively buried. The largest pit was the first, about 2000 bodies were buried in it. They buried them like this: bodies, a layer of lime, again bodies, again a layer of lime, and so on until the hole is completely filled. Lime was needed for the speedy decomposition of corpses. Now all the bodies of those killed from the execution pits have been exhumed, and the contours of the pits are now lined with cast-iron slabs.

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During April-May 1940, all the prisoners were destroyed in this way. This crime remained unknown until April 13, 1943, when the Germans announced that they had discovered Katyn graves in the occupied Soviet territory, in which Polish officers who were shot by the NKVD of the USSR in the spring of 1940 were buried.
To study the circumstances of the tragedy, the Germans formed an "international" commission of representatives of the allied countries of Germany and the states occupied by it.

On April 28, 1943, she began work, and completed it on April 30. The final document states that, based on the documents found in the graves, it can be concluded that executions were carried out in the spring of 1940. We are talking about all kinds of notes, newspapers, diaries, among which the German commission did not find those dated later than the spring of 1940.

The main color of the Polish memorial is rust, which, according to the designers, is the color of gore. Below the bell - if you shake it, the ringing comes as if "from under the ground."

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Starting from May 1943, the excavations were stopped. By this time, 4143 bodies from 7 graves had been exhumed, while 4 more remained unopened, more than half of the corpses were identified from the documents found. In September 1943, the Red Army liberated Smolensk. Retreating, the Germans destroyed or took material evidence with them. In January 1944, a commission began to work under the leadership of the doctor Burdenko, which, according to supporters of the German version, was instructed to prove at all costs the guilt of the Germans in the execution of the Poles in Katyn.

Separate graves of Polish generals Smoravinsky and Bogatyrevich. The granddaughter of General Smoravinsky in 2010 was on the ill-fated plane that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

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The Commission of the Soviets unearthed the remaining 4 graves, removed 925 bodies from the ground. Documents dated later than the spring of 1940, including those dated 1941, were found in the clothes of the dead. Supporters of the German version believe that all these papers are falsified. In addition, in the final report of the commission, errors were found in the spelling of the names and initials of the German servicemen and witnesses accused of the execution, and the incorrect indication of the military ranks of the suspects. All this, according to supporters of the German version, only indicates that the Burdenko commission was fulfilling the political order of the Soviet leadership, and did not conduct unbiased research.

One way or another, the conclusion of the commission became the official version of the USSR on the Katyn issue and remained so until perestroika. He remained until M. Gorbachev questioned him, stating in 1990 that “documents were found that indirectly but convincingly indicate that thousands of Polish citizens who died in the Smolensk forests exactly half a century ago became victims of Beria and his henchmen.

Now Polish officers are buried in such mass graves just a hundred meters from the places of execution. All the graves are fraternal and Russia now does not allow the transportation of bodies to the territory of Poland. An exception was made only for the only woman shot in Katyn - the pilot Antonina Levandovskaya.

Speaking about the motives for committing a crime, opponents of the Soviet version do not come to a common opinion. Some believe that the execution of the Poles is a continuation of the Stalinist policy of repression, therefore it is impossible to give an unambiguous answer to this question, because the murders of "millions of innocent citizens" are also inexplicable. That is, repression for the sake of repression. Other adherents believe that the execution was carried out out of revenge for the murder of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers who were captured by the Poles in 1920.

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Thus, from the point of view of the supporters of the German version, the point in the Katyn case has been put, the guilt of the NKVD of the USSR has been unambiguously proven.

The Poles listed all those killed by name. Everyone has their own memorial plaque, where relatives come and honor the memory, put flags, stick photos.

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Pilot Antonina Lewandowska is already buried in Warsaw, but nevertheless, a memorial plaque about her remains.

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Commemorative plaques were made at the level of graves, i.e. visitors walk from below, and from above, as it were, a decorative layer of soil.

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This story also has a Soviet version. What is true has not yet been fully clarified. As a rule, most people visiting the memorial hear 2 versions from the guides, and they accept one or the other, depending, for example, on their personal attitude towards the Stalin regime. But it is better to build your own opinion, without personal emotions, because. the Soviet version also has a sufficient number of facts.

According to it, in late February or early March, the leadership of the USSR decided to send the cases of Polish officers prisoners of war for consideration to the Special Conference of the NKVD, which sentenced the prisoners to imprisonment for terms of 3 to 8 years in labor camps for special purposes. It should be noted that forcing prisoners of war officers to work is a violation of the Geneva Convention, so all this took place in secrecy. Captured Poles were taken to camps near Smolensk for the construction of roads between Smolensk and Minsk.

The Poles who were shot in Katyn were delivered to the Gnezdovo station by rail, where they were reloaded into covered buses and taken to the NKVD dacha.

There is also a "valley of death" in the Katyn memorial. This is a cemetery of Soviet people - "enemies of the people" and other "counter-revolutionary scum" (Earlier, this word could often be found in quite official documents, because the level of education of the "people's commissars" left much to be desired) innocent killed by the "communists". A cemetery without graves, just land on which excavations were not carried out, and the corpses were not exhumed. It is located behind such a small gate.

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Here, people simply put crosses anywhere, knowing that their relative was shot here, but no one knows exactly where the body is in the ground.

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But back to the Soviet version of the execution of the Poles. In special purpose camps, a stricter regime is observed, in particular, it is forbidden to correspond with relatives. This, according to supporters of the Soviet version, can explain why letters from Polish officers stopped reaching Poland. In August 1941, Smolensk was surrendered to the Nazi invaders, the Poles did not want to retreat with the Red Army, but hoped to return to their homeland with the arrival of the Germans, and thus the Poles fell into the hands of the Nazis. First, the Poles worked for the Germans, and then they shot them.

The technology of execution is the binding of hands with German twine (this is a recognized fact, but the question is why the NKVD needed to use German twine instead of the Russian rope. The German version explains this by “compromising” the Germans, but in 1940 Germany had not yet violated the Molotov Pact - Ribbentrop did not declare war on Russia. Then the NKVD had to predict a future war with Germany, the capture of Smolensk by the Germans and the discovery of the Katyn burials by them ... ..), a shot in the back of the head directly at the dug ditch, sometimes with raising the uniform, throwing a noose around the neck, using sawdust, inflicting wounds with a bayonet. Neither before nor after the assassination were Polish officers searched.

The Russian cemetery in Katyn is less equipped than the Polish one, and the memorial here is still only in the project. Here, only bulk wooden floorings have been made - paths along which visitors walk, and under them there may still be unexhumed burials.

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Memorial at the Russian cemetery - the fence was made according to the designers' idea in such a way that its borders could be expanded. It seems to symbolize the infinity of these crimes.

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Orthodox cross at the Russian cemetery.

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After the Red Army liberated Smolensk, a commission led by physician Nikolai Burdenko began to investigate the Katyn murders. According to the Soviet version, graves untouched by the Nazis were excavated in Katyn, where documents dated later than the spring of 1940 were found.

The result of the work of the Burdenko Commission was a document that blames the German occupiers for the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. The Germans, in 1943, attracted an entire international commission for the exhumation of bodies, one of the participants of which, the Czech Frantchisek Gaek, later wrote a whole article “Katyn Evidence”, where he refers to the fact that the state of the corpses, things of the dead indicates a later period of execution, t .e. not about the spring of 1940, but about the fall of 1941 or even later.

Now the main document for the recognition of the German version of the tragedy is Beria's note to Stalin.

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There, too, the Soviet version cites many inaccuracies, for example, the phrase "the NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary to propose the NKVD of the USSR", the absence of Kalinin and Kaganovich's signatures, and a host of other inconsistencies.

Speaking about the motives for the crime, supporters of the Soviet version believe that the Germans shot Polish officers due to the fact that peace was concluded between the USSR and the Polish government in exile in August 1941, and the Polish army of General Anders began to be formed in concert from among the amnestied Polish prisoners of war (amnestied all Polish citizens who were on the territory of the USSR).

Accordingly, Polish prisoners of war who fell into the hands of the Nazis could escape and take part in the war against Nazi Germany.

At the exit from the memorial there are 2 small expositions. The first of them is a museum of the political history of Russia. It is small, but some of the exhibits are quite interesting.

These are real drawings of Soviet children who, instead of the sun, the sea or the apple tree, painted portraits of tyrants, God save all subsequent generations of children from this.

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An excerpt from the Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper, you read and see how much "propaganda garbage" Soviet propaganda pushed into the heads of teenagers using the press.

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The words "scoundrel" and "scum" were quite often used in the official Soviet press, because it was necessary to clearly form an opinion among the masses - white or black and without any shades of gray. And propaganda also formed hatred for negative heroes, in the next clipping of the entire paragraph of the text and for “counter-revolutionary agitation” - it is difficult to understand the meaning of the phrase, the workers are already demanding to SHOT PEOPLE.

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The only thing left for the wives was to write letters to Comrade Stalin, which hardly any of the top leadership read at all.

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And here, in general, everything is simple and clear without further ado - after all, "brevity is the sister of talent."

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And this is the Seliger forum of that time.

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The second museum is also small, it presents some things of the Poles that were not taken to Warsaw to the Katyn Museum. Personal belongings - on the right are tongs, with which the captives pulled out their teeth.

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Military uniform of Polish officers of that time.

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Now, next to the memorial, a chapel has been built in memory of the people who found their death here.

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You can argue for a long time and give a bunch of facts about who is to blame for this tragedy. The only thing that is certain is that both Stalin and Hitler could have done it. The latter was ruthless and guilty of a heap of deaths of innocent civilian Jews, Russians, Poles and others, while the former even destroyed his own people in exiles and camps. About the German version, the Polish director Andrzej Wajda shot the film "Katyn" in 2007, it is generally not bad, although it smacks of propaganda, and of course not such an obvious propaganda din as the Russian "August 8" about the events in Georgia in 2008.

The following facts seem very strange to me personally: 1). The murder of Poles with German weapons (why would the NKVDists not use regular Nagans, and in general it is unlikely that the NKVD officers were armed with German "Walters"). 2). Why use a German tourniquet for the same reason. 3). If the Russians wanted to hide the truth like that, then why shoot officers in clothes, it would be more logical to do it in underwear and without documents, then it would be much easier to hide it.

Well, it's unlikely that anyone will ever know the truth. After all, this is the difference between “real truth” and “political” truth. "Political truth" is always written to please the interests of the current government. Well, everyone draws conclusions for himself.

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