The Germans themselves admitted that they shot the Poles at Katyn. YU

Katyn: Hitler’s provocation turned into a monstrous lie directed against Russia

The investigation into all the circumstances of the mass murder of Polish military personnel, which went down in history as the “Katyn massacre,” still causes heated discussions in both Russia and Poland.

According to the "official" modern version of the murder Polish officers- the work of the NKVD of the USSR.

However, back in 1943-1944. a special commission headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko came to the conclusion that the Polish soldiers were killed by the Nazis.

Despite the fact that the current Russian leadership agreed with the version of the “Soviet trace,” there are indeed a lot of contradictions and ambiguities in the case of the mass murder of Polish officers.

To understand who could have shot Polish soldiers, it is necessary to take a closer look at the investigation process of the Katyn massacre itself.

In March 1942, residents of the village of Kozyi Gory, in the Smolensk region, informed the occupation authorities about the site of a mass grave of Polish soldiers.

The Poles working in the construction platoon dug up several graves and reported this to the German command, but they initially reacted to the news with complete indifference.

The situation changed in 1943, when a turning point had already occurred at the front and Germany was interested in strengthening anti-Soviet propaganda. On February 18, 1943, German field police began excavations in the Katyn Forest.

A special commission was formed, headed by Gerhardt Butz, a professor at the University of Breslau, a “luminary” of forensic medicine, who during the war years served with the rank of captain as the head of the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center.

Already on April 13, 1943, German radio reported that the burial site of 10 thousand Polish officers had been found.

In fact, German investigators “calculated” the number of Poles who died in the Katyn Forest very simply - they took the total number of officers of the Polish army before the start of the war, from which they subtracted the “living” - the soldiers of Anders’ army.

All other Polish officers, according to the German side, were shot by the NKVD in the Katyn Forest. Naturally, it was not without the anti-Semitism inherent in the Nazis - the German media immediately reported that Jews took part in the executions.

On April 16, 1943, the Soviet Union officially denied the “slanderous attacks” Hitler's Germany. On April 17, the Polish government in exile turned to the Soviet government for clarification.

It is interesting that at that time the Polish leadership did not try to blame the Soviet Union for everything, but focused on the crimes of Nazi Germany against the Polish people. However, the USSR broke off relations with the Polish government in exile.

Joseph Goebbels, the “number one propagandist” of the Third Reich, managed to achieve even greater effect than he had originally imagined.

The Katyn massacre was presented by German propaganda as a classic manifestation of the “atrocities of the Bolsheviks.”

It is obvious that the Nazis, accusing the Soviet side of killing Polish prisoners of war, sought to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of Western countries.

The brutal execution of Polish prisoners of war, allegedly carried out by Soviet security officers, should, in the opinion of the Nazis, push the USA, Great Britain and the Polish government in exile away from cooperation with Moscow.

Goebbels succeeded in the latter - in Poland, many people accepted the version of the execution of Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD.

The fact is that back in 1940, correspondence with Polish prisoners of war who were in the territory stopped Soviet Union. Nothing more was known about the fate of the Polish officers.

At the same time, representatives of the United States and Great Britain tried to “hush up” the Polish issue, because they did not want to irritate Stalin during such a crucial period, when Soviet troops were able to turn the tide at the front.

To ensure a larger propaganda effect, the Nazis even involved the Polish Red Cross (PKK), whose representatives were associated with the anti-fascist resistance, in the investigation.

On the Polish side, the commission was headed by Marian Wodzinski, a physician from the University of Krakow, an authoritative person who participated in the activities of the Polish anti-fascist resistance.

The Nazis even went so far as to allow representatives of the PKK to the site of the alleged execution, where graves were being excavated.

The commission's conclusions were disappointing - the PKK confirmed the German version that the Polish officers were shot in April-May 1940, that is, even before the start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union.

On April 28-30, 1943, an international commission arrived in Katyn. Of course, this was a very loud name - in fact, the commission was formed from representatives of states occupied by Nazi Germany or that maintained allied relations with it.

As one would expect, the commission took Berlin's side and also confirmed that Polish officers were killed in the spring of 1940 by Soviet security officers.

Further investigative actions by the German side, however, were stopped - in September 1943, the Red Army liberated Smolensk.

Almost immediately after the liberation of the Smolensk region, the Soviet leadership decided on the need to conduct its own investigation to expose Hitler’s slander about the involvement of the Soviet Union in the massacres of Polish officers.

On October 5, 1943, a special commission of the NKVD and NKGB was created under the leadership of the People's Commissar state security Vsevolod Merkulov and Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Sergei Kruglov.

Unlike the German commission, the Soviet commission approached the matter in more detail, including organizing interrogations of witnesses. 95 people were interviewed.

As a result, interesting details emerged. Even before the start of the war, three camps for Polish prisoners of war were located west of Smolensk. They housed officers and generals of the Polish Army, gendarmes, police officers, and officials captured on Polish territory. Most of the prisoners of war were used for road work of varying degrees of severity.

When the war began, the Soviet authorities did not have time to evacuate Polish prisoners of war from the camps. So the Polish officers were already in German captivity, Moreover, the Germans continued to use the labor of prisoners of war on road and construction work.

In August - September 1941, the German command decided to shoot all Polish prisoners of war held in Smolensk camps.

The execution of the Polish officers was carried out directly by the headquarters of the 537th Construction Battalion under the leadership of Chief Lieutenant Arnes, Chief Lieutenant Rekst and Lieutenant Hott.

The headquarters of this battalion was located in the village of Kozyi Gory. In the spring of 1943, when a provocation against the Soviet Union was already being prepared, the Nazis rounded up Soviet prisoners of war to excavate graves and, after the excavations, removed from the graves all documents dated after the spring of 1940.

This is how the date of the supposed execution of Polish prisoners of war was “adjusted”. The Soviet prisoners of war who carried out the excavations were shot by the Germans, and local residents were forced to give testimony favorable to the Germans.

On January 12, 1944, a Special Commission was formed to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution of prisoners of war by Polish officers in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk).

This commission was headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Lieutenant General of the Medical Service Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, and included a number of prominent Soviet scientists.

It is interesting that the commission included the writer Alexei Tolstoy and Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia Nikolai (Yarushevich).

Although public opinion in the West by this time was already quite biased, nevertheless, the episode with the execution of Polish officers in Katyn was included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal. That is, Hitler Germany’s responsibility for committing this crime was actually recognized.

For many decades the Katyn massacre was forgotten, however, when in the late 1980s. The systematic “shaking” of the Soviet state began, the history of the Katyn massacre was again “refreshed” by human rights activists and journalists, and then by the Polish leadership.

In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev actually admitted the responsibility of the Soviet Union for the Katyn massacre.

From that time on, and for almost thirty years now, the version that Polish officers were shot by the NKVD of the USSR has become the dominant version. Even a “patriotic turn” Russian state in the 2000s did not change the situation.

Russia continues to “repent” for the crime committed by the Nazis, and Poland puts forward increasingly stringent demands for recognition of the execution in Katyn as genocide.

Meanwhile, many domestic historians and experts are expressing their point of view on the Katyn tragedy. Thus, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin in the book “Katyn. A lie that became history” draws attention to very interesting nuances.

For example, all the corpses found in burials in Katyn were dressed in Polish army uniforms with insignia. But until 1941, Soviet prisoner of war camps were not allowed to wear insignia. All prisoners were equal in status and could not wear cockades or shoulder straps.

It turns out that Polish officers simply could not have worn insignia at the time of death if they had actually been shot in 1940.

Since the Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention for a long time, keeping prisoners of war while retaining their insignia in Soviet camps was not allowed.

Apparently, the Nazis did not think through this interesting point and themselves contributed to exposing their lies - Polish prisoners of war were shot after 1941, but then the Smolensk region was occupied by the Nazis. Anatoly Wasserman also points out this circumstance, referring to the work of Prudnikova and Chigirin, in one of his publications.

Private detective Ernest Aslanyan draws attention to very interesting detail — Polish prisoners of war were killed with firearms manufactured in Germany. The NKVD of the USSR did not use such weapons.

Even if the Soviet security officers had German weapons at their disposal, they were by no means in the same quantity as was used in Katyn. However, this circumstance supports the version that the Polish officers were killed by the Soviet side, for some reason it is not considered. More precisely, this question, of course, was raised in the media, but the answers to it were given somewhat incomprehensible, notes Aslanyan.

The version about the use of German weapons in 1940 in order to “write off” the corpses of Polish officers as Nazis really seems very strange.

The Soviet leadership hardly expected that Germany would not only start a war, but would also be able to reach Smolensk. Accordingly, there was no reason to “expose” the Germans by shooting Polish prisoners of war with German weapons.

Another version seems more plausible - executions of Polish officers in the camps of the Smolensk region actually took place, but not at all on the scale that Hitler’s propaganda spoke of.

There were many camps in the Soviet Union where Polish prisoners of war were kept, but nowhere else were mass executions carried out.

What could force the Soviet command to arrange the execution of 12 thousand Polish prisoners of war in the Smolensk region? It is impossible to answer this question.

Meanwhile, the Nazis themselves could well have destroyed Polish prisoners of war - they did not feel any reverence for the Poles, and were not distinguished by humanism towards prisoners of war, especially towards the Slavs. Killing several thousand Poles was no problem at all for Hitler’s executioners.

However, the version of the murder of Polish officers by Soviet security officers is very convenient in the modern situation.

For the West, Goebbels’s propaganda is a wonderful way to once again “prick” Russia and blame Moscow for war crimes. For Poland and the Baltic countries, this version is another tool of anti-Russian propaganda and a way to achieve more generous funding from the United States and the European Union.

As for the Russian leadership, its agreement with the version of the execution of the Poles on the orders of the Soviet government is explained, apparently, by purely opportunistic considerations.

As “our answer to Warsaw,” we could raise the topic of the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Poland, of whom there were more than 40 thousand people in 1920. However, no one is addressing this issue.

A genuine, objective investigation into all the circumstances of the Katyn massacre is still waiting in the wings.

We can only hope that it will completely expose the monstrous slander against the Soviet country and confirm that the real executioners of Polish prisoners of war were the Nazis.

Ilya Polonsky

The case of the Katyn massacre still haunts researchers, despite the Russian side’s admission of guilt. Experts find many inconsistencies and contradictions in this case that do not allow them to make an unambiguous verdict.

Katyn tragedy: who shot the Polish officers?

Magazine: History from the “Russian Seven”, Almanac No. 3, autumn 2017
Category: Mysteries of the USSR
Text: Russian Seven

Strange haste

By 1940, up to half a million Poles found themselves in the territories of Poland occupied by Soviet troops, most of whom were soon liberated. But about 42 thousand officers of the Polish army, policemen and gendarmes, who were recognized as enemies of the USSR, continued to remain in Soviet camps.
Substantial part(from 26 to 28 thousand) prisoners were employed in road construction, and then transported to a special settlement in Siberia. Later, many of them would be liberated, some would form the “Anders Army”, others would become the founders of the 1st Army of the Polish Army.
However, the fate of approximately 14 thousand Polish prisoners of war held in the Ostashkov, Kozel and Starobelsk camps remained unclear. The Germans decided to take advantage of the situation by announcing in April 1943 that they had found evidence of the execution of several thousand Polish officers by Soviet troops in the forest near Katyn.
The Nazis quickly assembled an international commission, which included doctors from controlled countries, to exhume corpses from mass graves. In total, more than 4,000 remains were recovered, killed, according to the conclusion of the German commission, no later than May 1940 by the Soviet military, that is, when the area was still in the zone of Soviet occupation.
It should be noted that the German investigation began immediately after the disaster at Stalingrad. According to historians, this was a propaganda move in order to divert public attention from national shame and switch to the “bloody atrocity of the Bolsheviks.” According to Joseph Goebbels, this would not only damage the image of the USSR, but also lead to a break with the Polish authorities in exile and official London.

Not convinced

Of course, the Soviet government did not stand aside and initiated its own investigation. In January 1944, a commission led by the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Nikolai Burdenko, came to the conclusion that in the summer of 1941, due to the rapid advance of the German army, Polish prisoners of war did not have time to evacuate and were soon executed. To prove this version, Burdenko's commission testified that the Poles were shot from German weapons.
In February 1946, the Katyn tragedy became one of the cases that was investigated during the Nuremberg Tribunal. The Soviet side, despite providing arguments in favor of Germany's guilt, was nevertheless unable to prove its position.
In 1951, a special commission of the House of Representatives of Congress on the Katyn issue was convened in the United States. Its conclusion, based only on circumstantial evidence, declared the USSR guilty of the Katyn murder. As justification, in particular, the following signs were cited: USSR opposition to the investigation of the international commission in 1943, reluctance to invite neutral observers during the work of the Burdenko commission, except for correspondents, as well as the inability to present sufficient evidence of German guilt in Nuremberg.

Confession

For a long time, the controversy surrounding Katyn was not renewed, since the parties did not provide new arguments. Only during the years of perestroika did a Polish-Soviet commission of historians begin to work on this issue. From the very beginning of its work, the Polish side began to criticize the results of the Burdenko commission and, referring to the glasnost proclaimed in the USSR, demanded that Additional materials.
At the beginning of 1989, documents were discovered in the archives indicating that the affairs of the Poles were subject to consideration at a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR. From the materials it followed that the Poles held in all three camps were transferred to the disposal of the regional NKVD departments and then their names did not appear anywhere else.
At the same time, the historian Yuri Zorya, comparing the NKVD lists of those leaving the camp in Kozelsk with the exhumation lists from the German “White Book” on Katyn, discovered that these were the same people, and the order of the list of persons from the burials coincided with the order of the lists for dispatch.
Zorya reported this to KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, but he refused further investigation. Only the prospect of publishing these documents forced the USSR leadership in April 1990 to admit guilt for the execution of Polish officers.
“The identified archival materials in their entirety allow us to conclude that Beria, Merkulov and their henchmen were directly responsible for the atrocities in the Katyn Forest,” the Soviet government said in a statement.

Secret package

Until now, the main evidence of the guilt of the USSR is considered to be the so-called “package No. 1”, stored in the Special Folder of the Archive of the CPSU Central Committee. It was not made public during the work of the Polish-Soviet commission. The package containing materials on Katyn was opened by the Yeltsin Presidency on September 24, 1992, copies of the documents were handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa and thus saw the light of day.
It must be said that the documents from “package No. 1” do not contain direct evidence of the guilt of the Soviet regime and can only indirectly indicate it. Moreover, some experts, paying attention to a large number of discrepancies in these papers, calls them forgeries.
From 1990 to 2004, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation conducted its investigation into the Katyn massacre and still found evidence of the guilt of Soviet leaders in the deaths of Polish officers. During the investigation, surviving witnesses who testified in 1944 were interviewed. Now they stated that their testimony was false, as it was obtained under pressure from the NKVD.
Today the situation has not changed. Both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have repeatedly spoken out in support of the official conclusion about the guilt of Stalin and the NKVD. “Attempts to cast doubt on these documents, to say that someone falsified them, this is simply being frivolously done by those who are trying to whitewash the nature of the regime that Stalin created in a certain period in our country,” said Dmitry Medvedev.

Doubts remain

Nevertheless, even after the official recognition of responsibility by the Russian government, many historians and publicists continue to insist on the fairness of the conclusions of the Burdenko Commission. In particular, Viktor Ilyukhin, a member of the Communist Party faction, spoke about this. According to the parliamentarian, former employee The KGB told him about the fabrication of documents from “package No. 1”. According to supporters of the “Soviet version,” key documents of the Katyn affair were falsified in order to distort the role of Joseph Stalin and the USSR in the history of the 20th century.
Chief Researcher of the Institute Russian history RAS Yuri Zhukov questions the authenticity key document“package No. 1” - a note from Beria to Stalin, which reports on the plans of the NKVD regarding the captured Poles. “This is not Beria’s personal letterhead,” notes Zhukov. In addition, the historian draws attention to one feature of such documents, with which he has worked for more than 20 years. “They were written on one page, a page and one third at most. Because no one wanted to read long papers. So again I want to talk about the document that is considered key. It’s already four pages long!” - the scientist summarizes.
In 2009, on the initiative of independent researcher Sergei Strygin, an examination of Beria’s note was carried out. The conclusion was this: “The font of the first three pages is not found in any of the authentic NKVD letters of that period identified to date.” Moreover, three pages of Beria’s note were typed on one typewriter, and the last page on another.
Zhukov also draws attention to another oddity of the Katyn case. If Beria had received the order to shoot Polish prisoners of war, the historian suggests, he would probably have taken them further to the east, and would not have killed them here near Katyn, leaving such clear evidence of the crime.
Doctor of Historical Sciences Valentin Sakharov has no doubt that the Katyn massacre was the work of the Germans. He writes, “In order to create graves in the Katyn Forest for allegedly Polish citizens shot by the Soviet authorities, they dug up a lot of corpses at the Smolensk Civil Cemetery and transported these corpses to the Katyn Forest, which greatly outraged the local population.”
All the testimony that the German commission collected was extracted from the local population, Sakharov believes. In addition, the Polish residents called as witnesses signed documents in German, which they did not speak.
However, some documents that could shed light on the Katyn tragedy are still classified. In 2006, State Duma deputy Andrei Savelyev submitted a request to the archive service Armed Forces Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the possibility of declassifying such documents.
In response, the deputy was informed that “the expert commission of the Main Directorate of Educational Work of the Armed Forces Russian Federation produced expert assessment documents on the Katyn case, stored in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and concluded that it was inappropriate to declassify them.”
Recently, you can often hear the version that both the Soviet and German sides took part in the execution of the Poles, and the executions were carried out separately at different times.
This may explain the presence of two mutually exclusive systems of evidence. However, at the moment it is only obvious that the Katyn case is still far from being resolved.

Why did the USSR and Poland exchange territories in 1951?

The “case of the Katyn execution” will dominate Russian-Polish relations for a very long time, causing serious passions among historians and 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 history requires a cool head and prudence, but our contemporaries often lack both.

Relations between Russia and Poland have not been smooth and good neighborly for centuries. Decay Russian Empire, which allowed Poland to regain 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 Western Ukraine And Western Belarus, but also to capture up to 200,000 Soviet soldiers.

They don’t like to talk about the future 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 appalling conditions of detention and abuse of the Poles.

Unfriendly relations between the Soviet Union and Poland ended in September 1939, when, after Germany attacked Poland, the Red Army occupied the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, reaching the so-called “Curzon Line” - the border that was supposed to become the dividing line of the Soviet and Polish states according to proposal 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 dangerous.

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

As a result, just under 42,000 soldiers and officers of the Polish army, police, and gendarmes remained in Soviet camps, who were considered “inveterate enemies” Soviet power».

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, and 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.

Doctor Goebbels' cunning plan

The first to break the silence were the Nazis, who in April 1943 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 Polish prisoners to the Katyn Forest, who were never seen alive again.

The beginning of Hitler's investigation into the Katyn massacre coincided with the end Battle of Stalingrad- The Nazis needed a reason to divert attention from their military disaster. It was for this reason that the investigation into the “bloody crime of the Bolsheviks” was launched.

Calculation Joseph Goebbels was not only aimed at causing, as they now say, damage to the image of the USSR. The news of the destruction of Polish officers by the NKVD inevitably caused a rupture in relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government in exile located in London.

Employees of the USSR NKVD in the Smolensk region, witnesses and/or participants in the Katyn execution in the spring of 1940. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

And since official London stood behind the Polish émigré government, the Nazis cherished the hope of creating a quarrel not only between the Poles and Russians, but also Churchill with Stalin.

The Nazis' plan was partly justified. Head of the Polish government in exile Wladislaw Sikorski really became furious, broke off relations with Moscow and demanded a similar step from Churchill. However, on July 4, 1943, Sikorsky died in a plane crash near Gibraltar. Later in Poland a version would appear 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 proven

In October 1943, when the territory of the Smolensk region came under the control of Soviet troops, a Soviet commission began working on the site 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 Prisoners of War Polish Officers in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk) by the Nazi invaders,” which was headed by Chief Surgeon of the Red Army Nikolai Burdenko.

The commission came to the following conclusion: Polish officers who were in special camps in 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 massacres in the Katyn Forest. To prove this version, the “Burdenko commission” cited the results of an examination, which showed that the Poles were shot from German weapons. In addition, Soviet investigators found belongings and objects from the dead that indicated 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 took 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 executed at Katyn. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Package number 1

Over the next 40 years, the parties did not present any new arguments, 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 discovered in 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 responsibility for the shooting, 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 “package number 1”, stored in the secret Special Folder of the Archive of the CPSU Central Committee.

Meanwhile, researchers point out that the documents from “package number 1” have a huge number of inconsistencies that allow them to be considered a fake. A lot of documents of this kind allegedly testifying to the crimes of Stalinism appeared at the turn of the 1980-1990s, but most of them were exposed as fakes.

For 14 years, from 1990 to 2004, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office conducted an investigation into the “Katyn massacre” and ultimately came to the conclusion that Soviet leaders were guilty of the deaths of Polish officers. During the investigation, the surviving witnesses who testified in 1944 were again interrogated, and they stated that their evidence was false, given under pressure from the NKVD.

However, supporters of the version of “Nazi guilt” reasonably note that the investigation by the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office was carried out in the years when the thesis of “Soviet guilt for Katyn” was supported by the leaders of the Russian Federation, and therefore there is no need to talk about an impartial investigation.

Excavations in Katyn. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

“Katyn 2010” will be “hanged” on Putin?

The situation has not changed today. Because the Vladimir Putin And Dmitry Medvedev in one form or another 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 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 dwindling. Opponents of the State Duma’s decision of 2010 believe that it was caused not so much by objective facts, but by political expediency, the desire to use this step to improve relations with Poland.

International Memorial to the Victims political repression. Mass grave. Photo: www.russianlook.com

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

On the morning of April 10, 2010, a Tu-154M aircraft, on board 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 mourning events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the tragedy in Katyn.

Despite the fact that the investigation showed that the main cause of the plane crash was the mistaken decision of the pilots to land in bad weather conditions, caused by pressure from high-ranking officials on the crew, in Poland itself to this day there are many 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 surface, containing documents allegedly indicating that the plane of the Polish President was destroyed by FSB agents on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

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

During World War II, both sides of the conflict committed many crimes against humanity. Millions of civilians and military personnel died. One of the controversial pages of that history is the execution of Polish officers near Katyn. We will try to find out the truth, which was hidden for a long time by blaming others for this crime.

For more than half a century, the real events in Katyn were hidden from the world community. Today, information on the case is not secret, although opinions on this matter are ambiguous among historians and politicians, as well as among ordinary citizens who participated in the conflict between the countries.

Katyn massacre

For many, Katyn became a symbol of brutal murders. The shooting of Polish officers cannot be justified or understood. It was here, in the Katyn Forest in the spring of 1940, that thousands of Polish officers were killed. The mass murder of Polish citizens was not limited to this place. Documents were made public according to which, during April-May 1940, more than 20 thousand Polish citizens were exterminated in various NKVD camps.

The shooting in Katyn has long complicated Polish-Russian relations. Since 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the State Duma have recognized that the mass murder of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest was the activity of the Stalinist regime. This was made public in the statement “On the Katyn tragedy and its victims.” However, not all public and politicians in the Russian Federation they agree with this statement.

Captivity of Polish officers

Second World War for Poland began on September 1, 1939, when Germany entered its territory. England and France did not enter into conflict, awaiting the outcome of further events. Already on September 10, 1939, USSR troops entered Poland with the official goal of protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian population of Poland. Modern historiography calls such actions of aggressor countries the “fourth partition of Poland.” Red Army troops occupied the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. By decision, these lands became part of Poland.

The Polish military, defending their lands, could not resist the two armies. They were quickly defeated. Eight camps for Polish prisoners of war were created locally under the NKVD. They are directly related to the tragic event, called the “execution in Katyn”.

In total, up to half a million Polish citizens were captured by the Red Army, most of whom were eventually released, and about 130 thousand people ended up in camps. After a while, some of the ordinary military, natives of Poland, were sent home, more than 40 thousand were transported to Germany, the rest (about 40 thousand) were distributed among five camps:

• Starobelsky (Lugansk) - 4 thousand officers.
• Kozelsky (Kaluga) - 5 thousand officers.
• Ostashkovsky (Tver) - gendarmes and police officers in the amount of 4,700 people.
• allocated for road construction - 18 thousand privates.
• 10 thousand ordinary soldiers were sent to work in the Krivoy Rog basin.

By the spring of 1940, letters to relatives, which had previously been regularly transmitted through the Red Cross, stopped coming from prisoners of war in three camps. The reason for the silence of the prisoners of war was Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which connected the fates of tens of thousands of Poles.

Execution of prisoners

In 1992, a proposal document dated August 3, 1940 from L. Beria to the Politburo was made public, which discussed the issue of shooting Polish prisoners of war. The decision on capital punishment was made on March 5, 1940.

At the end of March, the NKVD completed the development of the plan. Prisoners of war from the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps were taken to Kharkov and Minsk. Former gendarmes and police officers from the Ostashkovsky camp were transported to the Kalinin prison, from which ordinary prisoners were taken in advance. Huge pits were dug not far from the prison (Mednoye village).

In April, prisoners began to be taken out for execution in groups of 350-400. Those sentenced to death assumed that they would be released. Many left in the carriages in high spirits, not even realizing that they would soon die.

How the execution at Katyn took place:

• the prisoners were tied up;
• they threw an overcoat over their heads (not always, only for those who were especially strong and young);
• led to a dug ditch;
• killed with a shot in the back of the head from a Walther or Browning.

It was the latter fact that for a long time indicated that German troops were guilty of crimes against Polish citizens.

Prisoners from the Kalinin prison were killed right in their cells.

From April to May 1940 the following were shot:

• in Katyn - 4421 prisoners;
• in the Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps - 10,131;
• in other camps - 7305.

Who was shot in Katyn? Not only career officers were executed, but also lawyers, teachers, engineers, doctors, professors and other representatives of the intelligentsia mobilized during the war.

"Missing" officers

When Germany attacked the USSR, negotiations began between the Polish and Soviet governments regarding joining forces against the enemy. Then they began to search for the officers taken to Soviet camps. But the truth about Katyn was still unknown.

None of the missing officers could be found, and the assumption that they escaped from the camps was unfounded. There was no news or mention of those who ended up in the camps mentioned above.

The officers, or rather their bodies, were found only in 1943. Mass graves of executed Polish citizens were discovered in Katyn.

Investigation of the German side

German troops were the first to discover mass graves in the Katyn Forest. They exhumed the excavated bodies and conducted their investigation.

The exhumation of the bodies was carried out by Gerhard Butz. International commissions were brought in to work in the village of Katyn, which included doctors from German-controlled European countries, as well as representatives of Switzerland and Poles from the Red Cross (Polish). Representatives of the International Red Cross were not present due to a ban by the USSR government.

The German report included the following information about Katyn (the execution of Polish officers):

• As a result of the excavations, eight mass graves were discovered, from which 4,143 people were removed and reburied. Most the dead were identified. In graves No. 1-7 people were buried in winter clothes (fur jackets, overcoats, sweaters, scarves), and in grave No. 8 - in summer clothes. Also in graves No. 1-7 were found newspaper scraps dating from April-March 1940, and there were no traces of insects on the corpses. This indicated that the execution of Poles in Katyn took place in the cool season, that is, in the spring.
• Many personal belongings were found with the dead; they indicated that the victims were in the Kozelsk camp. For example, letters from home addressed to Kozelsk. Many also had snuff boxes and other items with the inscription “Kozelsk”.
• Tree cuttings showed that they were planted on the graves about three years ago from the time of discovery. This indicated that the pits were filled in in 1940. At this time, the territory was under the control of Soviet troops.
• All Polish officers in Katyn were shot in the back of the head with German-made bullets. However, they were produced in the 20-30s of the XX century and were exported in large quantities in and the Soviet Union.
• The hands of those executed were tied with a cord in such a way that when trying to separate them, the noose was tightened even more. The victims from grave No. 5 had their heads wrapped so that when they tried to make any movement, the noose would strangle the future victim. In other graves, the heads were also tied, but only of those who stood out with sufficient physical strength. On the bodies of some of the dead, traces of a tetrahedral bayonet were found, like Soviet weapons. The Germans used flat bayonets.
• The commission interviewed local residents and found that in the spring of 1940, a large number of Polish prisoners of war arrived at the Gnezdovo station, who were loaded into trucks and taken towards the forest. The local residents never saw these people again.

The Polish commission, which was present during the exhumation and investigation, confirmed all German conclusions in this case, without finding any obvious traces of document fraud. The only thing the Germans tried to hide about Katyn (the execution of Polish officers) was the origin of the bullets used to carry out the killings. However, the Poles understood that representatives of the NKVD could also have similar weapons.

Since the autumn of 1943, representatives of the NKVD took up the investigation of the Katyn tragedy. According to their version, Polish prisoners of war were engaged in road work, and when the Germans arrived in the Smolensk region in the summer of 1941, they did not have time to evacuate them.

According to the NKVD, in August-September of the same year, the remaining prisoners were shot by the Germans. To hide traces of their crimes, representatives of the Wehrmacht opened the graves in 1943 and removed from them all documents dating from after 1940.

The Soviet authorities prepared a large number of witnesses to their version of events, but in 1990 the surviving witnesses retracted their testimony for 1943.

The Soviet commission, which carried out repeated excavations, falsified some documents, and completely destroyed some of the graves. But Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which haunted Polish citizens, nevertheless revealed its secrets.

Katyn case at the Nuremberg trials

After the war from 1945 to 1946. The so-called Nuremberg trials took place, the purpose of which was to punish war criminals. The Katyn issue was also raised at the trial. The Soviet side blamed German troops for the execution of Polish prisoners of war.

Many witnesses in this case changed their testimony; they refused to support the conclusions of the German commission, although they themselves took part in it. Despite all the attempts of the USSR, the Tribunal did not support the prosecution on the Katyn issue, which actually gave rise to the idea that Soviet troops were guilty of the Katyn massacre.

Official recognition of responsibility for Katyn

Katyn (the shooting of Polish officers) and what happened there has been reviewed by different countries many times. The United States conducted its investigation in 1951-1952; at the end of the 20th century, a Soviet-Polish commission worked on this case; since 1991, the Institute of National Remembrance was opened in Poland.

After the collapse of the USSR, the Russian Federation also took up this issue anew. Since 1990, a criminal investigation by the military prosecutor's office began. It received #159. In 2004, the criminal case was dropped due to the death of the accused.

The Polish side put forward a version of the genocide of the Polish people, but the Russian side did not confirm it. The criminal case on the fact of genocide was discontinued.

Today, the process of declassifying many volumes of the Katyn case continues. Copies of these volumes are transferred to the Polish side. The first important documents on prisoners of war in Soviet camps were handed over in 1990 by M. Gorbachev. The Russian side admitted that the Soviet government in the person of Beria, Merkulov and others was behind the crime in Katyn.

In 1992, documents on the Katyn massacre were made public, which were stored in the so-called Presidential Archive. Modern scientific literature recognizes their authenticity.

Polish-Russian relations

The issue of the Katyn massacre appears from time to time in Polish and Russian media. For Poles, it has significant significance in the national historical memory.

In 2008, a Moscow court rejected a complaint about the execution of Polish officers by their relatives. As a result of the refusal, they filed a complaint against the Russian Federation in Russia, which was accused of ineffective investigations, as well as of disdainful attitude towards close relatives of the victims. In April 2012, he qualified the execution of prisoners as a war crime, and ordered Russia to pay 10 of the 15 plaintiffs (relatives of 12 officers killed in Katyn) 5 thousand euros each. This was compensation for the plaintiffs' legal costs. It is difficult to say whether the Poles, for whom Katyn has become a symbol of family and national tragedy, achieved their goal.

Official position of the Russian authorities

Modern leaders of the Russian Federation, V.V. Putin and D.A. Medvedev, share the same point of view on the Katyn massacre. They made statements several times condemning the crimes of the Stalinist regime. Vladimir Putin even expressed his assumption, which explained Stalin's role in the murder of Polish officers. In his opinion, the Russian dictator thus took revenge for the defeat in 1920 in the Soviet-Polish war.

In 2010, D. A. Medvedev initiated the publication of classified documents Soviet time documents from “package No. 1” on the Rosarkhiv website. The Katyn massacre, the official documents of which are available for discussion, is still not fully resolved. Some volumes of this case still remain classified, but D. A. Medvedev told the Polish media that he condemns those who doubt the authenticity of the documents presented.

On November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted the document “On the Katyn Tragedy...”. This was opposed by representatives of the Communist Party faction. According to the accepted statement, the Katyn massacre was recognized as a crime that was committed on the direct orders of Stalin. The document also expresses sympathy for the Polish people.

In 2011, official representatives of the Russian Federation began to declare their readiness to consider the issue of rehabilitation of victims of the Katyn massacre.

Memory of Katyn

Among the Polish population, the memory of the Katyn massacre has always remained part of history. In 1972, a committee was created in London by Poles in exile, which began collecting funds for the construction of a monument to the victims of the massacre of Polish officers in 1940. These efforts were not supported by the British government, as they were afraid of the reaction of the Soviet government.

By September 1976, a monument was opened at the Gunnersberg cemetery, which is located west of London. The monument is a low obelisk with inscriptions on the pedestal. The inscriptions are made in two languages ​​- Polish and English. They say that the monument was built in memory of more than 10 thousand Polish prisoners in Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. They went missing in 1940, and part of them (4,500 people) were exhumed in 1943 near Katyn.

Similar monuments to the victims of Katyn were erected in other countries of the world:

• in Toronto (Canada);
• in Johannesburg (South Africa);
• in New Britain (USA);
• at the Military Cemetery in Warsaw (Poland).

The fate of the 1981 monument at the Military Cemetery was tragic. After installation, it was removed at night by unknown people using a construction crane and machines. The monument was in the form of a cross with the date “1940” and the inscription “Katyn”. Adjoining the cross were two pillars with the inscriptions “Starobelsk” and “Ostashkovo”. At the foot of the monument were the letters “V. P.”, meaning “Eternal Memory”, as well as the coat of arms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the form of an eagle with a crown.

The memory of the tragedy of the Polish people was well illuminated in his film “Katyn” by Andrzej Wajda (2007). The director himself is the son of Jakub Wajda, a career officer who was executed in 1940.

The film was shown in different countries, including in Russia, and in 2008 he was in the top five of the international Oscar award in the category for best foreign film.

The plot of the film is based on a story by Andrzej Mularczyk. The period from September 1939 to the autumn of 1945 is described. The film tells the story of the fate of four officers who ended up in a Soviet camp, as well as their close relatives who do not know the truth about them, although they guess the worst. Through the fate of several people, the author conveyed to everyone what the real story was.

“Katyn” cannot leave the viewer indifferent, regardless of nationality.

On March 5, 1940, the USSR authorities decided to apply the highest form of punishment to Polish prisoners of war - execution. This 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 entered into diplomatic relations with his newfound ally, the Polish government in exile. As part of the new treaty, all Polish prisoners of war, especially those captured in 1939 on the territory of the Soviet Union, were granted an amnesty and the right to free movement throughout the territory of the Union. The formation of Anders' army began. However, the Polish government was missing about 15,000 officers who, according to documents, were supposed to be in the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Yukhnovsky camps. To all the accusations of the Polish General Sikorski and General Anders of violating the amnesty agreement, Stalin replied that all the prisoners were released, but could escape to Manchuria. Subsequently, one of Anders’ subordinates described his alarm: “Despite the “amnesty”, Stalin’s own firm promise to return prisoners of war to us, despite his assurances that 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 above-mentioned camps. Questioning thousands of colleagues returning from camps and prisons, we have never heard any reliable confirmation of the whereabouts of the prisoners taken from those three camps.” He also owned the words spoken several years later: “Only in the spring of 1943 did it open to the world terrible secret, the world heard a word that still emanates horror: Katyn.”

re-enactment

As you know, the Katyn burial site was discovered by the Germans in 1943, when these areas were under occupation. It was the fascists who contributed to the “promotion” of the Katyn case. Many specialists were involved, the exhumation was carefully carried out, they even took local residents on excursions there. The unexpected discovery in the occupied territory gave rise to a version of a deliberate staging, which was supposed to serve as propaganda against the USSR during the Second World War. This became an important argument in accusing the German side. Moreover, there were many Jews on the list of those identified.
The details also attracted attention: V.V. Kolturovich from Daugavpils outlined his conversation with a woman who, together with fellow villagers, went to look at the opened graves: “I asked her: “Vera, what did people say to each other while looking at the graves?” The answer was as follows: “Our careless slobs can’t do that - it’s too neat a job.” Indeed, the ditches were perfectly dug under the cord, the corpses were laid out in perfect stacks. The argument, of course, is ambiguous, but we should not forget that according to the documents, the execution of such huge amount people were produced to the maximum short time. The performers simply did not have enough time for this.

Double jeopardy

At the famous Nuremberg Trials on July 1-3, 1946, the Katyn massacre was blamed on Germany and appeared in the indictment of the International Tribunal (IT) in Nuremberg, section III “War Crimes”, about 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 support the Soviet accusation, and the Katyn episode is absent from the tribunal’s verdict. All over the world this was perceived as a “tacit admission” by the USSR of its guilt.
Preparation and progress Nuremberg trials were accompanied by at least two events that compromised the USSR. On March 30, 1946, the Polish prosecutor Roman Martin, who allegedly had documents proving the guilt of the NKVD, died. Soviet prosecutor Nikolai Zorya also fell victim, who died suddenly 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, researcher on the Katyn issue Vladimir Abarinov in his work cites the following monologue from the daughter of an NKVD officer: “I’ll tell you what. The order regarding the Polish officers came directly from Stalin. My father said that he saw an authentic document with Stalin’s signature, what should he do? Put yourself under arrest? Or shoot yourself? My father was made a scapegoat for decisions made by others.”

Party of Lavrentiy Beria

The Katyn massacre cannot be blamed on just one person. However, the greatest role in this, according to archival documents, was played by Lavrentiy Beria, “Stalin’s right hand.” The leader’s daughter, 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 execution 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 manner, with application to them capital punishment punishment - execution." Reason: “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system.” Two days later, the Politburo issued a decree on the transport of prisoners of war and preparations for execution.
There is a theory about the forgery of Beria’s “Note”. Linguistic analyzes give different results, official version does not deny Beria's involvement. However, statements about the falsification of the “note” are still being made. The last one in 2010, addressed to Zyuganov, reported on the acquaintance of the author, a certain V.I. Ilyukhin, with the real author of the letter.

Frustrated hopes

At the beginning of 1940, the most optimistic mood was in the air among Polish prisoners of war in Soviet camps. Kozelsky and Yukhnovsky camps were no exception. The convoy treated foreign prisoners of war somewhat more leniently than its own fellow citizens. It was announced that the prisoners would be transferred to neutral countries. In the worst case, the Poles believed, they would be handed over to the Germans. Meanwhile, NKVD members arrived from Moscow and began work.
Before being sent to prisoners who sincerely believe that they are being sent to safe place, were vaccinated against typhoid and cholera - apparently to calm them down. Everyone received a packed lunch. But in Smolensk everyone was ordered to prepare to leave: “We have been standing on a siding in Smolensk since 12 o’clock. April 9, getting up in the prison cars and preparing to leave. We are being transported somewhere in cars, what next? Transportation in “crow” boxes (scary). We were taken somewhere in the forest, it looked like a summer cottage…” - this is the last entry in the diary of Major Solsky, who rests today in the Katyn forest. The diary was found during exhumation.

The downside of recognition

On February 22, 1990, the head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, V. Falin, informed Gorbachev about new archival documents found that confirm the guilt of the NKVD in the Katyn execution. Falin proposed to urgently formulate a new position of the Soviet leadership in relation to this case and inform the President of the Polish Republic, Wladimir Jaruzelski, about new discoveries in the matter of the terrible tragedy. On April 13, 1990, TASS published an official statement admitting the guilt of the Soviet Union in the Katyn tragedy. Jaruzelski received from Mikhail Gorbachev lists of prisoners being transferred 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 of the Katyn tragedy. This is what Valentin Alekseevich Alexandrov, a senior official of the CPSU Central Committee, told Nicholas Bethell: “We do not exclude 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 regarding Katyn. We in the Central Committee have received many letters from veterans’ organizations in which we are asked why we are defaming the names of those who were only doing their duty in relation to 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, total number which numbered about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the issue of the role of genocide in the Katyn tragedy. However, following the results of the case in 2004, it was announced that it was possible to establish the deaths of 1,803 officers, of whom 22 were identified. The Soviet leadership completely denied the genocide against the Poles. Prosecutor General Savenkov commented on this as follows: “during the preliminary investigation, at the initiative of the Polish side, the version of genocide was checked, and my firm statement is that there is no basis 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 Main Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, the Polish Sejm demanded recognition of the Katyn events as an act of genocide. Members of the Polish parliament sent a resolution to the Russian authorities, in which they demanded that Russia “recognize the murder of Polish prisoners of war as genocide” based on Stalin’s personal hostility towards the Poles due to defeat in the 1920 war. In 2006, relatives of the dead Polish officers filed a lawsuit in the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, with the aim of obtaining recognition of Russia in the genocide. The end to this pressing issue for Russian-Polish relations has not yet been reached.