Did the USSR shoot Polish officers in the Katyn forest? Two versions of one execution. The unfinished story of the Katyn tragedy

Issues of cultural studies and history

THE ALLEGED MYSTERY OF THE REASONS FOR THE EXECUTION OF POLISH OFFICERS IN KATYN IN MARCH 19401

I. I. Kaliganov

take up this topic I was prompted by a television program about the Katyn tragedy with the participation of such famous personalities as academician A. O. Chubaryan, film director N. S. Mikhalkov, political scientist V. M. Tretyakov and others. During the conversation between them, N. S. Mikhalkov’s question about motives for the shooting Polish officers- a question left unanswered. Indeed, why was it necessary to destroy the Polish command staff just on the eve of the war with the Germans? Does this look reasonable if just a little more than a year after the Katyn tragedy in the USSR, entire divisions began to be created from Polish prisoners of war to fight the Nazi invaders? Why was it necessary to commit such an atrocity in the complete absence of visible reasonable reasons? According to the interlocutors of the program, there is a certain mystery in this... But, in our opinion, there was nothing mysterious here. Everything becomes immediately clear if you briefly immerse yourself in the events of those years and the political atmosphere of that time, if you analyze the ideology of the totalitarian Bolshevik state of the 20s - mid-50s of the XX century.

The topic of Katyn is not new to me: in what I read to students of the State Academy Slavic culture(GASK) course of lectures “Introduction to Slavic Studies” includes a section “Painful points of relations between the Slavs”, in which the Katyn execution of Polish officers is given a mandatory place. And our students themselves, who have visited Poland, as a rule, ask about Katyn, wanting to find out additional details. But most Russians know almost nothing about the Katyn tragedy. Therefore, here, first of all, it is necessary to provide a brief historical background on how Polish officers ended up in Katyn, how many of them were shot there and when the above-mentioned outrageous crime was committed. Unfortunately, our newspapers, magazines and television often report superficial, very contradictory information, and people often have the misconception that captured Polish officers were imprisoned in the Katyn camp and were executed due to the approach of German troops, with the total number of Polish officers executed being 10 or even 20 thousand people. There are still some voices that the perpetrators of the death of the Polish military personnel have not been definitively established and that they could have been the Nazis, who then tried to blame the USSR for their own atrocity. That is why we will try here to present the materials sequentially, without disturbing the order of events and using, if possible, accurate facts and figures, delving not only into the essence of them themselves, but also into the emotional, state and universal meaning that they carry.

After the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak of World War II, unleashed on September 1, 1939 by Germany’s attack on Poland, German troops, having broken the heroic resistance of the enemy in two weeks (more precisely, in 17 days), occupied most of the ancestral Polish lands, then forcing Poles to surrender. The USSR did not come to the aid of Poland: its proposal to the Polish side to conclude a cooperation agreement on the eve of World War II was rejected. Poland participated in negotiations with Hitler to conclude a treaty directed against the USSR; earlier it stated that it would not allow the transit of Soviet troops through its territory to provide possible assistance to potential Soviet allies in Europe. This contributed in part to the Munich Agreement of 1938, the subsequent dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the absorption of Czech lands by Germany, and the territorial gains of Poland itself. Events of this kind clearly did not contribute to good neighborly relations between Poland and the USSR, and formed among the Russians a feeling of hostility or even hostility towards the Poles. This feeling was also fueled by memories that had not yet been erased from the memory of the recent Soviet-Polish war of 1918-1921, the encirclement of the Red Army near Warsaw, the captivity of 130 thousand Red Army soldiers, who were then placed in the terrible camps of Pulawy, Dombio, Shchelkovo and Tucholi, from which home Only a little more than half of the prisoners returned2.

In Soviet propaganda, Poland appeared with stable epithets “bourgeois” or “gentleman”. The last word was heard by almost every Russian: everyone knew and sang a patriotic song with the lines “The chieftain dogs remember, the Polish gentlemen remember our cavalry blades.” In the song, “lords” were placed on a par with the chieftain dogs, and the word “dogs” in Russia firmly stuck to the German knights of the Teutonic Order, who stubbornly strived in the 13th - early 15th centuries. to the Slavic east (the stable expression “knight dogs”). In the same way, the word “pan” in Russian does not, like the Poles, have the harmless respectful-neutral meaning “master.” It has acquired additional, mainly negative connotations, which are attributed to those who are not actually called that, but are called names. “Pan” is a person of a specific leaven that has a whole set of negative qualities: arrogant, wayward, arrogant, spoiled, pampered, etc. And, of course, this person is not at all poor (it’s hard to imagine a gentleman in holey trousers), that is, she is a rich, bourgeois person, far from the “thin, hunchbacked” working class - a collective image from the poetry of V. Mayakovsky. Thus, in the consciousness of Soviet people of the 20s - 40s of the XX century. an unflattering evaluative cliché was built up for the Poles: Poland is lordly, bourgeois, hostile and aggressive, like chieftain dogs and German knight dogs.

No one doubted Poland’s aggressiveness in the then USSR. After all, just about twenty years ago, taking advantage of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the turmoil that set in Russia after the Bolshevik coup of 1917, the Poles not only revived their statehood - they then rushed east to Ukraine and Belarus, trying to restore the unjust borders of the Polish state 1772 d. This caused, as is known, the Soviet-Polish war

1918-1921, during which the Poles captured a significant part of Belarus and right-bank Ukraine, along with Kiev, but were then driven back by the Red Army, which drove the interventionists all the way to Warsaw. However, according to the Treaty of Riga of 1921, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus remained with Poland, which was perceived by Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians themselves living in the USSR as a historical injustice. The division of peoples by artificial political boundaries is always perceived as unjust and illogical, as a kind of historical absurdity that must be eliminated at the first opportunity. This is what the Ukrainians and Belarusians thought, and so did the Russian people, who felt a sense of class solidarity and were absolutely confident that the Polish bourgeois “lords” were oppressing the unfortunate Ukrainian and Belarusian poor. Therefore, at 3 a.m. from September 16 to 17, 1939, after the Germans had almost completely completed their task in Poland, the USSR made its move, beginning to send its troops into the territory of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and entering Polish soil itself. On the Soviet side, a total of 600 thousand people, about 4 thousand tanks, 2 thousand aircraft and 5,500 guns were involved.

The Polish army offered armed resistance to the Red Army: battles took place in Grodno, near Lvov, Lublin, Vilno, Sarny and other settlements3. Moreover, captured Polish officers were shot. This happened in Augustovets, Boyars, Maly and Bolshie Brzostovitsy, Khorodov, Dobrovitsy, Gayi, Grabov, Komarov, Lvov, Molodechno, Svisloch, Zlochov and other areas. 13 hours after the start of the process of introducing Soviet troops (i.e. at 16:00 hours on September 17), the commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces, Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly issued a general directive calling not to resist the advancing units of the Red Army4. Some Polish units, however, did not obey the directive and continued to fight until October 1 inclusive. In total, according to the speech of V. M. Molotov on October 31, 1939, 3.5 thousand military personnel were killed on the Polish side, about 20 thousand people were wounded or went missing. Soviet losses amounted to 737 killed and 1,862 wounded5. In some places, Ukrainians and Belarusians greeted the Red Army soldiers with flowers: some of the people, intoxicated by Soviet propaganda, hoped for a new, better life.

In Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, by September 21, the Soviet army captured about 120 thousand soldiers and officers of the Polish Army. About 18 thousand people made their way to Lithuania, over 70 thousand to Romania and Hungary. Some of the prisoners consisted of Polish military personnel who retreated from Poland under the rapid onslaught of the Germans here, to the eastern lands of their then state. According to Polish sources, 240-250 thousand soldiers and officers of the Polish Army were captured by the Russians6. Some discrepancies in estimating the number of Polish prisoners of war arise as a result of the use of different counting methods and the fact that later, even before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Germany and the USSR exchanged part of the Polish military and civilians who, as a result of hostilities, found themselves far from their place of origin. permanent

accommodation. The Soviet side managed to transfer about 42.5 thousand Poles to Germany, and Germany in response was three times less: about 14 thousand people.

Naturally, leaving an impressive number of foreign prisoners of war in its border zone, which actually turned out to be Western Ukraine and Western Belarus for the USSR, would be reckless from the point of view of national security. Therefore, the Soviet authorities undertook what any state would have done in such a situation: dispersing the mass of prisoners of war through their internment in various parts of the country. At the same time, some of the captured Poles were released after interrogation by NKVD officers to their homeland, and representatives of the top, middle and lower command staff of the Polish Army were sent to various prisoner of war camps. The same thing happened to officers, chiefs and employees of the Polish police, intelligence officers, commanders and guards of prisons and some other officials.

The transfer of Polish senior, senior and junior officers from the border regions to other regions of the USSR was carried out from October 3, 1939 to January 1940.7 The most elite was the prisoner of war camp in Kozelsk, located 250 km southeast of Smolensk and belonging to the department of Smolensk regional NKVD. About 4.7 thousand Poles were stationed here, among whom there were many high-ranking officers and mobilized reserve officers, who in civilian life had purely humanitarian professions of doctors, teachers, engineers, and writers. The attitude towards prisoners of war in this camp was quite tolerable: generals and colonels (4 generals, 1 admiral and 24-26 colonels)8 were housed several people in rooms separate from the bulk of the camp prisoners, they were allowed to have orderlies. The diet was quite satisfactory, as was the medical care. Prisoners could send letters to their homeland, and the cessation of their correspondence with relatives and loved ones in Poland made it possible to date the Katyn tragedy to approximately the end of April 1940.9 The second camp for Polish senior and junior officers was located in the Starobelsk region in a former convent and was subordinate to the NKVD of the then Voroshilovgrad ( Lugansk, now Kharkov) region. 3.9 thousand Polish prisoners of war were stationed here (including 8 generals, 57 colonels, 130 lieutenant colonels and other lower rank officials1"). Conditions in this camp were somewhat worse compared to the camp in Kozelsk, but also quite tolerable No one mocked the prisoners, no one beat them regularly, no one forced them to fall face down in the dirt countless times during “walks” and then deprive them of washing for a whole month, no one deprived them medical care, as was the case with the Red Army soldiers in Polish camps in the 20s of the 20th century.

Even in located on the territory former monastery Nilova Pustyn (Stolbny Island on Lake Seliger) In the Ostashkov camp, where about 6 thousand Polish junior officers of the army, police and gendarmerie were stationed, as well as prison guards and privates11 and the living conditions were the worst, everything was not so bad. Judging by the Poles' own testimony,

“The administrative staff, especially doctors and nurses, treated the prisoners humanely”12.

Further, we will not delve into the details of how difficult it was to find the truth about the terrible Katyn tragedy, about the endless denials of the Soviet side, which continued to blame the Germans for everything for almost half a century. The motives for these denials are numerous and varied enough to cover them here. Let us only note that the main ones were, at first, the reluctance to darken relations with the allies during the Second World War, then to undermine “fraternal ties with friendly Poland, which has moved along the path of building socialism,” and subsequently, attempts to rehabilitate the name of Stalin, which, unfortunately, are gradually being undertaken , and to this day. In our case, more important is the fact that Russia officially recognized the guilt of the USSR in the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. Deny the fact of the Katyn execution after April 13, 1990, when USSR President M. S. Gorbachev handed over to the then President of the Republic of Poland W. Jaruzelski full list the names of the Poles taken from Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk to the place of execution are simply meaningless13. A year and a half later, on October 14, 1992, the Russian side handed over to Poland a new package of documents and a “special folder” that had been stored in the archives of the CPSU Central Committee for many decades. It contained information of particular importance classified as “Top Secret”: an extract from Protocol No. 13 of March 5, 1940, drawn up at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, with the strokes of I. V. Stalin,

V. M. Molotov and K. E. Voroshilov. With these flourishes, the leaders of the USSR approved the “examination in a special order” of the cases of 14,700 former officers of the Polish army and other military personnel, i.e., they pronounced the sentence “execution” at the suggestion of the NKVD. Recently, the Russian government handed over to Poland a new multi-volume package of documents related to the death of the Poles in the USSR, which certainly contain a lot of new declassified data that can shed additional light on the topic we are considering.

But the essence is no longer in doubt: the Polish officers were shot not by the Nazis, but by the executioners of the Stalin-Beria NKVD. It remains to answer the question of what made Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov give such a monstrous order. There are several versions here.

The first version, supported by Polish radicals and Russophobes: Stalin's genocide of the Polish people. Particular attention is paid to the fact that among the executed prisoners of the three camps there were more than 400 doctors, several hundred engineers, more than 20 university professors and many teachers. In addition, 11 generals and 1 admiral, 77 colonels and 197 lieutenant colonels, 541 majors, 1,441 captains, 6,061 other junior officers and sub-officers, as well as 18 chaplains were shot. Thus, supporters of this version conclude, the Russians destroyed the Polish military and civilian elite.

However, this point of view is untenable, since genocide usually applies to the entire people, and not just to some part of its social elite. In August 1941, Polish pilots and sailors were transported to England.

At the end of October 1941, a Polish contingent began to form on the territory of the USSR, numbering 41.5 thousand people and increasing by March 1942 to almost 74 thousand people. The Polish emigration government in London proposed increasing the strength of the Polish corps to 96 thousand people15. At the head of this, in fact, army was a Pole, General Vladislav Anders - a graduate of the St. Petersburg Page Corps, who served in the Russian tsarist army in the First World War. However, the Soviet command was in no hurry to give the Poles weapons. Vladislav Anders was captured by the Red Army near Novo-Grudok, where he offered fierce resistance to the Germans and Russians. Long time he was in an NKVD prison and how he could behave in the future, having received command of an almost hundred thousand Polish army on the territory of the USSR, was not entirely clear. Therefore, by September 1, 1942, General Anders’ army was evacuated to Iran, from where it was transported to Africa to fight the British against the Germans.

Version two: the execution of Polish officers is Russian revenge for the defeat near Warsaw and the inhumane treatment of captured Red Army soldiers in Polish camps. It seems that this is exactly the version outlined by Polish Colonel Sigmund Berling, who refused to go with Anders to Iran and led the Polish soldiers and officers who remained in the USSR. Later, he wrote the following in his diary: “...hopeless, stupid resistance and an irreconcilably hostile attitude towards the USSR, which has its origins in the past... will in the future become the direct causes of the decision of the Soviet authorities, which led to the terrible (Katyn) tragedy”16. The following fact would seem to speak about the Russians’ irritation and sense of vindictiveness towards the Poles. In September 1939, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.P. Potemkin handed over to the Polish Ambassador in Moscow

formation of the Polish state as such17. The embitterment of Stalin and his entourage was probably caused by the data Soviet intelligence about the formation by the Germans in occupied Poland separate brigade Podhale Riflemen to send them to Finland and participate in the war against the Red Army. The order to form a Polish brigade appeared on February 9, 1940, and only the truce concluded between the USSR and Finland on March 13 of the same year thwarted these plans18. Let us recall that the order of the Big Three to shoot Polish officers dates back to March 5, 1940. It is unlikely that this close chronological sequence of the events we mentioned was of a random nature.

The third version we would like to propose: totalitarian class “sanitation”. Execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, in internal prison The Kharkov NKVD and other places was an elementary “purge”, characteristic of totalitarian states of that time. Although previous version seems very plausible and emotions when the “Big Red Three” signed execution orders for the Poles could have played some role, they were by no means the main reason for it. The postulate “the idea is everything, and man is nothing” was proclaimed as the main credo of Bolshevik totalitarianism.

According to him, the multimillion-dollar human mass is just construction material, a significant part of which must inevitably go to waste. After the October Revolution of 1917, during civil war in Russia, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, with incredible cruelty exterminated 100 thousand Orthodox priests, shot 54 thousand officers, 6 thousand teachers, almost 9 thousand doctors, about 200 thousand workers and over 815 thousand peasants19. In the 30s of the XX century. under Stalin, the terrible “Red Wheel” of terror again rolled through Soviet cities and villages, smearing millions of people like unnecessary insects hindering the movement forward. The edge of this terrible “Red Wheel” passed in 1940 among the Poles who fell within its reach.

The execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest cannot be regarded as petty revenge for the Red Army soldiers who died in Polish captivity. The Bolsheviks treated them as waste material needed for the construction of the world dictatorship of the proletariat. This execution was obviously of a class nature and represented a preventive class “sanitation” for the future unhindered construction of socialism in People’s Poland. Stalin and his entourage had no doubt that the Red Army would win a quick victory over Nazi Germany. The USSR surpassed Germany in the number of weapons and human resources. The provision that the Red Army would fight with small forces and defeat the enemy on foreign territory appeared in its military regulations. And Poland, of course, after the victory of the USSR should have been one of the first to join the future World Communist Community. The reality of World War II overturned Stalin's sweet dreams. Victory over fascism was won, but at the cost of a sea of ​​blood and the lives of tens of millions of Soviet people.

Returning to the moral lessons of Katyn, first of all it is necessary to pay tribute to the memory of all the Poles who were innocently killed there and in other places. This fact is one of the most tragic in the history of Russian-Polish relations. But are they “Russians”? Unfortunately, many, following the Polish Russophobes, begin to repeat the artificial oppositions they use: “Poland and Russia”, “Polish-Russian war of 1918-1921”, “Poles and Russians”. In these oppositions, the national moment has no right to exist: not “Poland and Russia”, but “Poland and Soviet Russia”, not “Polish-Russian war”, but “Polish-Soviet war”. The same applies to the execution in Katyn, where the opposition “Poles-Russians” should not take place (it arises in the minds of the Poles and involuntarily, since the Polish word “gs^ashp” (Russian) coincides with the meaning of our word “Russian”) , Bolshevik totalitarianism, unlike German fascism, did not have national character. The construction of the giant punitive “Red Wheel” was international. It was attended by the founder of “red terrorism”, it is unclear who Lenin’s nationality was, a kind of Swedish-Jewish-Kalmyk-Russian individual (see the publication about the national roots of Lenin in “Ogonyok” from the time of V. Korotich). In any case, he did not feel like a Russian, because it is impossible to imagine that atheists, a Jew, a Tatar or a Bashkir, would be capable of giving a secret order to exterminate 100 thousand people.

rabbis or muezzins, of course, if he is not crazy or a pathological murderer-maniac. Lenin's work was continued and multiplied by the Georgians Stalin and Beria, under whom the number of those killed and tortured went into the millions. The head of the Cheka and the deputy also performed excellently in this field. Chairman of the Cheka, the Poles F.E. Dzerzhinsky and I.S. Unshlikht2", the Jews L. Trotsky and J. Sverdlov, the Latvians M.I. Latsis and P.Ya. Peters did not lag behind them. The famous troika of Russian executioners N.I. Yezhov,

V.S. Abakumov and V.N. Merkulov, in comparison with the previous defendants, are only their pathetic followers. We should not forget the fact that it was the Russians who suffered the most numerous losses from the “Red Wheel”. Next to the eight Katyn ditches, where the remains of 4,200 Polish officers rest, there are mass graves of Russians, Ukrainians and Jews executed by Beria’s executioners. Therefore, Polish Russophobes have no real arguments to accuse the Russians of the genocide of the Poles or Polonophobia. It would be better for Poles and Russians to fight for the construction of a magnificent memorial complex in Moscow, dedicated to the millions of people and entire nations who suffered from Bolshevik totalitarianism.

2 Kaliganov II. II. Russia and the Slavs today and tomorrow (Polish and Czech perspectives) // Slavic world in the third millennium. Slavic identity - new factors of solidarity. M., 2008. pp. 75-76.

4 Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. Documents and materials. M., 1997. P. 65.

5 O foreign policy Soviet Union // Bolshevik. 1939. No. 20. P. 5.

6 Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 15.

7 Katyn drama: Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. The fate of interned Polish soldiers / comp. and general ed. O. V. Yasnova. M., 1991. S. 21-22.

8 Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 435; Ezhevsky L. Katyn, 1940. Riga, 1990.

9 Ezhevsky L. Katyn, 1940. P. 18.

10 Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 437.

11 Ibid. P. 436.

12 2bgos1sha Kaig^ka \y otstye s1okitep1b\y. L., 1962. 8. 15-16; Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 521.

13 Katyn drama: Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. P. 16. The burial places of all executed Polish officers have not yet been established. As for Katyn, the tragedy occurred near Smolensk in the Kozye Gory (according to another vowel “Kosogory”, see: Ezhevsky L. Op. op. p. 16) in the Katyn forest, which once belonged to Polish landowners, and then came under the jurisdiction of the NKVD , after which it was surrounded by barbed wire and made inaccessible to unauthorized persons. In addition to the three camps mentioned, Polish prisoners of war were kept in Putivlsky, Kozelytsansky (in the Poltava region), Yuzhsky, Yukhnovsky, Vologda (Zaonikeevsky), Gryazovetsky and Oransky

camps. In addition, over 76 thousand refugees and defectors from Poland were accommodated in the Krasnoyarsk and Altai territories. Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Gorky, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Chelyabinsk and Yakutsk regions, as well as in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The vast majority of them remained alive and returned home at the end of the war (see: Katyn. March 1940 - September 2000. Execution. Fates of the living. Echo of Katyn. Documents. M., 2001. P. 41).

14 Ibid. P. 25; Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 521.

15 Parsadanova V.S. On the history of soldiers and officers of the Polish Army interned in the USSR // Soviet Slavonic Studies. M., 1990. No. 5. P. 25.

16 Berling Z. Wspomnienia. Warszawa, 1990. T. 1. Z largow do Andersa. S. 32.

18 Katyn drama: Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. P. 31.

19 Kaliganov II. II. Bolshevik Russia in Bulgarian marginal literature of the 20-40s of the XX century. // Bulgaria and Russia (XVIII-XX centuries). Mutual knowledge. M., 2010. P. 107.

20 The international character of the command staff of the NKVD workers is clearly visible in the history of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, built by the hands of prisoners. See: White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin: History of construction, 1931-1934. / ed. M. Gorky, JI. Averbakh, S. Firina. M., 1998. (Reprint of the 1934 edition). S. 72, 157, 175, 184, 325, 340, 358, 373, etc.

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 the murder of Polish officers was 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 inherent anti-Semitism of the Nazis - German means mass media they immediately reported that Jews took part in the executions.

On April 16, 1943, the Soviet Union officially denied the “slanderous attacks” of Nazi 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 on the territory of the Soviet Union ceased. 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 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 herded Soviet prisoners of war to excavate graves and, after the excavations, removed from the graves all documents dating back to later than spring 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 German fascist invaders in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk) prisoners of war of Polish officers.

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 is putting forward more and more strict requirements recognition of the Katyn massacre 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 they themselves contributed to the exposure of 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 a very interesting detail - Polish prisoners of war were killed from firearms, made 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.

Concerning Russian leadership, then his 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 Soviet country and confirm that the real executioners of Polish prisoners of war were the Nazis.

Ilya Polonsky

What is meant by the term “Katyn crime”? The term is collective. We are talking about the execution of about twenty-two thousand Poles who had previously been in various prisons and camps of the NKVD of the USSR. The tragedy happened in April-May 1940. Polish policemen and officers who were captured by the Red Army in September 1939 were shot.

The prisoners of the Starobelsky camp were killed and buried in Kharkov; prisoners of the Ostashkovsky camp were shot in Kalinin and buried in Medny; and the prisoners of the Kozelsky camp were shot and buried in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk, at a distance of two km from Gnezdovo station). As for the prisoners from prisons in the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine, there is reason to believe that they were shot in Kharkov, Kyiv, Kherson, and Minsk. Probably in other places of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR, which have not yet been established.

Katyn is considered one of the execution sites. This is a symbol of the execution to which the above-mentioned groups of Poles were subjected, since the graves of Polish officers were discovered in Katyn (in 1943). For the next 47 years, Katyn was the only identified location where a mass grave of victims was found.

What preceded the shooting

The Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (a non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR) was concluded on August 23, 1939. The presence of a secret protocol in the pact indicated that these two countries had delimited their spheres of interest. For example, the USSR was supposed to get the eastern part of pre-war Poland. And Hitler, with the help of this pact, got rid of the last obstacle before attacking Poland.

On September 1, 1939, World War II began with the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland. During the bloody battles of the Polish army with the aggressor, the Red Army invaded (September 17, 1939). Although Poland signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR. The Red Army operation was declared by Soviet propaganda as a “liberation campaign in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine.”

The Poles could not have foreseen that the Red Army would also attack them. Some even believed that Soviet troops were brought in to fight the Germans. Because of Poland's desperate situation in that situation, the Polish commander-in-chief had no choice but to issue an order not to fight with Soviet army, and to resist only when the enemy tries to disarm Polish units.

As a result, only a few Polish units fought the Red Army. At the end of September 1939, Soviet soldiers captured 240-250 thousand Poles (among them officers, soldiers, border guards, police, gendarmes, prison guards, and so on). It was impossible to provide so many prisoners with food. For this reason, after disarmament took place, some non-commissioned officers and privates were released home, and the rest were transferred to prisoner of war camps of the NKVD of the USSR.

But there were too many prisoners in these camps. Therefore, many privates and non-commissioned officers left the camp. Those who lived in territories captured by the USSR were sent home. And those who were from the territories occupied by the Germans, according to the agreements, were transferred to Germany. Polish military personnel captured by the German army were transferred to the USSR: Belarusians, Ukrainians, residents of the territory that was transferred to the USSR.

The exchange agreement also affected civilian refugees who ended up in territories occupied by the USSR. People could turn to the German commission (they operated in the spring of 1940 on the Soviet side). And the refugees were allowed to return to permanent place residence on Polish territory occupied by Germany.

Non-commissioned officers and privates (approximately 25,000 Poles) remained in captivity of the Red Army. However, NKVD prisoners included not only prisoners of war. Mass arrests were carried out due to political motives. Members injured public organizations, political parties, large landowners, industrialists, businessmen, border violators and other “enemies of Soviet power.” Before the sentences were passed, those arrested spent months in prisons in the western BSSR and Ukrainian SSR.

On March 5, 1940, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to shoot 14,700 people. This number included officials, Polish officers, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, jailers and siege officers. It was also decided to destroy 11,000 prisoners from the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine, who were allegedly counter-revolutionary spies and saboteurs, although in fact this was not the case.

Beria, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, wrote a note to Stalin that all these people should be shot, because they are “inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power.” This was the final decision of the Politburo .

Execution of prisoners

Polish prisoners of war and prisoners were executed in April-May 1940. Prisoners from the Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky camps were sent in stages of 100 people under the command of the NKVD departments in the Kalinin, Smolensk and Kharkov regions, respectively. People were shot as new stages arrived.

At the same time, prisoners of prisons in the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine were shot.

Those 395 prisoners who were not included in the execution order were sent to the Yukhnovsky camp ( Smolensk region). Later they were transferred to the Gryazovets camp (Vologda region). At the end of August 1941, prisoners formed the Polish Army in the USSR.

Through a short time After the execution of prisoners of war, the NKVD carried out an operation: the families of those repressed were deported to Kazakhstan.

Consequences of the tragedy

Throughout the entire time after the terrible crime occurred, the USSR tried to do everything possible to shift its blame onto German army. Allegedly, it was German soldiers who shot Polish prisoners and prisoners. Propaganda worked with all its might, there was even “evidence” of this. At the end of March 1943, the Germans, together with the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross, exhumed the remains of 4,243 killed. The commission was able to establish the names of half of the dead.
However, the “Katyn lie” of the USSR is not only its efforts to impose its version of what happened on all countries of the world. The communist leadership of the then Poland, which was brought to power by the Soviet Union, also pursued this internal policy.
Only after half a century did the USSR take the blame upon itself. On April 13, 1990, a TASS statement was published, which referred to “direct responsibility for the atrocities in the Katyn Forest of Beria, Merkulov and their henchmen.”
In 1991, Polish specialists and the Main Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP) carried out a partial exhumation. The burial places of prisoners of war were finally established.
On October 14, 1992, B. N. Yeltsin published and handed over to Poland evidence confirming the guilt of the USSR leadership in the “Katyn crime.” Much of the investigation materials still remain classified.
On November 26, 2010, the State Duma, despite the opposition of the Communist Party faction, decided to adopt a statement on the “Katyn tragedy and its victims.” This incident was recognized in history as a crime, the commission of which was directly ordered by Stalin and other leaders of the USSR.
In 2011, Russian officials made a statement about their readiness to consider the issue of rehabilitation of victims of the tragedy.

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 a symbol brutal murders became Katyn. 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

The 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. Decision on to the highest degree the punishments were accepted 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.

Exactly last fact for a long time testified 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 of 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 20th century and were exported in large quantities to 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 those who stood out sufficiently 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, who were loaded into trucks and taken away 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 have 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 Russia, and in 2008 it 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.

First, you need to understand how did Polish officers in the 40s end up in a place like Katyn? On September 17, 1939, under an agreement with Germany, the Soviet Union launched an offensive against Poland. It is worth noting here that with this offensive the USSR set itself a very pragmatic task - to return its previously lost lands - Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which our country lost in the Russian-Polish war in 1921, as well as to prevent the proximity of the Nazi invaders to our borders. And it was thanks to this campaign that the reunification of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples began within the borders in which they exist today. Therefore, when someone says that Stalin = Hitler only because they conspired to divide Poland among themselves, then this is only an attempt to play on a person’s emotions. We did not divide Poland, but only returned our ancestral territories, while at the same time trying to protect ourselves from an external aggressor.

During this offensive, we regained Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and about 150 thousand Poles dressed in military uniform. Here, again, it is worth noting that representatives of the lower class were immediately released, and later, in 1941, 73 thousand Poles were transferred to the Polish general Anders, who fought against the Germans. We still had that part of the prisoners who did not want to fight against the Germans, but also refused to cooperate with us.

Polish prisoners taken by the Red Army

Today there are 2 versions of the events of those days:

• Polish officers were killed by German fascists between September and December 1941;


• The Polish “flower of the nation” was shot by Soviet soldiers in May 1940.

Remains of executed Polish officers

• the corpses of Polish officers had high degree safety, which did not correspond to their being in the ground for three whole years;


• water got into grave No. 5, and if the Poles had really been shot by the NKVD, then within three years the corpses would have begun to undergo adipocyration (the transformation of soft parts into a gray-white sticky mass) of internal organs, but this did not happen;


• surprisingly good preservation of shape (the fabric on the corpses did not decay; the metal parts were somewhat rusty, but in some places retained their shine; the tobacco in the cigarette cases was not spoiled, although over 3 years of lying in the ground both the tobacco and the fabric should have suffered greatly from dampness) ;


• Polish officers were shot with German-made revolvers;


• the witnesses interviewed by the Nazis were not direct eyewitnesses, and their testimony was too vague and contradictory.

“The members of the international commission - all, I note, except the Swiss expert, from countries either occupied by the Nazis or their satellites - were brought by the Nazis to Katyn on April 28, 1943. And already on April 30, they were taken out of there on a plane that landed not in Berlin, but at a provincial intermediate Polish airfield in Biała Podlaski, where the experts were taken to a hangar and forced to sign a completed report. And if in Katyn the experts argued and doubted the objectivity of the evidence presented to them by the Germans, here, in the hangar, they unquestioningly signed what was required. It was obvious to everyone that the document had to be signed, otherwise they might not have made it to Berlin. Later other experts spoke about this.”

Katyn. Smolensk Spring 1943. German doctor Butz demonstrates to a commission of experts documents found on murdered Polish officers. In the second photo: Italian and Hungarian “experts” examine the corpse.

• the first 3 pages were printed on one typewriter, and the last on another;


• the font of the last page is found on a number of obviously authentic NKVD letters from the years 39-40, and the fonts of the first three pages are not found in any of the authentic NKVD letters of that time identified to date [from later expert opinions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation].

The second version of events is primarily based on the one led by the chief military surgeon, Academician N. Burdenko, in 1944. It is worth noting here that after Goebbels staged a performance in 1943 and forced, on pain of death, forensic experts to sign medical reports beneficial to fascist propaganda, there was no point in Burdenko’s commission to hide anything or hide evidence. In this case, only the truth could save our country.
In particular, the Soviet commission revealed that it was simply impossible to carry out a mass execution of Polish officers without the knowledge of the population. Judge for yourself. In pre-war times, the Katyn Forest was a favorite vacation spot for residents of Smolensk, where their dachas were located, and there were no restrictions on access to these places. It was only with the arrival of the Germans that the first bans on entering the forest appeared, increased patrols were established, and in many places signs began to appear threatening to shoot people entering the forest. In addition, there was even a pioneer camp of Promstrakhkassa nearby. It turned out that there were facts of threats, blackmail and bribery of the local population by the Germans to give them the necessary testimony.

The commission of academician Nikolai Burdenko works in Katyn.

• a very small part of the corpses (20 out of 925) had their hands tied with paper twine, which was unknown to the USSR in May 1940, but was produced only in Germany from the end of that year;


• complete identity of the method of shooting Polish prisoners of war with the method of shooting civilians and Soviet prisoners of war, widely practiced by the Nazi authorities (shot in the back of the head);


• the fabric of clothing, especially overcoats, uniforms, trousers and outer shirts, is well preserved and is very difficult to tear by hand;


• the execution was carried out with German weapons;


• there were absolutely no corpses in a state of putrefactive decay or destruction;


• valuables and documents dated 1941 were found;


• witnesses were found who saw some Polish officers alive in 1941, but who were listed as executed in 1940;


• witnesses were found who saw Polish officers in August-September 1941, working in groups of 15-20 people under the command of the Germans;


• Based on the analysis of injuries, it was decided that in 1943 the Germans performed an extremely insignificant number of autopsies on the corpses of executed Polish prisoners of war.

As can be seen, the Soviet commission presented very significant arguments in its defense. But, despite this, among the accusers of our country, in response, there is a version that Soviet soldiers deliberately shot Polish prisoners German weapons according to Hitler's method in order to blame the Germans for their atrocities in the future. Firstly, in May 1940 the war had not yet begun, and no one knew whether it would start at all. And in order to pull off such a cunning scheme, it is necessary to have exact confidence that the Germans will be able to capture Smolensk at all. And if they can capture it, then we must be absolutely sure that, in turn, we will be able to take these lands back from them, so that later we can open the graves in the Katyn Forest and blame ourselves on the Germans. The absurdity of this approach is obvious.

It is interesting that the first accusation against Goebbels (April 13, 1943) came just two months after the end of Battle of Stalingrad(February 2, 1943), which determined the entire further course of the war in our favor. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the final victory of the USSR was only a matter of time. And the Nazis understood this very well. Therefore, accusations from the Germans look like an attempt to take revenge by redirecting

“If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.”
"We do not seek the truth, but the effect"
Joseph Goebbels