Katyn is the story of the tragedy. Katyn tragedy: who shot the Polish officers?

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 political figures in the Russian Federation 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. 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 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 of those who stood out with sufficient physical strength. On the bodies of some of the dead, traces of a tetrahedral bayonet, like a Soviet weapon, were found. 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 Archives. 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 with the European Court. Russia was accused of ineffective investigations, as well as of neglecting the 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 documents classified in Soviet times from “package No. 1” on the website of the Russian Archive. 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.

In September 1939, Soviet troops entered Polish territory. The Red Army occupied those territories that were entitled to it according to the secret additional protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that is, the current western Ukraine and Belarus. During the march, the troops captured almost half a million Polish residents, most of whom were later released or handed over to Germany. According to the official note, about 42 thousand people remained in Soviet camps.

Autumn 1939. (Pinterest)

On March 3, 1940, in a note to Stalin, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria wrote that in camps on Polish territory there were a large number of former officers of the Polish army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, members of uncovered counter-revolutionary insurgent organizations and defectors.

He branded them “incorrigible enemies of Soviet power” and proposed: “Cases about prisoners of war in camps - 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege officers and jailers, as well as cases about those arrested and in prison Western regions of Ukraine and Belarus in the amount of 11,000 people, members of various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." Already on March 5, the Politburo made a corresponding decision.

Note to Stalin. (Pinterest)

Execution near Katyn

By the beginning of April, everything was ready for the destruction of prisoners of war: prisons were liberated, graves were dug. The condemned were taken away for execution in groups of 300-400 people. In Kalinin and Kharkov, prisoners were shot in prisons. In Katyn, those who were especially dangerous were tied up, an overcoat thrown over their heads, taken to a ditch and shot in the back of the head.

As subsequent exhumation showed, the shots were fired from Walter and Browning pistols, using German-made bullets. The Soviet authorities later used this fact as an argument when they tried to blame German troops for the execution of the Polish population at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The tribunal rejected the charge, which was, in essence, an admission of Soviet guilt for the Katyn massacre.

German investigation

The events of 1940 have been investigated several times. German troops were the first to investigate in 1943. They discovered burials in Katyn. The exhumation began in the spring. It was possible to approximately establish the time of burial: the spring of 1940, since many of the victims had scraps of newspapers from April-May 1940 in their pockets. It was not difficult to establish the identities of many of the executed prisoners: some of them kept documents, letters, snuff boxes and cigarette cases with carved monograms.

The Poles were shot with German bullets, but they were supplied in large quantities to the Baltic states and the Soviet Union. Local residents also confirmed that the trains with captured Polish officers were unloaded at a station nearby, and no one ever saw them again. One of the participants in the Polish commission in Katyn, Jozef Mackiewicz, described in several books how it was no secret to any of the locals that the Bolsheviks shot Poles here.

Remains of Poles. (Pinterest)

In the fall of 1943, another commission operated in the Smolensk region, this time a Soviet one. Her report states that there were actually three work camps for prisoners in Poland. The Polish population was employed in road construction. In 1941, there was no time to evacuate the prisoners, and the camps came under German leadership, which authorized the executions. According to members of the Soviet commission, in 1943 the Germans dug up the graves, seized all newspapers and documents indicating dates later than the spring of 1940, and forced locals to testify. The famous “Burdenko Commission” largely relied on the data from this report.

Crimes of the Stalinist regime

In April 1990, the USSR admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre. One of the main arguments was the discovery of documents indicating that Polish prisoners were transported by order of the NKVD and were no longer listed in statistical documents. Historian Yuri Zorya found out that the same people were on the exhumation lists from Katyn and on the lists of those leaving the Kozel camp. It is interesting that the order of the lists for the stages coincided with the order of those lying in the graves, according to the German investigation.

Excavated grave in Katyn. (Pinterest)

Today in Russia the Katyn massacre is officially considered a “crime of the Stalinist regime.” However, there are still people who support the position of the Burdenko Commission and consider the results of the German investigation as an attempt to distort Stalin’s role in world history.

What happened in Katyn
In the spring of 1940, in the forest near the village of Katyn, 18 km west of Smolensk, as well as in a number of prisons and camps throughout the country, thousands of captured Polish citizens, mostly officers, were shot by the Soviet NKVD over the course of several weeks. The executions, the decision of which was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March 1940, took place not only near Katyn, but the term “Katyn execution” is applied to them in general, since the executions in the Smolensk region became known first.

In total, according to data declassified in the 1990s, NKVD officers shot 21,857 Polish prisoners in April-May 1940. According to the Russian Main Military Prosecutor's Office, released in 2004 in connection with the closure of the official investigation, the NKVD opened cases against 14,542 Poles, while the deaths of 1,803 people were documented.

The Poles, executed in the spring of 1940, were captured or arrested a year earlier among (according to various sources) from 125 to 250 thousand Polish military personnel and civilians, whom the Soviet authorities, after the occupation of the eastern territories of Poland in the fall of 1939, considered “unreliable” and were moved to 8 specially created camps on the territory of the USSR. Most of them were soon either released home, or sent to the Gulag or to settlement in Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, or (in the case of residents of the western regions of Poland) transferred to Germany.

However, thousands of “former officers of the Polish army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, participants in uncovered counter-revolutionary rebel organizations, defectors, etc.”, the head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria proposed to be considered “inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power” and apply They are subject to the highest penalty - execution.

Polish prisoners were executed in many prisons throughout the USSR. According to the KGB of the USSR, 4,421 people were shot in the Katyn Forest, in the Starobelsky camp near Kharkov - 3,820, in the Ostashkovsky camp (Kalinin, now Tver region) - 6,311 people, in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus - 7 305 people.

Investigations
The name of the village near Smolensk became a symbol of the crimes of the Stalinist regime against the Poles also because it was from Katyn that the investigation into the executions began. The fact that the German field police were the first to present evidence of the guilt of the NKVD in 1943 predetermined the attitude towards this investigation in the USSR. Moscow decided that it would be most plausible to blame the fascists themselves for the execution, especially since during the execution the NKVD officers used Walthers and other weapons that fired German-made cartridges.

After the liberation of the Smolensk region by Soviet troops, a special commission conducted an investigation, which established that the captured Poles were shot by the Germans in 1941. This version became official in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries until 1990. The Soviet side also brought charges regarding Katyn after the end of the war as part of the Nuremberg trials, but it was not possible to provide convincing evidence of the Germans’ guilt; as a result, this episode was not included in the indictment.

Confessions and apologies
In April 1990, Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski came to Moscow on an official visit. In connection with the discovery of new archival documents indirectly proving the guilt of the NKVD, the Soviet leadership decided to change its position and admit that the Poles were shot by Soviet state security officers. On April 13, 1990, TASS published a statement that, in part, read: “The identified archival materials taken together allow us to conclude that Beria and Merkulov were directly responsible for the atrocities in the Katyn forest ( Vsevolod Merkulov, who in 1940 headed the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD - Vesti.Ru) and their henchmen. The Soviet side, expressing deep regret in connection with the Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism."

Mikhail Gorbachev gave Jaruzelski lists of officers sent to the stage - in fact, to the place of execution, from the camps in Kozelsk. Ostashkov and Starobelsk, and the Soviet Prosecutor General's Office soon began an official investigation. In the early 90s, during a visit to Warsaw, Russian President Boris Yeltsin apologized to the Poles. Representatives of the Russian government have repeatedly stated that they share the grief of the Polish people for those killed in Katyn.

In 2000, a memorial to the victims of repression was opened in Katyn, common not only to the Poles, but also to Soviet citizens who were shot by the NKVD in the same Katyn forest.

At the end of 2004, the investigation opened in 1990 was terminated by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation on the basis of clause 4 of part 1 of Art. 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation - in connection with the death of suspects or accused. Moreover, out of 183 volumes of the case, 67 were transferred to the Polish side, since the remaining 116, according to the military prosecutor, contain state secrets. Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in 2009.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an article published in the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza on the eve of a working visit in August 2009: “Shadows of the past can no longer darken today, and especially tomorrow, cooperation. Our duty to the departed, to history itself, is to do everything “In order to rid Russian-Polish relations of the burden of mistrust and prejudice that we inherited, turn the page and start writing a new one.”

According to Putin, “the people of Russia, whose fate was distorted by the totalitarian regime, well understand the heightened feelings of the Poles associated with Katyn, where thousands of Polish military personnel are buried.” “We must together preserve the memory of the victims of this crime,” the Russian Prime Minister urged. The head of the Russian government is confident that “the Katyn and Mednoe memorials, as well as the tragic fate of Russian soldiers taken captive by Poland during the 1920 war, should become symbols of common grief and mutual forgiveness.”

In February 2010, Vladimir Putin visited his Polish colleague Donald Tusk on April 7, where memorial events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre will be held. Tusk accepted the invitation, and Lech Walesa, the first prime minister of post-communist Poland Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as well as family members of the victims of NKVD executions will come to Russia with him.

It is noteworthy that on the eve of the meeting of the prime ministers of Russia and Poland in Katyn channel "Russia Culture" showed a film that and.

Rehabilitation requirements
Poland demands that the Poles executed in 1940 in Russia be recognized as victims of political repression. In addition, many there would like to hear from Russian officials an apology and recognition of the Katyn massacre as an act of genocide, and not references to the fact that the current authorities are not responsible for the crimes of the Stalinist regime. The termination of the case, and especially the fact that the resolution to terminate it, along with other documents, was considered secret and was not made public, only added fuel to the fire.

After the decision of the GVP, Poland began its own prosecutorial investigation into the “mass murder of Polish citizens committed in the Soviet Union in March 1940.” The investigation is headed by Professor Leon Keres, head of the Institute of National Remembrance. The Poles still want to find out who gave the order for the execution, the names of the executioners, and also give a legal assessment of the actions of the Stalinist regime.

Relatives of some officers who died in the Katyn Forest appealed to the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation in 2008 with a demand to consider the possibility of rehabilitating those executed. The GVP refused, and later the Khamovnichesky Court rejected the complaint against its actions. Now the demands of the Poles are being considered by the European Court of Human Rights.

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 a few years later: “Only in the spring of 1943 a terrible secret was revealed to the world, 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 the following: “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 a huge number of people was carried out in the shortest possible 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.

The preparation and progress of the 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. Nevertheless, the greatest role in this, according to archival documents, was played by Lavrenty 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 massacre was no exception. On March 3, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria suggested that Stalin consider the cases of Polish officers "in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - 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; the official version does not deny Beria’s involvement. However, statements about the falsification of the “note” are still being made.

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 officers arrived from Moscow and began work.

Before departure, the prisoners, who truly believed they were being sent to a safe place, were given vaccinations against typhoid fever and cholera, presumably to reassure them. 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 a confession of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, the total number of which was about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the 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.

Katyn case- large-scale falsification of German propaganda of its execution of Polish citizens (mainly captured officers of the Polish army), carried out after the occupation of this territory of the USSR, and attribution of these crimes to the Soviet government. Currently, this version is supported by neo-fascists and their supporters around the world. In the modern part of the Katyn Affair, an important role is played by the falsification of Politburo documents published by the anti-communist regime in 1992. According to falsified documents, the executions were carried out by decision, in accordance with the decree of March 5, 1940.

German fraud

On April 13, 1943, German radio broadcast an emergency message in which it was reported that a mass grave of 10 thousand Polish officers shot by the NKVD had been found near Smolensk: “a grave 28 meters wide was discovered, it contained 3,000 corpses of Polish officers, stacked on top of each other in twelve layers . The officers were wearing ordinary uniforms, some were tied up, each had a bullet hole in the back of their heads.” It was further reported that documents were preserved on the corpses, that the body of General Smoravinsky was found among the dead, that more and more corpses were being found, and that Norwegian journalists had already been familiarized with the find. This message signaled the start of a noisy propaganda campaign around Katyn. In particular, a visit to Katyn was organized by several groups of Polish citizens, journalists from different countries, Allied prisoners of war, etc. In the spirit of their usual anti-Semitism (fueled in this case by Hitler’s personal and persistent instructions), Goebbels’s propaganda inflated the topic of Jewish participation in the Katyn executions , claiming that the Poles were killed by “leaders of the Minsk branch of the NKVD” Lev Rybak, Abraham Borisovich, Chaim Finberg and others. In fact, the Jewish names were taken at random from the archives of the Minsk NKVD, which were inherited by the Germans. The number of Poles discovered in Katyn was determined by propaganda to be 12 thousand. This figure was derived speculatively: from the total number of officers captured by the Soviets, the number of those alive (in the army) was subtracted, and the rest were considered to be lying in Katyn.

Moscow responded on April 16, exposing Germany in slanderous fabrications and declaring that the murder was committed by the Germans themselves. At the same time, it was recognized that those killed were in Soviet captivity: “Fascist German reports on this matter leave no doubt about the tragic fate of former Polish prisoners of war, who were in 1941 in the areas west of Smolensk for construction work and who ended up together with many Soviet people, residents Smolensk region, into the hands of Nazi executioners in the summer of 1941 after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the Smolensk region." .

On the same day, the German Red Cross officially approached the International Red Cross (ICRC) with a proposal to take part in the investigation of the crime in Katyn. Almost simultaneously, on April 17, 1943, the Polish government in exile, for its part, turned to the ICC with a request to investigate the deaths of officers in Katyn; at the same time, it instructed its ambassador in Moscow to seek clarification from the Soviet government. The ICC (in accordance with the charter) responded that it would send a commission to the territory of the USSR only if the USSR government made a corresponding request. But Moscow categorically refused to participate in the investigation under conditions of fascist terror in German-occupied territory. After this, on April 24, Goebbels declared that “the participation of the Soviets can only be allowed in the role of the accused.”

Goebbels, speaking on April 17 at the next conference at which the press and radio were briefed, noted with satisfaction that “the Katyn affair has taken on such a scale that he did not at first expect.” The Minister of Propaganda expressed the hope that the Katyn affair would be able to “cause quite a big split.” to the enemy's front." The main idea, which should become the leitmotif of propaganda, is that “the Bolsheviks have not changed (...) that these are the same bloodthirsty dogs who pounced on the Russian nobility, who killed the Latvian nobility and the Latvian bourgeoisie (...) which in other parts of Europe would have become so to rage." At the same time, Goebbels stated: “Some of our people should be there earlier, so that when the Red Cross arrives, everything will be prepared and so that during the excavations they will not come across things that do not correspond to our line. It would be advisable to elect one person from us and one from the OKW, who would now prepare a kind of minute-by-minute program in Katyn.”. The main circumstance that “does not correspond to our line” and exposes German participation in the execution of the Poles was the German origin of the cartridges with which the Poles were shot.

Falsification of archival documents

As one of the signs indicating a possible falsification of Lavrentiy Beria’s note and extracts from the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, they point to the complete coincidence of the dates of sending the note (March 5, 1940) and the meeting of the Politburo (also March 5, 1940). Proponents of this point of view argue:

Unknown criminals “corrected” the original date. This was expressed in the fact that the indication of the number was erased from the “note” to Comrade Stalin and the number “5” fell into God knows where: it was “March 5, 1940”, but became “...March 1940”. In this form, the “note” ended up in the sixth volume of “Materials of the case on the verification of the constitutionality of decrees of the President of the Russian Federation concerning the activities of the CPSU and the Communist Party of the RSFSR, as well as on the verification of the constitutionality of the CPSU and the Communist Party of the RSFSR.”

In fact, Beria’s note is not dated at all (the date space on the form is not filled in: “..” March), but in the upper right corner, under the words “Top Secret” and among other official marks, there is a note: “from 5.3.40 ." ". The mark appeared when the document was attached to the case and means its connection with the decision of the Politburo.

In addition to the date and number, there are other dating features in the “Beria note” - a mention of the position of one of the members of the “execution troika” - a certain L.F. Bashtakov (chief of the 1st special department of the NKVD) (and Bashtakov took this position again on March 5, 1940 year) and figures taken from the “Soprunenko note” dated March 3, 1940.

“Beria’s Note No. 794/B” should be dated February 29, 1940. The basis for this was the previous and subsequent correspondence after the letter “No. 794/B” sent from the NKVD Secretariat in February 1940. In 2004, in the Russian State Archive socially -political history (RGASPI) in the working materials of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a letter from L.P. Beria was identified with the outgoing number “No. 793/b” dated February 29, 1940 (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 166, d 621, pp. 86 - 90).

Two subsequent letters - “No. 795/b” and “No. 796/b” were registered in the secretariat of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR also on February 29, 1940. This is reported in response No. 10/A-1804 dated December 31, 2005, signed Head of the Department of Registration and Archival Funds of the FSB of the Russian Federation, Major General V. S. Khristoforov, at the request of State Duma deputy Andrei Savelyev.

Naturally, a letter with outgoing number 794/B could have been signed and registered with the secretariat of the NKVD of the USSR only on February 29, 1940. However, it contains updated statistical data on the number of prisoners of war officers in the special camps of the UPV (Office for Prisoners of War Affairs) of the NKVD, which arrived in Moscow on the night of March 2-3 and were issued by the head of the NKVD UPV P.K. Soprunenko in the form of a “Control certificate” only on March 3, 1940 (Katyn. Prisoners, p. 430). This data could not be included in the text of the document registered on February 29, 1940.

From the ratio of the outgoing document numbers and the dates on them, it follows that from the central office of the NKVD from 15 to 20 documents were received per day. The question is: to what period of time can a document with outgoing number 794/B relate? Only by the time between February 22 (since 794 is more than 641:-) and March 2 (since 794 is LESS than 810:-) And number 794/B is not just located somewhere BETWEEN February 22 and March 2, but falls either on March 1, or even on February 29. At the same time, the “note of Beria” (as other Katyn scholars reasonably object to N.S. Lebedeva) contains figures from Soprunenko’s notes written on March 2 and 3. There was no way this data could have been included in the document written on March 1, because it did not exist in nature at that time. I’m generally silent about the mention in Beria’s “note” dated March 1 (or February 29?) of Bashtakov’s position, which he took only on March 5. Thus, in the note numbered 749/B, in as many as two cases there are references to data and positions that could not have been included in the original document with that number. Therefore, “Beria’s note” is forged. The “PB Resolution”, repeating it word for word, is also a fake. “Shelepin’s note,” which contains a mention of “the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee (!) of March 5, 1940,” is even more so a fake. That is, ALL documents that talk about the execution of Poles are fakes. According to supporters of the alternative version, all the original documents found by scientists in the archives speak of the registration of the affairs of the Poles through a Special Meeting. Which, according to this opinion, could not sentence anyone to death due to lack of authority. Moreover, researchers of the Katyn issue found verdicts of the OSO (for example, the verdicts of Oleinik and Svyanevich) these are confirmatory documents indicating that at least 26 Poles included in the so-called “Katyn List” (a list of Poles killed and missing in captivity ) were alive after May 1940. In addition, the location of camps OH1 and OH2, and whether they even existed at all, is still unknown. There are complaints about other points as well.

Among the published documents on Katyn, there are some in which not everything is clear with the forms themselves - in 1940, for some reason, the PB uses forms printed in the 30s (since they have places for dates marked “193_” year), although the NKVD document forms already indicate “194_” year.
For some reason, the dates on the incoming registration stamps (for example, on the “Shelepin note”) are YEARS different from the dating of the document itself.
the documents contain grammatical and factual errors (“resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of March 5, 1940”, “person_vek” and Starobelsk, which is “near Kharkov” - in “Shelepin’s note”) and typos that are completely impossible under those conditions (KAbulov in the “extract from PB protocol").
Beria’s “note”, dated 1940, contains proposals for the creation of a certain body - a “troika”, although Beria himself (carrying out a joint resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People’s Commissars) abolished these “troikas” at the end of 1938...

The treacherous “confession” of M. S. Gorbachev

On February 22, 1990, he sent it to M. S. Gorbachev, in which he reported on new archival finds proving the connection between the sending of Poles from the camps in the spring of 1940 and their execution. He pointed out that the publication of such materials would completely undermine the official position of the Soviet government (about “lack of evidence” and “lack of documents”), and therefore recommended urgently deciding on a new position. In this regard, it was proposed to inform Jaruzelski that direct evidence (orders, instructions, etc.) allowing one to name the exact time and specific culprits of the Katyn tragedy had not been found, but based on the “discovered indications” it can be concluded that the death of Polish officers in the Katyn area - the work of the NKVD and personally Beria and Merkulov.

On April 13, 1990, during Jaruzelski's visit to Moscow, a publication was published about the Katyn tragedy, which read:

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 side, expressing deep regret in connection with the Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism.

Gorbachev handed over to Jaruzelski the discovered NKVD transfer lists from Kozelsk, from Ostashkov and from Starobelsk.

Following this, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR began an investigation into the so-called “Katyn murder”.

Notes

"Closed package No. 1"
Decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940
Official website of the State Memorial Complex "Katyn"
Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
(English) Sanford, George. "