Without trial or investigation
In September 1939, Soviet troops entered Polish territory. The Red Army occupied those territories that were assigned to it under secret additional protocol Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that is, the current west of 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. IN Soviet camps, according to the official note, about 42 thousand people remained.
On March 3, 1940, in a note to Stalin, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria wrote that a large number of people were being held in camps on Polish territory. former officers 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.
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria ordered the execution of Polish prisoners
He branded them "incorrigible enemies Soviet power” and suggested: “Cases about prisoners of war in camps - 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege guards and jailers, as well as cases of 11,000 members arrested and in prison in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus various spy and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special order, with application to them capital punishment punishment - execution." Already on March 5, the Politburo made a corresponding decision.
Execution
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, had an overcoat thrown over their heads, taken to a ditch and shot in the back of the head.
At Katyn, prisoners were tied up 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.
At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the USSR tried to shift the blame to the Germans
The Poles were shot by German bullets, but they large quantities were supplied 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.
Soviet investigation
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.
Crime Stalin's regime
In 1990, the USSR officially admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre.
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.
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.
On April 16, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights will deliver its final verdict on the so-called Katyn case. One of the Polish radio stations, citing the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mr. Kaminski, reports that the ECHR meeting will be held in an open manner, and therefore the whole world will finally learn about the real truth regarding Katyn. In principle, you don’t even have to guess much about what the court’s verdict will be. One can only guess what kind of mine he will put under the further development of the Russian Federation and the attitude towards it on the part of the international community. Russia, by the way, is state level admits that the execution of Polish officers was the work of NKVD servicemen acting on the orders of Stalin and Beria, as even President Medvedev once stated.
The essence of the question is to blame the Soviet authorities of the 40s for the fact that, on their orders, in the territory of the Smolensk region alone, according to one source, about 4.5 thousand, and according to another - 20 thousand, Polish military personnel were shot. Moreover, if such a verdict is accepted (which there is no doubt about), then, as often happens, the blame will automatically transfer to modern Russia.
Let us recall that the first conversations about the tragedy in Katyn forest, were established in 1943 by Nazi occupation forces. Then German soldiers discovered (this word could, in principle, be written in quotation marks) near Smolensk in the area of Katyn and Gnezdovo station a mass grave of Polish (precisely Polish) officers. This was immediately presented as a fact of mass extermination of Polish prisoners by representatives of the NKVD. At the same time, the Germans stated that they conducted a thorough investigation and established that the execution took place in the spring of 1940, which once again proves the “Stalinist trace” in this case. The NKVD allegedly specifically used Walter and Browning pistols with German-made Geko bullets to carry out mass executions in order to cast a shadow on the “most humane” in the world fascist German army. Soviet Union, according to for obvious reasons, subjected all the conclusions of the German commission to complete obstruction.
However, in 1944, when Soviet troops drove the Nazis out of the territory of the Smolensk region, an investigation into this fact was already carried out by Moscow. According to the findings of the Moscow commission, which included public figures, military experts, doctors of medical sciences and even representatives of the clergy, it turned out that along with the Poles, the bodies of several hundred more rest in the huge graves of the Katyn Forest Soviet soldiers and officers. The Soviet commission pointed out that the murders of thousands of prisoners of war were committed by the Nazis in the fall of 1941. Of course, the conclusions of the Soviet commission of 1944 also cannot be taken unambiguously, but our task is to approach the consideration of the so-called Katyn issue from an objective point of view, based on facts and not unfounded accusations. This one has too many pitfalls, but trying not to pay attention to them means trying to distance yourself from Russian history.
The 1944 commission’s point of view on the Katyn tragedy in the Soviet Union persisted for several decades, until in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev handed over the so-called “new materials” on the Katyn case to the hands of Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski, after which the whole world started talking about the crimes of Stalinism against Polish officers. What were these “new materials”? They were based on secret documents allegedly signed by I.V. Stalin, L.P. Beria and other high-ranking officials statesmen Soviet state. Even during the transfer of these documents into the hands of M.S. Gorbachev himself, experts told him not to rush to draw conclusions from these materials, because these documents do not provide direct evidence of the executions of Poles by NKVD units and need to be verified for authenticity. However, Mr. Gorbachev did not wait for the end of the examination of documents and further conclusions of the commission on this not an easy task, and decided to make public the “terrible secret” about the atrocities of the Soviet regime.
In this regard, the first inconsistency arises, indicating that it is too early to draw an end to the Katyn issue. Why these secret documents surfaced precisely in February 1990? But even before this, they could have been made public at least twice.
The first publicity about the execution of Polish officers at the hands of Soviet security officers could have appeared during the famous 20th Congress of the CPSU Central Committee, when the cult of personality of J.V. Stalin was debunked by N.S. Khrushchev. In principle, in 1956, Khrushchev could not only condemn Stalin’s crimes on the territory of the USSR, but also receive simply huge foreign policy dividends from “revealing the Katyn secret,” because shortly before this, a commission of the American Congress was also involved in the Katyn case. But Khrushchev did not take advantage of this opportunity. And could he have used it? Were these “documents” available at that time? And to say that he knew nothing about real situation in the early 40s with Polish prisoners of war - naive...
Publicity could also take place in initial period Gorbachev's own stay in power, but for some reason did not take place. Why did it take place in February 1990? Perhaps the secret is that all these “new materials”, about which strangely nothing was known until 1990, were simply fabricated, and such systematic falsification was carried out precisely in the late 80s, when the Soviet Union has already set a course towards rapprochement with the West. What was needed were real “historical bombs.”
By the way, this point of view can be questioned as much as you like, but there are results of a documentary examination of those very “new materials” of the Katyn case. It turned out that the documents bearing the signatures of Stalin and other persons demanding that the cases of Polish prisoners of war be considered in a special manner were typed on one typewriter, and the sheets with Beria’s final signature were printed on another. In addition, on one of the extracts of the final decision adopted at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March 1940, strangely there was a stamp with attributes and the name of the CPSU. It’s strange, because the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself appeared only in 1952. This kind of inconsistency was also reported during the so-called Round table regarding the Katyn issue, organized in the State Duma in 2010.
But there are also inconsistencies in this Katyn tragedy, in which in lately they see only the obvious guilt of the NKVD employees, it doesn’t end there. In the case materials that have already been transferred to the Polish side, and this is more than fifty volumes, there are several documents that cast doubt on the date of the mass execution at Katyn - April-May 1940. These documents are letters from Polish military personnel, which were dated in the summer and autumn of 1941 - the time when the Smolensk land was already ruled Hitler's troops.
If you believe that the NKVD decided to specifically shoot Poles with German weapons and German bullets, then why did this even need to be done? After all, in Moscow at that time they still had no way of knowing that in just over a year the fascist Germany will attack to the Soviet Union...
The German commission that worked at the scene of the tragedy found that the hands of those shot were tied with special cotton laces made in Germany. All this again suggests that the perspicacious NKVD officers already knew then that Germany would attack the USSR and, apparently, ordered not only Brownings from Berlin, but also these twines in order to cast a shadow on Germany.
The same commission discovered a large amount of foliage in mass (spontaneous) graves near Katyn, which clearly could not have fallen from the trees in April, but this indirectly confirms that the massacres of Polish and Soviet prisoners of war could have been committed precisely in the fall of 1941.
It turns out that in the Katyn case there are a large number of questions that still do not find clear answers, if we are firmly convinced that the execution was the work of the NKVD. Virtually all evidence base, declaring the Soviet Union guilty, is based on the very documents whose authenticity is clearly in doubt. The appearance of these documents in 1990 only indicates that the Katyn affair was in fact being prepared as another blow to the integrity of the USSR, which at that time was already experiencing enormous difficulties.
Now it’s worth turning to the so-called eyewitness accounts. In the late 30s - early 40s, in an area located 400-500 meters from the place where they were subsequently produced mass shootings, the so-called government dacha was located. According to the testimony of the employees of this dacha, people like to come here on vacation famous people like Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Shvernik. The documents, which were “declassified” in the 90s, directly state that these visits took place when in the forest near the Goat Mountains ( former name Katyn) mass executions of Polish officers took place. It turns out that high-ranking officials were going on vacation to the site of a giant cemetery... They could simply not know about its existence - an argument that is difficult to take seriously. If the executions took place precisely in April-May 1940 in the immediate vicinity of that very government dacha, then it turns out that the NKVD decided to violate the immutable instructions on the order of executions. This instruction clearly states that mass executions should be carried out in places located no closer than 10 km from cities - at night. And here - 400 meters and not even from the city, but from the place where the political elite came to fish and get some fresh air. It’s hard to imagine how Klim Voroshilov was fishing when bulldozers were working a few hundred meters away from him, burying thousands of corpses in the ground. At the same time, they buried it lightly. It was established that the bodies of some of those shot were barely covered with sand, and therefore the hellish smell of numerous corpses must have spread through the forest. This is the government dacha... All this seems a little intelligible, taking into account the thoroughness of the NKVD’s approach to this kind of matter.
In 1991 former boss NKVD directorate P. Soprunenko stated that in March 1940 he held in his hands a paper with a Politburo resolution signed by Joseph Stalin on the execution of Polish officers. This is another reason to doubt the materials of the case, since it is known for certain that Comrade Soprunenko could in no way hold such a document in his hands, since his powers did not extend that far. It is difficult to assume that this document was “given to him to hold” by L. Beria himself in March 1940, because just a month before, ex-People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov, arrested on charges of attempting to commit a coup, was shot. Did Beria really feel so free that he could walk around the offices with the secret decisions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and give them to “hold in the hands” of anyone he wanted... Naive thoughts...
As Vyacheslav Shved says in the comments to his book “The Secret of Katyn”, falsification historical materials took place in different times and in different countries. One of bright examples falsifications in the USA - the accusation that Oswald single-handedly decided to assassinate President Kennedy. Only more than 40 years later it turned out that a multi-stage conspiracy was planned against John Kennedy with a large number actors.
It is quite possible that they are trying to present the Katyn tragedy in a way that is beneficial to certain political circles. Instead of conducting a truly objective investigation and complete declassification of documentary data, the information war continues around massacre Polish and Soviet military personnel, which deals another blow to the authority of Russia.
In this regard, it is interesting to pay attention to the recent decision of the Tver court in the lawsuit of E.Ya. Dzhugashvili, defending the honor and dignity of his grandfather I.V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin), accused of shooting Polish prisoners of war. Stalin's grandson demands that the State Duma remove the phrase from the parliamentary statement that the Katyn execution took place on the direct orders of J.V. Stalin. Let me note that this is the second such claim against the State Duma by Stalin’s grandson (the first was left unsatisfied by the court).
Despite the fact that the Tverskoy court left the second claim unsatisfied, its decision cannot be called unambiguous. In her final ruling, Judge Fedosova stated that “Stalin was one of the leaders of the USSR during the Katyn tragedy in September 1941" With just these words, the Tver court, clearly unwillingly, managed to emphasize that all the documents in the case of the executed Polish officers were possibly a gross falsification, which had yet to be seriously studied, and then real independent conclusions could be drawn on its basis. This once again suggests that whatever decision the ECHR makes, it will clearly not be based on everything historical facts a tragedy that still evokes conflicting feelings.
Of course, the execution of thousands of Polish officers is a huge national tragedy Poland, and most people understand this tragedy in Russia and share Polish grief. And at the same time, we must not forget that in addition to the Polish officers in that big war Tens of millions of other people perished, whose descendants also dream of a worthy attitude towards the memory of their dead ancestors on the part of the state and the public. You can exaggerate the Katyn tragedy as much as you like, but there is no need to deliberately keep silent about the thousands and thousands of other victims of the Second World War, about how today nationalist movements are actively raising their heads in the Baltic countries, towards which Poland for some reason has a very warm attitude. History, as we know, does not know the subjunctive mood, so history must be treated objectively. At every historical stage in the development of any state there is a very controversial period, and if all these historical disputes are used to escalate new conflicts, this will lead to a grandiose catastrophe that will simply crush civilization.
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 concluded diplomatic relations with a 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 excursions there local residents. An unexpected find 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. It became important argument blaming the German side. Moreover, there were many Jews on the list of those identified.
The details also attracted attention. V.V. Kolturovich from Daugavpils outlined his conversation with a woman who, together with fellow villagers, went to look at the opened graves: “I asked her: “Vera, what did people say to each other while looking at the graves?” The answer was as follows: “Our careless slobs can’t do that - it’s too neat a job.” Indeed, the ditches were perfectly dug under the cord, the corpses were laid out in perfect stacks. The argument, of course, is ambiguous, but we should not forget that according to the documents, the execution of such huge amount people were produced to the maximum short terms. 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 (ITT) in Nuremberg, section III"War Crimes", about the cruel treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of other countries. Friedrich Ahlens, commander of the 537th regiment, was declared the main organizer of the execution. He also acted as a witness in the retaliatory accusation against the USSR. The tribunal did not support the Soviet accusation, and the Katyn episode is absent from the tribunal’s verdict. All over the world this was perceived as a “tacit admission” by the USSR of its guilt.
Preparation and progress Nuremberg trials were accompanied by at least two events that compromised the USSR. On March 30, 1946, the Polish prosecutor Roman Martin, who allegedly had documents proving the guilt of the NKVD, died. Soviet prosecutor Nikolai Zorya also fell victim, who died suddenly right in Nuremberg in his hotel room. The day before, he told his immediate superior, Prosecutor General Gorshenin, that he had discovered inaccuracies in the Katyn documents and that he could not speak with them. The next morning he “shot himself.” There were rumors among the Soviet delegation that Stalin ordered “to bury him like a dog!”
After Gorbachev admitted the guilt of the USSR, researcher on the Katyn issue Vladimir Abarinov in his work cites the following monologue from the daughter of an NKVD officer: “I’ll tell you what. The order regarding the Polish officers came directly from Stalin. My father said that he saw a genuine document with Stalin's signature, what was he supposed to 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 biggest role in this, according to archival documents, Lavrentiy Beria played, “ right hand Stalin." 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. March 3 people's commissar 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 being sent to prisoners who sincerely believe that they are being sent to safe place, were vaccinated against typhoid and cholera - apparently to calm them down. Everyone received a packed lunch. But in Smolensk everyone was ordered to prepare to leave: “We have been standing on a siding in Smolensk since 12 o’clock. April 9, getting up in the prison cars and getting ready 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 country place...,” 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 Wojciech 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 the Soviet public opinion does not fully support Gorbachev’s policy regarding Katyn. We in the Central Committee have received many letters from veterans’ organizations in which we are asked why we are defaming the names of those who were only doing their duty in relation to the enemies of socialism.” As a result, the investigation against those found guilty was terminated due to their death or lack of evidence.
Unresolved issue
The Katyn issue became the main stumbling block between Poland and Russia. When a new investigation into the Katyn tragedy began under Gorbachev, the Polish authorities hoped for an admission of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, total number which numbered about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the issue of the role of genocide in the Katyn tragedy. However, following the results of the case in 2004, it was announced that it was possible to establish the deaths of 1,803 officers, of whom 22 were identified.
The Soviet leadership completely denied the genocide against the Poles. Prosecutor General Savenkov commented on this as follows: “during the preliminary investigation, at the initiative of the Polish side, the version of genocide was checked, and my firm statement is that there is no basis to talk about this legal phenomenon.” The Polish government was dissatisfied with the results of the investigation. In March 2005, in response to a statement by the Main Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, the Polish Sejm demanded recognition of the Katyn events as an act of genocide. Members of the Polish Parliament sent a resolution to Russian authorities, which 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.
In my opinion, the falsifiers who fabricated the investigation into the execution of Polish officers by the NKVD troops faced, in my opinion, two delicate problems at the final stage:
1. How to eliminate the discrepancy between the statement of the Nazis, who announced in 1943 that about 12 thousand Polish officers were shot in Katyn, and the current Russian-Polish “investigation”, which determined that 6 thousand Poles were “shot” near Medny, and 4 thousand near Kharkov and in Katyn - a little more than 4 thousand people.
2. Which government agency? USSR blame for the decision to shoot Polish officers, if all attempts to drag the Special Meeting under the NKVD into this turned out to be so untenable that only complete cretins and complete scoundrels can insist on them. (However, if Polish President Kwasniewski is satisfied with the “investigation” and radiates joy over its results, then we are dealing with both of them at the same time).
After the entry of Soviet troops into the territory of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine in September-October 1939 as internees, and after the emigrant government of Poland declared a state of war with the USSR in November 1939 - as prisoners of war - about 10 thousand officers of the former the Polish army and about the same number of gendarmes, police officers, intelligence officers, prison workers - in total about 20 thousand people (not counting privates and non-commissioned officers). By the spring of 1940 they were divided into three categories.
The first category is dangerous criminals convicted of murdering communists in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, sabotage, espionage and other serious crimes against the USSR. After arrest judicial authorities The USSR sentenced them - some to imprisonment with serving their sentences in forced labor camps, and some to execution. Taking into account the data that, due to various kinds Russian-Polish Goebbels members tell us of slips and slips, the total number of those sentenced to death penalty amounted to about one thousand people. Exact numbers It is impossible to name due to the fact that Russian falsifiers destroyed the files on all Polish criminals in the archives they inherited, so that it would be easier for them, together with their Polish accomplices, to build a version of the execution of Polish officers by the “Stalinist regime.”
The second category - persons from among the Polish officers, who for the world community were supposed to designate Polish prisoners of war - about 400 people in total. They were sent to the Gryazovets prison camp in Vologda region. Most of them were released in 1941 and handed over to General Anders, who began forming a Polish army on the territory of the USSR. General Anders, with the consent of the Soviet leadership, who was convinced that the Andersites did not want to fight against the Nazis on the Eastern Front along with the Red Army, took this army, numbering several divisions, through Turkmenistan and Iran to the Anglo-Americans in 1942. By the way, the British, who had Anders’ units at their disposal, did not stand on ceremony with the arrogant Poles and in the spring of 1944 threw them under German machine guns into the mountainous neck of the Italian town of Montecasino, where they died in large numbers.
The third category consisted of the bulk of Polish army officers, gendarmes and police officers, who could not be released for two reasons. Firstly, they could join the ranks of the Home Army, which was subordinate to the Polish émigré government and launched semi-partisan military operations against the Red Army and Soviet power structures. Secondly, based on the inevitability of war with Nazi Germany, about which the Soviet leadership had no illusions, the normalization of relations with the Polish government in exile and the subsequent use of the Poles for a joint fight against fascism was not ruled out.
A painful and painful solution to the fate of the third, main part of the Polish prisoners of war was found in the fact that they were recognized as socially dangerous by a special meeting under the NKVD of the USSR, convicted and imprisoned in forced labor camps. Their dispatch from Kozelsky, Ostashsky and Starobelsky prisoner of war camps (prisoner of war camps and forced labor camps have completely different character, because the latter contain only convicts) was carried out in April-May 1940. Convicted Poles were transported to forced labor camps special purpose, located west of Smolensk, and there were three of them. The Poles held in these camps were used in the construction and repair of highways until the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The beginning of the war was extremely unfavorable for the Soviet Union. Already July 16, 1941 German troops captured Smolensk, and they found camps with Polish prisoners of war even earlier. In an atmosphere of confusion and elements of panic, evacuate the Poles inland Soviet territory It was not possible to travel by rail or road, and they refused to leave for the East on foot along with a small number of guards. Only a few of the Polish Jewish officers did this. In addition, the most decisive and courageous of the officers began to make their way to the West, thanks to which some of them managed to survive.
The Nazis got their hands on the entire file on the Poles, which they kept in the forced labor camps. This allowed them to announce in 1943 that the number of those executed was about 12 thousand. Using the file data, they published the “Official Materials...” of their investigation, where they included various “documents” to support their slanderous version of the execution of Polish officers by the Soviets. But, despite the German pedantry, among the documents cited there were those that showed that their owners were alive as of October 1941. This is what, for example, V.N. wrote about the “Official Materials...” of the Germans. Pribytkov, who worked as director of the Central Special Archive of the USSR before it came under the control of the Yeltsinists: “...The decisive document given is a certificate of citizenship issued to Captain Stefan Alfred Kozlinsky in Warsaw on October 20, 1941. That is, this document contained in the official German publication and extracted from the Katyn grave, completely negates the Nazi version that the executions were carried out in the spring of 1940, and shows that the executions were carried out after October 20, 1941, that is, by the Germans." Available data convincingly indicate that the Germans began executing Poles in the Katyn Forest in September 1941 and completed the action by December of the same year. In the materials of the investigation conducted by the commission of Academician N.N. Burdenko, there is also evidence that the Germans, before demonstrating burials in the Katyn Forest in 1943 to various “semi-official” organizations and individuals, opened the graves and brought into them the corpses of Poles they had shot in other places. Soviet prisoners of war, involved in this work in the amount of 500 people, were destroyed. Next to the graves of Poles executed in the Katyn Forest there are mass graves of Russians. Dating mainly to 1941 and partly to 1942, they contain the ashes of 25 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and civilians. It’s hard to believe, but “academic experts” and would-be investigators suffering from Smerdyakovism syndrome, having produced mountains of papers over 14 years of “investigation,” do not even mention this!
In the story of the Polish prisoners of war, the actions of the then political leadership led by Stalin do not look legally impeccable. Some rules were violated international law, namely the relevant provisions of the 1907 Hague and 1929 Geneva Conventions relative to the treatment of prisoners of war in general and with prisoners of war of officers in particular. There is no need to deny this, since denial in this case plays into the hands of our enemies, who, with the help of the “Katyn affair,” want to finally rewrite the history of the Second World War. We must admit that the condemnation of Polish officers by a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR and their sending to forced labor camps with a change in their status from prisoners of war to prisoners, although it can be justified from the standpoint of political and economic expediency, is in no way justified from the standpoint of international law . We must also recognize that sending Polish officers to camps near western border The USSR deprived us of the opportunity to provide them with proper security in connection with treacherous attack Hitler's Germany. And it becomes clear why Stalin and Beria in November-December 1941 could not say anything definite to Generals Sikorski, Anders and the Polish Ambassador Kot about the fate of the Polish officers captured by the Red Army in September-October 1939. They really did not know what became of them after the Nazis occupied a significant part of the territory of the USSR. And to say that at the time of the German invasion the Poles were in forced labor camps west of Smolensk would mean an international scandal and would create difficulties in creating anti-Hitler coalition. Meanwhile, the London Polish government already at the beginning of December 1941 received reliable information about the execution of Polish officers by the Germans near Katyn. But it did not bring this information to the Soviet leadership, but mockingly continued to “find out” where their compatriot officers had gone. Why? The first reason is that the Poles in 1941-1942 and even in 1943 were confident that Hitler would defeat the Soviet Union. The second reason, stemming from the first, is the desire to blackmail the Soviet leadership for subsequent refusal to participate in military operations against the Germans on the Soviet-German front.
Goebbels' falsification of the "Katyn Affair" was exposed during an investigation carried out between October 5, 1943 and January 10, 1944 by the Emergency State Commission chaired by Academician N.N. Burdenko. The main results of the work of the Commission N.N. Burdenko were included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal as “Document USSR-48”. During the investigation into the case of Polish officers, 95 witnesses were questioned, 17 statements were verified, the necessary examination was carried out, and the location of the Katyn graves was examined.
As indirect evidence of their version, all modern Goebbelsites cite the fact that the Nuremberg Tribunal excluded the Katyn episode from among the crimes of the leaders Nazi Germany. The conclusion of the Burdenko commission was presented as an accusation document, which, as an official document, according to Article 21 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, did not require additional evidence. After all, the leaders fascist Germany They were not accused of having personally shot someone or burned them alive in huts. They were accused of pursuing a policy that resulted in such massive crimes as have never been known to humanity. The prosecutors showed that the genocide against the Poles, which also manifested itself at Katyn, was the official policy of the Nazis. However, the judges of the Nuremberg Tribunal, without taking into account the conclusions of the Burdenko commission, only imitated judicial investigation on the execution of Polish officers near Katyn. After all, the coals were already smoldering cold war! Several years later, in 1952, the American member of the Nuremberg Tribunal, Robert H. Jackson, admitted that his position on Katyn was determined by the corresponding instructions from the government of President G. Truman. In 1952, a US Congressional commission fabricated the version of the Katyn case they wanted and in its conclusion recommended that the US government transfer the case to the UN for investigation. However, as the Polish Goebbelsites complain, “...Washington did not consider it possible to do this.” Why? Yes, because the question of who killed the Poles has never been a secret for the Americans. And in 1952, Washington found itself in the position of the current Goebbelsites, who were afraid to take the case to court: it was beneficial for the US government to chew up this case in the press, but it could not allow it to be tried in court. U American government was smart enough not to bring fakes to the UN. But our stupid provincials, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, rushed to Warsaw to the Polish presidents with any fake. But this is not enough: Yeltsin ordered his guardsmen to lay out the forgeries before the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and, together with them, was caught in the forgery. Result: The Constitutional Court did not say a word about the Katyn tragedy, and according to the logic of the Russian-Polish Goebbelsites, this should be interpreted as an acquittal verdict for the Soviet Union and its leadership. One cannot but agree with Nobel, who once said: “Any democracy very quickly turns into a dictatorship of scum.” The current investigation of the Katyn case by two “big democracies” - Russian and Polish - confirms the truth of the words of the famous Swede.
Yuri Slobodkin,
candidate legal sciences, associate professor
(mostly captured officers of the Polish army) on the territory of the USSR during the Second World War.
The name comes from the small village of Katyn, located 14 kilometers west of Smolensk, in the region railway station Gnezdovo, near which mass graves of prisoners of war were first discovered.
As evidenced by documents transferred to the Polish side in 1992, the executions were carried out in accordance with the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940.
According to an extract from minutes No. 13 of the Politburo meeting of the Central Committee, more than 14 thousand Polish officers, police officers, officials, landowners, factory owners and other “counter-revolutionary elements” who were in camps and 11 thousand prisoners in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus were sentenced to death.
Prisoners of war from the Kozelsky camp were shot in the Katyn forest, not far from Smolensk, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky - in nearby prisons. As follows from a secret note from KGB Chairman Shelepin sent to Khrushchev in 1959, a total of about 22 thousand Poles were killed then.
In 1939, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army transferred eastern border Poland and Soviet troops were taken prisoner different sources, from 180 to 250 thousand Polish troops, many of whom, mostly privates, were then released. 130 thousand military personnel and Polish citizens, whom the Soviet leadership considered “counter-revolutionary elements,” were imprisoned in the camps. In October 1939, residents of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were liberated from the camps, and more than 40 thousand residents of Western and Central Poland were transferred to Germany. The remaining officers were concentrated in the Starobelsky, Ostashkovsky and Kozelsky camps.
In 1943, two years after the occupation by German troops western regions USSR, reports appeared that NKVD officers shot Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. For the first time, the Katyn graves were opened and examined German doctor Gerhard Butz, who headed the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center.
On April 28-30, 1943, an International Commission consisting of 12 specialists worked in Katyn forensic medicine out of line European countries(Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Croatia, Holland, Slovakia, Romania, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Czech Republic). And Dr. Butz and international commission gave a conclusion about the involvement of the NKVD in the execution of captured Polish officers.
In the spring of 1943, a technical commission of the Polish Red Cross worked in Katyn, which was more cautious in its conclusions, but the facts recorded in its report also implied the guilt of the USSR.
In January 1944, after the liberation of Smolensk and its environs, the Soviet “Special Commission to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution” worked in Katyn German fascist invaders prisoners of war of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest", which was headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army, academician Nikolai Burdenko. During the exhumation, inspection physical evidence and autopsies of corpses, the commission established that the executions were carried out by the Germans no earlier than 1941, when they occupied this area of the Smolensk region. The Burdenko Commission accused the German side of shooting the Poles.
Question about the Katyn tragedy for a long time remained open; The leadership of the Soviet Union did not recognize the fact of the execution of Polish officers in the spring of 1940. According to the official version German side in 1943, used a mass grave for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union to prevent the surrender of German soldiers and to attract the peoples of Western Europe to participate in the war.
After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, they returned to the Katyn case again. In 1987, after the signing of the Soviet-Polish Declaration on Cooperation in the Fields of Ideology, Science and Culture, a Soviet-Polish commission of historians was created to investigate this issue.
The Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR (and then the Russian Federation) was entrusted with the investigation, which was conducted simultaneously with the Polish prosecutor's investigation.
On April 6, 1989, a funeral ceremony took place to transfer symbolic ashes from the burial site of Polish officers in Katyn to be transferred to Warsaw. In April 1990, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev handed over to Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski lists of Polish prisoners of war transported from the Kozelsky and Ostashkov camps, as well as those who had left the Starobelsky camp and were considered executed. At the same time, cases were opened in the Kharkov and Kalinin regions. On September 27, 1990, both cases were combined into one by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.
On October 14, 1992, the personal representative of Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over copies to Polish President Lech Walesa archival documents about the fate of Polish officers who died on the territory of the USSR (the so-called “Package No. 1”).
Among the transferred documents, in particular, was the protocol of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 5, 1940, at which it was decided to propose punishment to the NKVD.
On February 22, 1994, a Russian-Polish agreement “On burials and places of memory of victims of wars and repressions” was signed in Krakow.
On June 4, 1995, a memorial sign was erected in Katyn Forest at the site of the executions of Polish officers. 1995 was declared the Year of Katyn in Poland.
In 1995, a protocol was signed between Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Poland, according to which each of these countries independently investigates crimes committed on their territory. Belarus and Ukraine provided the Russian side with their data, which was used in summing up the results of the investigation by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.
On July 13, 1994, the head of the investigative group of the GVP Yablokov issued a resolution to terminate the criminal case on the basis of paragraph 8 of Article 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR (due to the death of the perpetrators). However, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation canceled Yablokov's decision three days later, and assigned further investigation to another prosecutor.
As part of the investigation, more than 900 witnesses were identified and questioned, more than 18 examinations were carried out, during which thousands of objects were examined. More than 200 bodies were exhumed. During the investigation, all the people who worked at that time were questioned. government agencies. The director of the Institute of National Remembrance, Deputy Prosecutor General of Poland, Dr. Leon Keres, was notified of the results of the investigation. In total, the file contains 183 volumes, of which 116 contain information constituting state secret.
The Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation reported that during the investigation of the Katyn case, the exact number of people who were kept in the camps "and in respect of whom decisions were made" was established - just over 14 thousand 540 people. Of these, more than 10 thousand 700 people were kept in camps on the territory of the RSFSR, and 3 thousand 800 people were kept in Ukraine. The death of 1 thousand 803 people (of those held in the camps) was established, the identities of 22 people were identified.
On September 21, 2004, the Main Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation again, now finally, terminated criminal case No. 159 on the basis of paragraph 4 of part 1 of Article 24 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation (due to the death of the perpetrators).
In March 2005, the Polish Sejm demanded that Russia recognize the mass executions of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest in 1940 as genocide. After this, the relatives of the victims, with the support of the Memorial society, joined the fight for recognition of those executed as victims of political repression. The Main Military Prosecutor's Office does not see repression, answering that “the actions of a number of specific high-ranking officials of the USSR are qualified under paragraph “b” of Article 193-17 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1926), as an abuse of power, which had grave consequences in the presence of particularly aggravating circumstances, 21.09 .2004, the criminal case against them was terminated on the basis of clause 4, part 1, article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation due to the death of the perpetrators.”
The decision to terminate the criminal case against the perpetrators is secret. The military prosecutor's office classified the events in Katyn as ordinary crimes, and classified the names of the perpetrators on the grounds that the case contained documents constituting state secrets. As a representative of the Main Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation stated, out of 183 volumes of the "Katyn Case", 36 contain documents classified as "secret", and in 80 volumes - "for official use". Therefore, access to them is closed. And in 2005, employees of the Polish prosecutor's office were familiarized with the remaining 67 volumes.
The decision of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation to refuse to recognize those executed as victims of political repression was appealed in 2007 in the Khamovnichesky Court, which confirmed the refusals.
In May 2008, relatives of the Katyn victims filed a complaint with the Khamovnichesky Court in Moscow against what they considered to be an unjustified termination of the investigation. On June 5, 2008, the court refused to consider the complaint, arguing that district courts do not have jurisdiction to consider cases that contain information constituting state secrets. The Moscow City Court recognized this decision as legal.
The cassation appeal was transferred to the Moscow District Military Court, which rejected it on October 14, 2008. On January 29, 2009, the decision of the Khamovnichesky Court was supported by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
Since 2007, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) from Poland began to receive claims from relatives of Katyn victims against Russia, which they accuse of failing to conduct a proper investigation.
In October 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) accepted for consideration a complaint in connection with the refusal of Russian legal authorities to satisfy the claim of two Polish citizens, who are descendants of Polish officers executed in 1940. The son and grandson of Army officers reached the Strasbourg court Polish Jerzy Yanovets and Anthony Rybovsky. Polish citizens justify their appeal to Strasbourg by the fact that Russia is violating their right to a fair trial by not complying with the provision of the UN Human Rights Convention, which obliges countries to ensure the protection of life and explain every case of death. The ECHR accepted these arguments, taking the complaint of Yanovets and Rybovsky into proceedings.
In December 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decided to consider the case as a matter of priority, and also referred a number of questions to the Russian Federation.
At the end of April 2010, Rosarkhiv, on the instructions of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, posted on its website for the first time electronic samples original documents about the Poles executed by NKVD officers in Katyn in 1940.
On May 8, 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev handed over to the Polish side 67 volumes of criminal case No. 159 on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. The transfer took place at a meeting between Medvedev and acting President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski in the Kremlin. The President of the Russian Federation also handed over a list of materials in individual volumes. Previously, materials from a criminal case had never been transferred to Poland - only archival data.
In September 2010, as part of the execution by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation of the Polish side's request for legal assistance, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation transferred to Poland another 20 volumes of materials from the criminal case on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn.
In accordance with the agreement between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski Russian side continues to work on declassifying materials from the Katyn case, which was conducted by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office. On December 3, 2010, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation transferred another significant batch of archival documents to Polish representatives.
On April 7, 2011, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office handed over to Poland copies of 11 declassified volumes of the criminal case on the execution of Polish citizens in Katyn. The materials contained requests from the chief research center Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, certificates of criminal records and burial places of prisoners of war.
As Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika reported on May 19, Russia has practically completed the transfer to Poland of the materials of the criminal case initiated upon the discovery of mass graves of the remains of Polish servicemen near Katyn ( Smolensk region). Accessed May 16, 2011, Polish side.
In July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) declared admissible two complaints by Polish citizens against the Russian Federation related to the closure of the case of the execution of their relatives near Katyn, in Kharkov and in Tver in 1940.
The judges decided to combine two lawsuits filed in 2007 and 2009 by relatives of deceased Polish officers into one proceeding.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
