Katyn: execution of Polish officers. History of the tragedy in Katyn. Katyn massacre. the beginning of mass executions of Polish citizens carried out by the NKVD

A village in the Smolensk region, not far from which there are places of mass executions and burials Polish officers in 1940, as well as Soviet citizens in the late 1930s. The name of Katyn is inextricably linked with the question of the fate of the executed Polish soldiers and the heated discussion around it. Today, the Katyn Memorial Complex is located in the forest, and on its territory there is a military cemetery with the graves of 4415 Polish officers, as well as the graves of 6.5 thousand Soviet citizens repressed in the 1930s and about 500 Soviet prisoners of war executed by the Germans.

History of events

On September 1, 1939, German troops attacked the territory, thereby laying the foundation. On September 3, official Berlin invited the Soviet government to oppose Poland and occupy a number of eastern regions. Polish state from the "sphere of Soviet interests". The Red Army began preparations for the corresponding operation, and already on September 17, Soviet units crossed the border with Poland and occupied the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. November 28 Warsaw capitulated, the Polish leadership left the country.

In Moscow, they immediately attended to the problem of Polish prisoners of war. According to Soviet data, the Red Army captured 300,000 soldiers and officers. Most likely, this figure was overestimated, and in reality it was about 240 thousand. On September 19, the NKVD of the USSR submitted to the Soviet government a draft “Regulations on prisoners of war”, and also issued an order “On the organization of prisoner of war camps”. It was prisoners of war, and not internees, who were considered Polish soldiers who voluntarily surrendered to Soviet captivity. According to the above order, eight camps were created on the territory of the USSR for the maintenance of Polish prisoners of war. Later, two more camps were added to them in Vologda region- Vologda and Gryazovets. At the end of October 1939, the USSR and Germany exchanged Polish prisoners of war: people from the regions that were in the zone German occupation, were placed at the disposal of the Germans; immigrants from the eastern regions of Poland - transported to the USSR.

By October 3, there were 8843 Polish military personnel in the Kozelsky camp, 11262 military personnel in Starobelsky camp by November 16, and 12235 military personnel in Ostashkovsky camp by the beginning of November. In these and a number of other camps, the conditions of detention were difficult, and there was not enough space for incoming prisoners of war. The Vologda camp, for example, was designed for only 1,500 people, and almost 3,500 Poles arrived there. Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps eventually received the status of "officers", and in Ostashkovsky it was ordered to contain gendarmes, intelligence officers and counterintelligence officers, policemen and jailers. 8 generals, 57 colonels, 130 lieutenant colonels, 321 majors and about 3.4 thousand other officers were kept in the Starobelsky camp; in Kozelsky - 1 rear admiral, 4 generals, 24 colonels, 29 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, and a total of 4727 people. There was also one woman in the camp - pilot Yanina Levandovskaya, second lieutenant. Polish officers actively protested against the extremely poor conditions of their detention: from the memoirs of the surviving prisoners, it is known that water froze in the cells in cold weather, and torture and bullying by the guards were a common occurrence.

The decision to execute Polish soldiers

On February 21, 1940, Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Merkulov signed a directive according to which all Polish prisoners of war held in Starobelsky Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky camps of the NKVD of the USSR should be transferred to prisons. In a letter dated March 5, Beria proposed to shoot 25,700 Poles arrested and prisoners of war, arguing that "all of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred for the Soviet system," and "are trying to continue counter-revolutionary work, are conducting anti-Soviet agitation." These statements by Beria were consistent with the testimony of Soviet agents and operatives: most of the Polish officers and policemen who were captured were indeed enthusiastic to fight for the independence of Poland. It was supposed to consider the cases of all Poles without bringing charges, indictments and other documents. The decision on punishment was assigned to the troika in the composition, and Bashtakov. The first on the corresponding paper sent to, signed "for" and signed Stalin, then -, and. and also voted in favour. According to an extract from the minutes of the Politburo meeting, more than 14,000 Polish military personnel, policemen, and civilian "counter-revolutionary elements" who were in camps and 11,000 imprisoned in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, were sentenced to death. In the Katyn forest, not far from, prisoners of war from the Kozelsky camp were shot. The territory of the Katyn forest was at the disposal of the department of the GPU-NKVD. Back in the early 1930s, a rest house for NKVD officers appeared here, and the forest was fenced off.

German investigation of the Katyn case

As early as the autumn of 1941, the Nazi leadership had information about the burial places of the Poles who were shot in the Katyn forest, near Vinnitsa and in a number of other places. In some of these places, the Germans carried out exhumations, identification with the participation of relatives. These procedures were photographed and documented, including for propaganda purposes. It was only in 1943 that the Nazis decided to deal with the Katyn issue in earnest. Then they published the first information that thousands of Polish officers were shot by the NKVD in the forest near Smolensk. On March 29, 1943, the Germans began to open the graves with the remains of Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. The occupiers organized a whole propaganda campaign: the exhumation was widely covered in the press, on the radio and in newsreels, and numerous “tourists” were brought to the scene from Poland and prisoner of war camps, from neutral countries, from among the inhabitants of Smolensk. On April 13, Propaganda Minister J. Goebbels announced on the radio that 10,000 bodies of executed Poles had been found in Katyn. In his diary, he noted that the "Katyn case" was becoming a "colossal political bomb". The International Red Cross refused to consider the case. The Germans formed their own commission, which included specialists from Germany's allies and satellite countries, as well as from neutral countries. But most of them refused to participate in the exhumation. As a result, most of the work under the vigilant supervision of the Germans was carried out by the technical commission of the Polish Red Cross, headed by S. Skarzhinsky. In her conclusions, she was rather cautious, but nevertheless admitted that the Soviet Union was to blame for the deaths of Polish soldiers.

As a result of the exhumation measures, the Germans published "Official Materials on the Katyn Massacres". This publication has been reprinted in most European languages, in all allied countries of Germany and in the territories occupied by her. In the "Official materials ..." were given not the numbers that were established by the experts from the Polish commission, but those that were previously voiced by the Germans (that is, 10-12 thousand instead of 4113 people).

In Poland and among the Polish emigration, the German revelations did not meet with the reaction expected in Berlin. The anti-Soviet rhetoric was reinforced only by right-wing publications. The democratic forces were of the opinion that the Germans were trying to set the Poles against the Russians, and supported the version that the officers were shot by the Germans in the autumn of 1941. The command of the Home Army and the Polish government in exile, although they recognized the accuracy of the information from Germany, called on their supporters to "consider Nazi Germany enemy No. 1." and, who also understood that the conclusions of the Germans were justified, made a choice in favor of the unity of the allies. In April 1943, at a meeting of the British Prime Minister with Sikorski, with the participation of British Foreign Secretary Eden, a draft statement of the Polish government was agreed upon, which emphasized that the Polish government "denies Germany the right to extract from the crimes of which it accuses other countries, arguments for its own benefits." Churchill assured Stalin that he would oppose any investigation into the Katyn events. At the same time, the Polish government in exile at the end of 1941 started talking about the fate of Polish prisoners of war: on December 3, during the visit of V. Sikorsky to Moscow, he and Anders handed over to Stalin a list of names for 3.5 thousand Polish officers who were not found by the Polish command in the USSR. In February 1942, Anders provided a list of already 8,000 names.

Soviet position on the Katyn case

For Stalin, the "Katyn case" was an unpleasant surprise. The Soviet side published counterinformation, stating that the Germans shot the Poles in the autumn of 1941. In 1944, after the liberation of Smolensk, a “Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of War by the Nazi Invaders in the Katyn Forest” headed by Academician N. Burdenko worked in Katyn. The commission concluded that the executions were carried out no earlier than 1941, just at the time when the Germans occupied the outskirts of Smolensk. The Soviet side accused the Nazis of the death of Polish prisoners of war, and called the version put forward by them about the execution of Polish officers of the NKVD propaganda, aimed at attracting peoples Western Europe to fight against the USSR.

In the post-war decades, there were no advances in the study of the Katyn case. In the early 1970s, the head of Poland, E. Gierek, first turned to L. I. Brezhnev with a request to clarify this issue, but he did not take any steps. Two years later, Gerek applied the same to the head of the USSR Foreign Ministry A.A. Gromyko, but he said that he had "nothing to add" about Katyn. In 1978, the burial area in Katyn was surrounded by a brick fence, inside two steles were placed with the inscription: "To the victims of fascism - Polish officers shot by the Nazis in 1941."

Only after coming to power and the beginning of perestroika, the dialogue with Poland about the events of the early 1940s was resumed. In 1987, the USSR and Poland signed a declaration on cooperation in the field of ideology, science and culture. Under pressure from the Polish side, the USSR authorities agreed to create a Polish-Soviet commission of historians on relations between countries. The Soviet part of the commission was headed by the director of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU G.L. Smirnov. The main topic of the commission's work was the Katyn tragedy. On April 6, 1989, a funeral ceremony was held for the transfer of symbolic ashes from the burial place of Polish officers in Katyn to be transferred to Warsaw.

In a TASS statement dated April 14, 1990, the execution of Polish prisoners of war was recognized as one of the grave crimes of Stalinism. In the same month, Gorbachev handed over to Polish President W. Jaruzelsky lists of Polish prisoners of war who were transferred from the Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky camps or departed from the Starobelsky camp (the latter were considered shot). Responsibility for the death of the Poles was assigned to the NKVD and its leadership: Beria, Merkulov and others. In the same year, Poland and the USSR signed the "Declaration on Cooperation in the Field of Culture, Science and Education", which opened up access to Russian archives for Polish scientists. On October 13, 1990, the Soviet side handed over to the Polish Embassy in Moscow the first set of documents relating to the death of Polish prisoners of war in the USSR.

In 1989, an Orthodox cross was installed at the burial site, and in 1990, during the visit of V. Jaruzelsky, a Catholic cross was installed.

Katyn question in modern Russia

In April 1992, a Russian-Polish editorial board was created, which was to publish sources about the fate of Polish prisoners. Since September of the same year, Polish historians, who were members of a specially created Military Archival Commission, have been identifying and copying relevant documents in such archives as the TsKhIDK RF, GARF, TsKhSD, RTSKHIDNI, RGVA. On October 14, 1992, a collection of documents from the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, including the so-called "package No. 1", was simultaneously made public in Warsaw and Moscow. In November 1992, another batch of documents concerning the fate of the Poles in the USSR in 1939-1941 was officially handed over to Polish archivists who arrived in Moscow.

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 the Katyn forest at the site of the executions of Polish officers. In Poland, 1995 was declared the year of Katyn. In 1994 and 1995, Polish specialists conducted a second study of the burials in Katyn.

On October 19, 1996, the Russian government issued a decree "On the creation of memorial complexes of Soviet and Polish citizens - victims of totalitarian repressions in Katyn ( Smolensk region) and Medny (Tver region). In 1998, the Directorate of the State Memorial Complex"Katyn" and the following year - the construction of the memorial itself began. On July 28, 2000, it was opened to visitors.

In 2004, the General Military Prosecutor's Office Russian Federation finally closed the criminal case on the murders of Poles in Katyn for the death of the perpetrators. The names of the perpetrators were classified as the case contains documents constituting state secrets. In April 2010, at the mourning events in Katyn, the leaders of the Russian Federation confirmed the conclusions of the late 1980s and early 1990s, calling Stalin the main culprit in the death of Polish citizens.

Some Russian historians, publicists and politicians believe that the Soviet side was not the only culprit in the death of the Poles in Katyn. There is a version that in 1943, about 7.5 thousand corpses of people of different nationalities dressed in Polish uniforms were buried in the Katyn forest, and in fact the NKVD shot not 12 thousand Poles, but 4421. In connection with the Katyn tragedy, Russian historians often mention tragic destinies captured Red Army soldiers in Poland in the early 1920s.

So who shot the Poles in Katyn? Our enkavedeshniki in the spring of 1940 - according to the current Russian leadership, or still the Germans in the fall of 1941 - as I found out at the turn of 1943-1944. a special commission headed by the Chief Surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko, the results of the examination of which were included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal?

In the book “Katyn. A Lie That Became History”, its authors, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin, tried to impartially, on the basis of documents, understand one of the most complex and confusing stories of the last century. And they came to a disappointing - for those who are ready to force Russia to repent for this "crime" - conclusion.

« If the reader remembers the first part (of the book) - write, in particular, the authors - then the Germans easily determined the ranks of the executed. How? And the insignia! Both in the report of Dr. Butz, and in some of the testimonies, stars are mentioned on the shoulder straps of the dead. But, according to the Soviet regulation on prisoners of war of 1931, they were forbidden to wear insignia. So shoulder straps with asterisks could not have been on the uniforms of prisoners shot by the NKVD in 1940. Wearing insignia in captivity was allowed only by the new Regulations adopted on July 1, 1941. It was also allowed by the Geneva Convention».

It turns out that our enkavedeshniki could not shoot captured Poles crowned with signs in 1940 military distinction that were found along with the remains of those killed. This could not be simply because these same insignia were torn off from all prisoners of war. There were no captured generals, captured officers or captured privates in our POW camps: according to their status, they were all simply prisoners, without insignia.

And this means that the Poles with "asterisks" could be executed by the NKVD only after 1 July 1941. But they, as Goebbels' propaganda announced in the spring of 1943 (a version of which was later picked up in Poland with slight variations, and now the leadership of Russia agreed with it), were shot back in 1940. Could this happen? In Soviet military camps - definitely not. But in German camps, this (the execution of prisoners marked with military distinctions) was, one might say, the norm: after all, Germany had already acceded (unlike the USSR) to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War.

The well-known publicist Anatoly Wasserman cites in his blog a remarkable document from an article by Daniil Ivanov “Did the non-signing of the Geneva Convention by the USSR affect the fate of Soviet prisoners of war?”:

“CONCLUSION OF THE CONSULTANT MALITSKY ON THE DRAFT RESOLUTION OF THE CEC AND SNK OF THE USSR “REGULATION ON PRISONERS OF WAR
Moscow, March 27, 1931
On July 27, 1929, the Geneva Conference worked out a convention on the maintenance of prisoners of war. The government of the USSR did not take part either in drawing up this convention or in its ratification. Instead of this convention, the present Regulations have been developed, the draft of which was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on March 19, 2009. G.
This draft provision is based on three ideas:
1) create a regime for our prisoners of war that would not be worse than the regime of the Geneva Convention;
2) issue, if possible, a brief law that does not reproduce the details of all those guarantees that the Geneva Convention gives, so that these details form the subject of instructions executing the law;
3) to formulate the issue of prisoners of war in accordance with Soviet principles of law (the inadmissibility of benefits for officers, the optional involvement of prisoners of war in work, etc.).
Thus, this Regulation is based in general on the same principles as the Geneva Convention, such as: the prohibition of ill-treatment of prisoners of war, insults and threats, the prohibition of using coercive measures to obtain information of a military nature from them, granting them civil legal capacity and disseminating on them general laws countries, the prohibition to use them in the war zone, etc.
However, in order to harmonize this Regulation with the general principles of Soviet law, the Regulation introduces the following differences from the Geneva Convention:
a) there are no benefits for officers, indicating the possibility of keeping them separately from other prisoners of war (Article 3);
b) the extension of civil rather than military regime to prisoners of war (Articles 8 and 9);
c) granting political rights to prisoners of war belonging to the working class or not exploiting the labor of the peasantry, to common grounds with other foreigners on the territory of the USSR (Article 10);
d) providing [opportunities] for prisoners of war of the same nationality, if they wish, to be placed together;
e) the so-called camp committees acquire broader camp competence, having the right to freely communicate with all bodies to represent all the interests of prisoners of war in general, and not only limit themselves to receiving and distributing parcels, the functions of a mutual benefit fund (Article 14);
f) prohibition to wear insignia and non-indication of the rules of saluting (Article 18);
g) prohibition of branching (art. 34);
h) the appointment of salaries not only for officers, but for all prisoners of war (Article 32);
i) the involvement of prisoners of war in work only with their consent (Article 34) and with the application to them of the general legislation on labor protection and working conditions (Article 36), as well as the distribution of wages to them in an amount not lower than that existing in the given locality for the relevant category of workers, etc.
Taking into account that this bill establishes a regime for the maintenance of prisoners of war no worse than the Geneva Convention, that therefore the principle of reciprocity can be extended without prejudice to both the USSR and individual prisoners of war, that the number of articles of the provision is reduced to 45 instead of 97 in the Geneva Convention that the principles of Soviet law are carried out in the Regulation, there are no objections to the adoption of this bill.

So, to summarize Anatoly Wasserman, another published by the Germans themselves material evidence of the impossibility of dating the execution of Polish prisoners in 1940. And since in July-August 1941, the Soviet law enforcement agencies obviously had neither the need nor the technical ability to destroy and bury thousands of Polish prisoners, the obvious was once again confirmed: the Germans themselves shot the Polish prisoners no earlier than the autumn of 1941.

Recall that for the first time the mass graves of Poles in the Katyn Forest were announced in 1943 by the Germans who occupied these territories. An international commission convened by Germany conducted an examination and concluded that the executions were carried out by the NKVD in the spring of 1940.

After the liberation of Smolensk land from the invaders, the Burdenko Commission was created in the USSR, which, after conducting its own investigation, came to the conclusion that the Poles were shot in 1941 by the Germans. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the deputy chief Soviet prosecutor, Colonel Yu.V. Pokrovsky, presented a detailed accusation in the Katyn case, based on the materials of the Burdenko commission and laying the blame for organizing the executions on the German side. True, the Katyn episode was not included in the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal itself, but it is present in the indictment of the Tribunal.

And this version of the Katyn massacre was official in the USSR until 1990, when Gorbachev took, and acknowledged the responsibility of the NKVD for their deeds. And this version of the Katyn events has since become official in modern Russia. An investigation conducted in 2004 into the Katyn case by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation confirmed the death sentences of 14,542 Polish prisoners of war by the "NKVD troika" and reliably established the death of 1,803 people and the identity of 22 of them. Russia continues to repent for Katyn and transfers to Poland all new declassified documents on these events.

True, these "documents", as it turned out recently, may very well turn out to be fake. The late State Duma deputy Viktor Ivanovich Ilyukhin, who was closely involved in restoring the truth in the “Katyn case” (for which, quite possibly, he paid with his life), told KM.RU how an “unnamed source” approached him (however, as Viktor Ivanovich clarified, for him this source is not only “named”, but also credible), who personally participated in the falsification of state archival data. Ilyukhin presented KM TV with blank forms of documents given to him by the source, corresponding to the late 1930s - early 1940s. The source bluntly stated that he and a group of other persons falsified documents on the Stalinist period of history, and on such forms.

« I can tell that these are absolutely real blanks- said Ilyukhin, - including those used by the 9th Directorate of the NKVD / NKGB at that time". Even the corresponding typewriters of the time, which were used in the central party institutions and state security organs, were provided in this group.

Victor Ilyukhin also presented several samples of stamps and seals such as “Classified”, “Special folder”, “Keep forever”, etc. Experts confirmed to Ilyukhin that the stamps and seals that produced these impressions were made in the period after 1970- x years. " Until the end of the 1970s. the world did not know such a technique for making these fake stamps and seals, and our forensic science also did not know", - said Ilyukhin. According to him, the opportunity to produce such prints appeared only at the turn of the 1970-80s. " This is also the Soviet period, but already completely different, and they were made, as that stranger explained, in the late 1980s - early 1990s, when the country was already ruled by Boris Yeltsin ", - Ilyukhin noted.

From the conclusions of the experts, it followed that various stamps, cliches, etc. were used in the preparation of documents on the "Katyn case". However, according to Ilyukhin, not all stamps and seals were fake, there were also genuine ones that "got, as they say by inheritance when in August 1991 they stormed and entered the building of the Central Committee, and found a lot there. There were both clichés and clichés; I must say that a lot of documents were also found. Documents that are not filed, but were in folders; all this was scattered in a disorderly state. Our source said that then all this was brought into line in order to later, along with genuine documents, put false documents into the case.

Such, in brief, is the current state of the Katyn affair. The Poles demand more and more "documentary" evidence of the guilt of the then Soviet leadership in the Katyn "crime". Well, the leadership of Russia is meeting these wishes, declassifying more and more archival documents. Which, as it turns out, are fakes.

In the light of all this, at least two fundamental questions arise.
First concerns directly Katyn and Russian-Polish relations. Why is the voice of those who (very reasoned, by the way) exposes the current official version, is not taken into account by the Russian leadership? Why not conduct an objective investigation of all the circumstances revealed in connection with the investigation of the Katyn case? Moreover, the recognition by Russia as the legal successor of the USSR of responsibility for Katyn threatens us with astronomical financial claims.
well and second the issue is even more important. After all, if during an objective investigation it is confirmed that state archives(at least their smallest part) are forged, then this puts an end to the legitimacy of the current government of Russia. It turns out that she stood at the helm of the country in the early 1990s with the help of a forgery. How then can you trust her?

As you can see, in order to resolve these issues, it is required to conduct an OBJECTIVE investigation of the materials on the Katyn case. But the current Russian government does not intend to conduct such an investigation.

The investigation into all the circumstances of the massacre of Polish soldiers, which went down in history as the "Katyn massacre", still causes heated discussions both in Russia and in Poland. According to the "official" modern version, the murder of Polish officers was the work of the NKVD of the USSR. However, back in 1943-1944. a special commission headed by the Chief Surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko came to the conclusion that the Nazis killed the Polish soldiers. Despite the fact that the current Russian leadership agreed with the version of the “Soviet trace”, there are indeed a lot of contradictions and ambiguities in the case of the massacre of Polish officers. In order to understand who could have shot the Polish soldiers, it is necessary to take a closer look at the very process of investigating the Katyn massacre.

In March 1942, residents of the village of Kozy Gory, in the Smolensk region, informed the occupying authorities about the mass grave of Polish soldiers. The Poles who worked in the construction platoon unearthed several graves and reported this to the German command, but it initially reacted to the news with complete indifference. The situation changed in 1943, when a turning point had already occurred at the front and Germany was interested in strengthening anti-Soviet propaganda. On February 18, 1943, the German field police began excavations in the Katyn Forest. A special commission was formed, headed by Gerhardt Butz, a professor at the University of Breslau, the "luminary" of forensic medical examination, who during the war years served with the rank of captain as head of the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center. Already on April 13, 1943, German radio reported on the found burial place of 10,000 Polish officers. In fact, the German investigators “calculated” the number of Poles who had died in the Katyn Forest very simply - they took the total number of officers of the Polish army before the start of the war, from which they subtracted the “living” - the Anders army. All other Polish officers, according to the German side, were shot by the NKVD in the Katyn forest. Naturally, the anti-Semitism inherent in the Nazis was not without - the German media immediately reported that Jews participated in the executions.

April 16, 1943 Soviet Union officially refuted the "slanderous attacks" of Nazi Germany. On April 17, the government of Poland in exile turned to the Soviet government for clarification. It is interesting that at that time the Polish leadership did not try to blame the Soviet Union for everything, but focused on the crimes of Nazi Germany against the Polish people. However, the USSR broke off relations with the Polish government-in-exile.

Joseph Goebbels, the "number one propagandist" of the Third Reich, managed to achieve an even greater effect than he had originally imagined. The Katyn massacre was passed off by German propaganda as a classic manifestation of the "atrocities of the Bolsheviks." Obviously, the Nazis, accusing the Soviet side of killing Polish prisoners of war, sought to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of the Western countries. The cruel execution of Polish prisoners of war, allegedly carried out by Soviet Chekists, was supposed, in the opinion of the Nazis, to alienate the United States, Great Britain and the Polish government in exile from cooperation with Moscow. Goebbels succeeded in the latter - in Poland, a lot of people accepted the version of the execution of Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD. The fact is that back in 1940, correspondence with Polish prisoners of war who were on the territory of the Soviet Union ceased. Nothing more was known about the fate of the Polish officers. At the same time, representatives of the United States and Great Britain tried to "hush up" the Polish topic, because they did not want to irritate Stalin at such a crucial period when Soviet troops were able to turn the tide at the front.

To ensure a larger propaganda effect, the Nazis even involved the Polish Red Cross (PKK), whose representatives were associated with the anti-fascist resistance, in the investigation. On the Polish side, the commission was headed by Marian Wodzinski, a physician from the University of Krakow, an authoritative person who participated in the activities of the Polish anti-fascist resistance. The Nazis even went so far as to allow representatives of the PKK to the place of the alleged execution, where excavations of graves took place. The conclusions of the commission were disappointing - the PKK confirmed the German version that the Polish officers were shot in April-May 1940, that is, even before the start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union.

On April 28-30, 1943, an international commission arrived in Katyn. Of course, it was a very loud name - in fact, the commission was formed from representatives of states occupied by Nazi Germany or maintaining allied relations with it. As expected, the commission sided with Berlin and also confirmed that Polish officers were killed in the spring of 1940 by Soviet Chekists. Further investigative actions of the German side, however, were terminated - in September 1943, the Red Army liberated Smolensk. Almost immediately after the liberation of the Smolensk region, the Soviet leadership decided that it was necessary to conduct its own investigation - in order to expose Hitler's slander about the involvement of the Soviet Union in the massacres of Polish officers.

On October 5, 1943, a special commission of the NKVD and the NKGB was created under the leadership of People's Commissar of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov and Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Sergei Kruglov. Unlike the German commission, the Soviet commission approached the matter in more detail, including the organization of interrogations of witnesses. 95 people were interviewed. As a result, interesting details emerged. Even before the start of the war, three camps for Polish prisoners of war were located west of Smolensk. They housed officers and generals of the Polish Army, gendarmes, police officers and officials taken prisoner on the territory of Poland. Most of the prisoners of war were used for road work of varying severity. When the war began, the Soviet authorities did not have time to evacuate Polish prisoners of war from the camps. So the Polish officers were already in German captivity, and the Germans continued to use the labor of prisoners of war in road and construction work.

In August - September 1941, the German command decided to shoot all Polish prisoners of war held in the Smolensk camps. The direct execution of Polish officers was carried out by the headquarters of the 537th construction battalion under the leadership of Lieutenant Arnes, Lieutenant Rekst and Lieutenant Hott. The headquarters of this battalion was located in the village of Kozi Gory. In the spring of 1943, when a provocation against the Soviet Union was already being prepared, the Nazis drove Soviet prisoners of war to excavate graves and, after excavations, seized from the graves all documents dated later than the spring of 1940. So the date of the alleged execution of Polish prisoners of war was “adjusted”. The Soviet prisoners of war who carried out the excavations were shot by the Germans, and the local residents were forced to give testimonies favorable to the Germans.

On January 12, 1944, a Special Commission was formed to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution by the Nazi invaders in the Katyn forest (near Smolensk) of Polish officers of war. This commission was headed chief surgeon Red Army Lieutenant General of the Medical Service Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, and included in it whole line prominent Soviet scientists. It is interesting that the writer Alexei Tolstoy and Metropolitan Nikolay (Yarushevich) of Kiev and Galicia were included in the commission. Although public opinion in the West by this time it was already quite biased, however, the episode with the execution of Polish officers in Katyn was included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal. That is, in fact, the responsibility of Nazi Germany for the commission of this crime was recognized.

For many decades, the Katyn massacre was forgotten, however, when in the late 1980s. the systematic “shattering” of the Soviet state began, the history of the Katyn massacre was again “refreshed” by human rights activists and journalists, and then by the Polish leadership. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev actually recognized the responsibility of the Soviet Union for the Katyn massacre. Since that time, and for almost thirty years now, the version that the Polish officers were shot by the employees of the NKVD of the USSR has become the dominant version. Even the “patriotic turn” of the Russian state in the 2000s did not change the situation. Russia continues to "repent" for the crime committed by the Nazis, while Poland puts forward increasingly stringent demands for recognizing the Katyn massacre as genocide.

Meanwhile, many domestic historians and experts express their point of view on Katyn tragedy. So, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin in the book “Katyn. A lie that has become history ”, draw attention to very interesting nuances. For example, all the corpses found in burials in Katyn were dressed in the uniform of the Polish army with insignia. But until 1941, insignias were not allowed to be worn in Soviet prisoner of war camps. All prisoners were equal in their status and could not wear cockades and shoulder straps. It turns out that Polish officers simply could not be with insignia at the time of death, if they were really shot in 1940. Since the Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention for a long time, the maintenance of prisoners of war with the preservation of insignia in Soviet camps was not allowed. Apparently, the Nazis did not think through this interesting moment and themselves contributed to the exposure of their lies - Polish prisoners of war were shot already after 1941, but then the Smolensk region was occupied by the Nazis. This circumstance, referring to the work of Prudnikova and Chigirin, is also pointed out in one of his publications by Anatoly Wasserman.

Private detective Ernest Aslanyan draws attention to a very interesting detail - Polish prisoners of war were killed with firearms made in Germany. The NKVD of the USSR did not use such weapons. Even if the Soviet Chekists had copies of German weapons at their disposal, they were by no means in the quantity used in Katyn. However, for some reason, this circumstance is not considered by supporters of the version that the Polish officers were killed by the Soviet side. More precisely, this question, of course, was raised in the media, but the answers to it were given some unintelligible ones, Aslanyan notes.

The version about the use of German weapons in 1940 in order to “write off” the corpses of Polish officers to the Nazis really seems very strange. The Soviet leadership hardly counted on the fact that Germany would not only start a war, but also be able to reach Smolensk. Accordingly, there was no reason to "set up" the Germans by shooting Polish prisoners of war from German weapons. Another version seems more plausible - the executions of Polish officers in the camps of the Smolensk region were indeed carried out, but not at all on the scale that Hitler's propaganda spoke about. There were many camps in the Soviet Union where Polish prisoners of war were kept, but nowhere else were mass executions carried out. What could force the Soviet command to arrange the execution of 12 thousand Polish prisoners of war in the Smolensk region? It is impossible to give an answer to this question. Meanwhile, the Nazis themselves could well have destroyed the Polish prisoners of war - they did not feel any reverence for the Poles, they did not differ in humanism in relation to prisoners of war, especially to the Slavs. To destroy several thousand Poles for the Nazi executioners was no problem at all.

However, the version about the murder of Polish officers by Soviet Chekists is very convenient in the current situation. For the West, the reception of Goebbels' propaganda is a wonderful way to once again "prick" Russia, to blame Moscow for war crimes. For Poland and the Baltic countries, this version is another tool of anti-Russian propaganda and a way to get more generous funding from the US and the EU. As for the Russian leadership, its agreement with the version about the execution of the Poles on the orders of the Soviet government is explained, apparently, by purely opportunistic considerations. As "our answer to Warsaw" one could raise the topic of the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Poland, of which in 1920 there were more than 40 thousand people. However, no one is addressing this issue.

A genuine, objective investigation of all the circumstances of the Katyn massacre is still waiting in the wings. It remains to be hoped that it will make it possible to fully expose the monstrous slander against the Soviet country and confirm that it was the Nazis who were the real executioners of the Polish prisoners of war.

What is Katyn, the Katyn tragedy, or when was the Katyn massacre (Polish. zbrodnia katyńska - « Katyn crime”), you, of course, need to give a clear and precise answer. Tune in right away that in the article we will consider several issues at once, which are closely linked to each other. And they can sound in different contexts.

Before writing this article, I read a lot of materials on this subject and I can say that there is no complete clarity in the answer and, unfortunately, it is impossible to give a short answer.

I'll probably start from the end. The consul’s question about what event happened in April 2010 (or something like: what tragic event happened in April 2010) can be firmly answered - on April 10, a plane crashed near Smolensk, on which President Lech Kaczynski and his wife and representatives of the Polish government were flying . None of the 88 passengers and 8 crew members survived.

Lech Kachinsky, at the head of the Polish delegation, was heading to the vicinity of the small village of Katyn - not far from Smolensk, where in the spring of 1940 the heinous crime of the Stalinist regime against the best sons of Poland took place. Polish officers who were taken prisoner in September 1939 were shot there. No trial or investigation. For the first time, 4143 bodies were discovered by the Nazis in 1943, who made this fact public.

This seems to be a simple answer to such a difficult question, but ...

Map of Poland 1939 with a dividing line according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop act

Katyn tragedy- I would say a common noun and therefore move on to another question that asks - what is the Molotov-Ribbentrop act. This is an act that was signed between the USSR and Germany on August 23, 1939 on non-aggression, but there was a secret part according to which these two countries removed the country of Poland from the world map. Zones of interests of both powers were established (some call it the 4th partition of Poland). This part of the treaty became known only in 1945, after the overthrow of fascism in Europe. Stalin, suffering from megalomania, saw the USSR within the borders of tsarist Russia, therefore, under the pretext of liberating the oppressed Ukrainians and Belarusians by bourgeois Poland, he decided to move the country's borders "a little" to the west (By the way, "thanks" to Stalin, the borders of Belarus, Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine are practically now there and are located!). So that in the eyes of the world, the USSR does not look like an occupier, but as a country that opposes the aggression of Nazi Germany, which attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, invaded Poland not immediately, but on September 17. In clear cooperation with Germany, Poland was destroyed and divided. At the same time, Polish soldiers were captured by both one and the other side.

The number of Polish officers and soldiers captured in the USSR was about 135,000 people.

So we come to the third question about Katyn.

Decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated March 5, 1940. about the destruction of the Poles.

On September 19, 1939, by order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 0308, the Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees under the NKVD of the USSR was created and 8 camps were organized for the maintenance of Polish prisoners of war:

Ostashkovsky - Gendarmes, policemen, border guards, etc. (place of execution - Kalinin prison);
Kozelshchansky -Officers;
Starobelsky -Officers; Yukhnovsky;
Kozelsky;
Putivl;
Yuzhsky;
Orange.

Private and non-commissioned officers were kept in 5 camps. The Stalin regime actively collected information among the Poles and, accordingly, firmly knew that they were filled with the spirit of fighting for their state, and of course, they were waiting for the moment of their release in order to resume the struggle for the independence of the state. To deprive Poland of the color of the nation, it was decided to destroy them. Since the spring of 1940, no more letters have been received from the officers of the Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky camps.

There is not enough space to describe the depth of the whole tragedy, and most importantly, most of the documents are missing. It should be understood that the "Katyn tragedy" symbolizes the death of about 22 thousand Poles, although the bodies of about 4 thousand were found in Katyn. About 3.8 thousand people were killed in the Starobelsk camp, and about 6.3 thousand people were killed in the Kalinin prison. There are 7.3 thousand people in prisons and camps in Ukraine and Belarus. It should be understood that people were in different camps, in different prisons, different cities. And specifically who, where they were taken to be shot, where and when they were killed - often there is no data. That is, "Katyn", as such, there were several ...

According to the data indicated in the note of the KGB chairman Shelepin, a total of 21,857 people were shot. However, this figure is inaccurate and provides only a rough estimate of the crime. And who took into account those who died in the camps and at work from diseases? Fled and disappeared without a trace. And what about those who were relatives of the executed and were evicted deep into the USSR or lived near the border (from 270 thousand!) And so did not reach or died of starvation upon arrival?

For the people of Kiev, the question about Bykovna is often heard from the consul. In short, one must answer that there was found a burial place from the “Katyn list” of executed Polish officers, as well as the place of execution of people repressed by the NKVD.

Just in case, I will also inform you about the fact that the Nazis at the same time (November 1939 - June 1940) carried out the action AB (Extraordinary Appeasement Action. Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion), as a result of which 2000 Polish citizens were destroyed belonging to the intelligentsia (scientists, teachers).

P.S. Maybe it seemed to you that a lot has been written here, I assure you - the most necessary. If you visit Russian sites on the Katyn tragedy, then you will get completely confused. I will only say one thing, no matter what the “researchers” of this issue are - who would not shift the blame, the dead Poles cannot be returned ... If there had not been a war in 1939, they would not have been captured, but they would have been alive. If anyone reads materials about Katyn - make up your own mind - the facts that different sides cite contradict one another.

Watch the film "Katyn" in 2007 (dir. A. Wajda) in Polish with subtitles (you can turn it off if your Polish is good) - it will help you perceive the material, and there may also be questions about cinema ...

In March 1942, residents of the village of Kozy Gory, in the Smolensk region, informed the occupying authorities about the mass grave of Polish soldiers. The Poles working in the construction platoon unearthed several graves and reported this to the German command, but it initially reacted with complete indifference. The situation changed in 1943, when a turning point had already occurred at the front and Germany was interested in strengthening anti-Soviet propaganda. On February 18, 1943, the German field police began excavations in the Katyn Forest. A special commission was formed, headed by Gerhardt Butz, a professor at the University of Breslau, the "luminary" of forensic medical examination, who during the war years served with the rank of captain as head of the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center. Already on April 13, 1943, German radio reported on the found burial place of 10,000 Polish officers. In fact, the German investigators “calculated” the number of Poles who had died in the Katyn Forest very simply - they took the total number of officers of the Polish army before the start of the war, from which they subtracted the “living” - the Anders army. All other Polish officers, according to the German side, were shot by the NKVD in the Katyn forest. Naturally, the anti-Semitism inherent in the Nazis was not without - the German media immediately reported that Jews participated in the executions.

On April 16, 1943, the Soviet Union officially refuted the "slanderous attacks" of Nazi Germany. On April 17, the government of Poland in exile turned to the Soviet government for clarification. It is interesting that at that time the Polish leadership did not try to blame the Soviet Union for everything, but focused on the crimes of Nazi Germany against the Polish people. However, the USSR broke off relations with the Polish government-in-exile.

Joseph Goebbels, the "number one propagandist" of the Third Reich, managed to achieve an even greater effect than he had originally imagined. The Katyn massacre was passed off by German propaganda as a classic manifestation of the "atrocities of the Bolsheviks." Obviously, the Nazis, accusing the Soviet side of killing Polish prisoners of war, sought to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of the Western countries. The cruel execution of Polish prisoners of war, allegedly carried out by Soviet Chekists, was supposed, in the opinion of the Nazis, to alienate the United States, Great Britain and the Polish government in exile from cooperation with Moscow. Goebbels succeeded in the latter - in Poland, a lot of people accepted the version of the execution of Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD. The fact is that back in 1940, correspondence with Polish prisoners of war who were on the territory of the Soviet Union ceased. Nothing more was known about the fate of the Polish officers. At the same time, representatives of the United States and Great Britain tried to “hush up” the Polish topic, because they did not want to irritate Stalin at such a crucial period when the Soviet troops were able to turn the tide at the front.

To ensure a larger propaganda effect, the Nazis even involved the Polish Red Cross (PKK), whose representatives were associated with the anti-fascist resistance, in the investigation. On the Polish side, the commission was headed by Marian Wodzinski, a physician from Krakow University, an authoritative person who participated in the activities of the Polish anti-fascist resistance. The Nazis even went so far as to allow representatives of the PKK to the place of the alleged execution, where excavations of graves took place. The conclusions of the commission were disappointing - the PKK confirmed the German version that the Polish officers were shot in April-May 1940, that is, even before the start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union.

On January 12, 1944, a Special Commission was formed to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution by the Nazi invaders in the Katyn forest (near Smolensk) of Polish officers of war. This commission was headed by the Chief Surgeon of the Red Army, Lieutenant General of the Medical Service Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, and a number of prominent Soviet scientists were included in it. It is interesting that the writer Alexei Tolstoy and Metropolitan Nikolay (Yarushevich) of Kiev and Galicia were included in the commission. Although public opinion in the West by this time was already quite biased, nevertheless, the episode with the execution of Polish officers in Katyn was included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal. That is, in fact, the responsibility of Nazi Germany for the commission of this crime was recognized.

Meanwhile, many domestic historians and experts express their point of view on the Katyn tragedy. So, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin in the book “Katyn. A lie that has become history ”, draw attention to very interesting nuances. For example, all the corpses found in burials in Katyn were dressed in the uniform of the Polish army with insignia. But until 1941, insignias were not allowed to be worn in Soviet prisoner of war camps. All prisoners were equal in their status and could not wear cockades and shoulder straps. It turns out that Polish officers simply could not be with insignia at the time of death, if they were really shot in 1940. Since the Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention for a long time, the maintenance of prisoners of war with the preservation of insignia in Soviet camps was not allowed. Apparently, the Nazis did not think through this interesting moment and themselves contributed to the exposure of their lies - Polish prisoners of war were shot already after 1941, but then the Smolensk region was occupied by the Nazis. This circumstance, referring to the work of Prudnikova and Chigirin, is also pointed out in one of his publications by Anatoly Wasserman.

Private detective Ernest Aslanyan draws attention to a very interesting detail - Polish prisoners of war were killed from a gunshot made in Germany. The NKVD of the USSR did not use such weapons. Even if the Soviet Chekists had copies of German weapons at their disposal, they were by no means in the quantity used in Katyn. However, for some reason, this circumstance is not considered by supporters of the version that the Polish officers were killed by the Soviet side. More precisely, this question, of course, was raised in the media, but the answers to it were given some unintelligible ones, Aslanyan notes.

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