Katyn: execution of Polish officers. History of the tragedy in Katyn. Did the USSR shoot Polish officers in the Katyn forest? The Katyn case is connected with

The “case of the Katyn massacre” will dominate Russian-Polish relations for a very long time, cause serious passions among historians, and even ordinary citizens.

In Russia itself, adherence to one or another version of the “Katyn massacre” determines a person’s belonging to one or another political camp.

Establishing the truth in the Katyn story requires a cool head and prudence, but our contemporaries often have neither one nor the other.

Relations between Russia and Poland have not been smooth and good neighborly for centuries. Decay Russian Empire, which allowed Poland to regain state independence, did not change the situation in any way. New Poland immediately entered into an armed conflict with the RSFSR, in which it succeeded. By 1921, the Poles managed not only to take control of the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, but also to capture up to 200,000 Soviet soldiers.

Pro further fate prisoners in modern Poland do not like to talk. Meanwhile, according to various estimates, from 80 to 140 thousand Soviet prisoners of war died in captivity from the horrific conditions of detention and bullying of the Poles.

Unfriendly relations between the Soviet Union and Poland ended in September 1939, when, after the German attack on Poland, the Red Army occupied the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, reaching the so-called "Curzon Line" - the border, which was to become the line of separation of the Soviet and Polish states according to offer British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon.

Polish prisoners taken by the Red Army. Photo: Public Domain

Missing

It should be noted that this liberation campaign The Red Army in September 1939 was launched at a time when the Polish government left the country, and the Polish army was defeated by the Nazis.

In the territories occupied by Soviet troops, up to half a million Poles were captured, most of whom were soon released. About 130 thousand people remained in the NKVD camps, recognized by the Soviet authorities as representing a danger.

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

As a result, a little less than 42,000 soldiers and officers of the Polish army, policemen, gendarmes remained in the Soviet camps, who were regarded as "hardened enemies Soviet power».

Most of these enemies, from 26 to 28 thousand people, were employed in the construction of roads, and then sent to Siberia to special settlements. Many of them would later join the “Anders Army” that was being formed in the USSR, while the other part would become the founders of the Polish Army.

The fate of approximately 14,700 Polish officers and gendarmes held in the Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky camps remained unclear.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War the question of these Poles hung in the air.

The cunning plan of Dr. Goebbels

The Nazis were the first to break the silence, in April 1943 they informed the world about the "unprecedented crime of the Bolsheviks" - the execution of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest.

The German investigation began in February 1943, based on the testimony of local residents who witnessed how, in March-April 1940, NKVD officers brought captured Poles to the Katyn Forest, who were never seen alive again.

The Nazis assembled an international commission, consisting of doctors from the countries under their control, as well as Switzerland, after which they exhumed the corpses in mass graves. In total, the remains of more than 4,000 Poles were recovered from eight mass graves, who, according to the conclusions of the German commission, were killed no later than May 1940. Evidence of this was declared the absence of the dead things that could indicate a later date of death. The Hitler commission also considered it proved that the executions were carried out according to the scheme adopted by the NKVD.

The start of Hitler's investigation of the "Katyn massacre" coincided with the end of the Battle of Stalingrad - the Nazis needed an excuse to divert attention from their military catastrophe. It was for this that the investigation of the "bloody crime of the Bolsheviks" was started.

Calculation at Joseph Goebbels was not only to cause, as they say now, damage to the image of the USSR. The news of the destruction of Polish officers by the NKVD was bound to cause a break in relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London.

Employees of the UNKVD of the USSR in the Smolensk region, witnesses and / or participants in the Katyn massacre in the spring of 1940. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

And since behind the Polish government in exile stood official London, then the Nazis cherished the hope of quarreling not only the Poles and Russians, but also Churchill co Stalin.

The plan of the Nazis was partly justified. Head of the Polish government in exile Wladyslaw Sikorsky really went into a rage, severed relations with Moscow and demanded a similar step from Churchill. However, on July 4, 1943, Sikorsky died in a plane crash near Gibraltar. Later, in Poland, a version will appear that the death of Sikorsky was the work of the British themselves, who did not want to quarrel with Stalin.

The guilt of the Nazis in Nuremberg could not be proved

In October 1943, when the territory of the Smolensk region came under the control of Soviet troops, a Soviet commission began to work on the spot to investigate the circumstances of the Katyn massacre. The official investigation was launched in January 1944 by the "Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of War by the Nazi Invaders in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk)," which was headed by chief surgeon of the Red Army Nikolai Burdenko.

The commission came to the following conclusion: the Polish officers who were in special camps on the territory of the Smolensk region were not evacuated in the summer of 1941 due to the rapid advance of the Germans. The captured Poles ended up in the hands of the Nazis, who carried out the massacre in the Katyn forest. To prove this version, the "Burdenko Commission" cited the results of an examination, which testified that the Poles were shot from German weapons. In addition, Soviet investigators found belongings and objects from the dead, indicating that the Poles were alive at least until the summer of 1941.

The guilt of the Nazis was also confirmed by local residents, who testified that they saw how the Nazis brought the Poles to the Katyn forest in 1941.

In February 1946 Katyn massacre”became one of the episodes considered by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Soviet side, blaming the execution of the Nazis, however, failed to prove her case in court. Adherents of the “NKVD crime” version are inclined to consider such a verdict in their favor, but their opponents categorically disagree with them.

Photos and personal belongings of those shot near Katyn. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Package number 1

Over the next 40 years, no new arguments were presented by the parties, and everyone remained in their previous positions, depending on their political views.

A change in the Soviet position occurred in 1989, when Soviet archives allegedly, documents were found indicating that the execution of the Poles was carried out by the NKVD with the personal sanction of Stalin.

On April 13, 1990, a TASS statement was issued in which Soviet Union pleaded guilty to the shooting, declaring it "one of the grave crimes of Stalinism."

The main evidence of the guilt of the USSR is now considered to be the so-called “package number 1”, which was stored in the secret Special folder of the Archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Meanwhile, the researchers draw attention to the fact that the documents from "package number 1" have a huge number of inconsistencies, allowing them to be considered fake. A lot of such documents, allegedly testifying to the crimes of Stalinism, appeared at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, but most of them were exposed as fakes.

For 14 years from 1990 to 2004, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office investigated the "Katyn massacre" and eventually came to the conclusion that the Soviet leaders were guilty of the death of Polish officers. During the investigation, the surviving witnesses who testified in 1944 were again interrogated, and they stated that their testimonies were false, given under pressure from the NKVD.

However, supporters of the “guilt of the Nazis” version reasonably note that the investigation of the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office was carried out in years when the thesis about “Soviet guilt for Katyn” was supported by the leaders of the Russian Federation, and therefore, it is not necessary to talk about an impartial investigation.

Excavations in Katyn. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

"Katyn-2010" "hang" on Putin?

The situation has not changed today. Because the Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev expressed in one form or another in support of the version of “the guilt of Stalin and the NKVD”, their opponents believe that an objective examination of the “Katyn case” in modern Russia impossible.

In November 2010, the State Duma adopted a statement “On the Katyn tragedy and its victims”, in which it recognizes the Katyn massacre as a crime committed on the direct orders of Stalin and other Soviet leaders, and expresses sympathy for the Polish people.

Despite this, the ranks of opponents of this version are not shrinking. Opponents of the State Duma's decision of 2010 believe that it was caused not so much by objective facts as by political expediency, by the desire to improve relations with Poland through this step.

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

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

On the morning of April 10, 2010, the Tu-154M aircraft, on board of which was Polish President Lech Kaczynski, as well as 88 more political, public and military figures of this country, at the Smolensk airport. The Polish delegation flew to the mourning events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Katyn tragedy.

Despite the fact that the investigation showed that the main cause of the plane crash was the erroneous decision of the pilots to land in bad weather, caused by pressure from high-ranking officials on the crew, there are still many in Poland who are convinced that the Russians deliberately destroyed the Polish elite.

No one can guarantee that in half a century another “special folder” will not suddenly pop up, which will contain documents allegedly indicating that the plane of the President of Poland was destroyed by FSB agents on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

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

How good it is that now more and more documents are being declassified behind the statute of limitations and it is possible to evaluate from a real point of view one or another historical events. It became obvious about the lies about the victims of the Gulag, and now the details of one of the largest political hoaxes of the 20th century are being revealed...

It is about the so-called Katyn case"- about the execution at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War near Smolensk by the German occupation authorities of Polish prisoners of war, including officers. The Katyn case" - from the very beginning of its inception in 1943, has become a tool of anti-Soviet, and now anti-Russian propaganda used by the most unfriendly and openly hostile to us forces abroad (primarily in Poland), and since the beginning of the 1990s, also within the country, causing serious damage to the reputation and authority of the Russian Federation.

To understand the issue, in 1943 (!) Representatives of the Third Reich announced the discovery in occupied Germany Soviet territory mass graves of Polish citizens near Smolensk. The Polish and international commissions of experts, summoned by the German side, established the alleged involvement of the NKVD of the USSR in the executions. But after the liberation of Smolensk in December 1943, a division of the NKVD-NKGB and a medical commission under the leadership of Nikolai Nikolayevich Burdenko worked in Katyn. The conclusion of the scientists stated that the Polish officers and citizens of the USSR were shot in 1941 by German soldiers. These conclusions were specially added by the Soviet side to the documents of the Nuremberg Trials.

The fact of the execution of several thousand Polish prisoners of war, including officers, in Katyn is obvious and beyond doubt. But who shot whom still causes a lot of controversy. But you can't hide the truth, it's like water, it will always find its way.

A.Yu.Plotnikov. Katyn: lies and truth of the past war

The question of the fate of Polish prisoners of war who ended up in the Soviet Union in 1939 as a result of Poland's defeat in the fleeting "September" war with Germany is currently one of the most falsified.

Moreover, it is an instrument of anti-Soviet, and now anti-Russian propaganda, used by the most unfriendly and openly hostile forces abroad (primarily in Poland), and since the beginning of the 1990s, inside the country, causing serious damage to the reputation and authority of the Russian Federation.

We are talking about the so-called "Katyn case" - about the execution at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War near Smolensk by the German occupation authorities of Polish prisoners of war, including officers, acting, we repeat, a typical example of the falsification of the history of the Second World War and at the same time one of the most acute "points of political confrontation" in modern world.

It would be more accurate to say MIFA, since the "Katyn case" - rightly called the "Goebbels provocation" from the very beginning of its occurrence in 1943 - is without exaggeration one of the largest political hoaxes of the 20th century.

A provocation launched by the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich and "picked up" by Poland, in which the perpetrators are alternately Germans and Russians and never Poles, who always position themselves as innocent victims of "totalitarian" regimes, invariably receiving "unconditional" support from America and Western Europeans ( and, more recently, the "new European" eastern) states, which have a very definite political interest in this.

In order to most fully show all the far-fetchedness of the so-called "Katyn problem", let's consider the issue not in isolation - which is usually resorted to by supporters of the version of guilt in the execution of Poles by the NKVD in order to conceal or hush up facts "inconvenient" for them - but in combination with other issues of the initial period of World War II, starting with how many Poles ended up in the USSR in 1939, how and when the interned Polish soldiers became prisoners of war, and until the formation of the armies of Generals Anders and the 1st Polish division (later - the First Corps) on the territory of the USSR Z.Berling, as well as their personnel and strength.

In addition, we will separately consider the currently open official correspondence of the NKVD regarding the general "movement" of Polish prisoners of war and the unloading of their detention camps in 1940-41.

It should immediately be noted that certain errors in the numbers here are not only possible, but inevitable, but this does not change the overall picture of what really happened, and is not a fraud or outright falsification in favor of a predetermined "political version" with the only known in advance -correct answer.

So, as a result of the entry of Soviet troops on September 17, 1939 into the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, as well as into the Vilna region of former Poland, according to various estimates, about 120-125 thousand Poles were interned (namely, interned, and not taken prisoner) , most of whom - residents of the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine (mainly privates and sergeants) - were released immediately in places of internment. That is why it is not possible to name the exact number of Polish military personnel who ended up in the USSR (as, for example, in the case of prisoners of war of the Japanese Kwantung Army in 1945), since their registration was established only after they were transferred to the territory of the USSR.

Among them, there were approximately 10 thousand officers, both regular and reserve officers.

Since at the end of September 1939, according to official statistics, only 64,125 servicemen of the former Polish army were admitted to reception centers in Ukraine and Belarus, the number of "going home" on the spot, according to general estimates, is 56-60 thousand people ( see: Military Historical Journal (hereinafter referred to as VIZH), No. 3, 1990, p. 41).

From a legal point of view, the interned Poles became prisoners of war after the Polish government in exile in the autumn of the same 1939 "declared war on the USSR" (for the transfer of the Vilna region to Lithuania in October 1939).

Further, in accordance with the Soviet-German agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war, in October and November 1939, 42.5 thousand people were transferred to the Germans (natives of the territory of Poland, which had seceded to Germany) and 24.7 thousand - natives were taken from the Germans, respectively. the territory that ceded to the Soviet Union, the vast majority of which was also immediately liberated (see: VIZH. No. 6. 1990. P. 52-53).

Thus, by simple arithmetic calculations, we can quite confidently say that by December 1939 we had no more than 23-25 ​​thousand Polish prisoners of war left, including about 10 thousand officers (in 1940 they were joined by 3 more 300 servicemen of the former Polish army from the territories of Lithuania and Latvia that became part of the USSR).

These are the initial figures from which it is possible and necessary to proceed when discussing all subsequent issues.

In this regard, it should be emphasized that the figure of 25 thousand people allegedly “destroyed by Stalin” presented to us by Poland and our domestic “comrades-in-arms” now (it is this figure that appears in the so-called “Note of L. Beria to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the March 1940", which will be discussed below) - among which, according to the same "Notes", the overwhelming majority are military personnel - is absurd and unrealistic "in fact", due to practical impossibility.

Unrealistic, if only because the total number of the army of General Anders (who refused to fight in the USSR and was transferred to Iran in 1942) amounted to 75.5 thousand people, including 5-6 thousand officers, among whom, according to available estimates, former prisoners of war were over 50% of ordinary and junior command staff, and almost all officers, and formed in 1943, the 1st Polish division named after. T. Kosciuszko (later the First Polish Corps of the Polish Army) under the command of General Berling - 78 thousand people, which also included a significant number of former prisoners of war, including, according to the author's calculations, at least several hundred officers.

Further. Of the total number of Polish prisoners of war, the fate of 14,135 people (private and sergeant staff) employed in 1939-1941 on the construction of the Rivne-Lviv road and held in the Lvov prisoner of war camp is well known and can be clearly traced from official documents: all of them "on the third the day after the German attack on the Soviet Union, they were evacuated to the Starobelsk camp, from where they were transferred to the formation of the Polish army (Anders' army. - A.P.); while the losses during the evacuation amounted to 1,834 people "(from the Certificate of the UPVI NKVD dated December 5, 1943 / / Former TsGOA, F. 1/p. Inv. 01e, D. 1; cited from: VIZH, No. 3, 1990, p. 53).

We repeat, some errors in the numbers are inevitable, but they can in no way refute the fact that most of the Polish prisoners of war who were in the USSR in 1939-1941 were alive by the beginning of World War II and formed the personnel base of the armies of Generals Anders formed in our country (we repeat, at least 50%) and Berling (staffing came from volunteers - ethnic Poles living in the USSR, Polish refugees, prisoners of war, as well as ethnic Poles drafted into the Red Army in 1939-1941 - residents of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus).

Otherwise, there would simply be no one to fight in them.

This alone deprives us of any grounds for the assertion that we even shot 14,500 (the initial figures of the "Polish claims" of the 1990s), not to mention the figure of 25,000 "killed by the NKVD" prisoners of war, which was mentioned.

Nevertheless, the fact of the execution of several thousand Polish prisoners of war, including officers, in Katyn is obvious and beyond doubt.

About the direct irrefutable evidence proving the guilt of the German command in the Katyn execution, we will talk a little lower.

Now let's pay attention to the following. One of the main arguments of the Polish (more precisely, Polish-Goebbels) version of the execution of the Poles in Katyn by the NKVD is the appeal of the current Warsaw to the official correspondence of the "Department for Prisoners of War and Internees" of the Commissariat (UPVI NKVD) of 1939-40, which, allegedly, is clear testifies to the execution of the Poles by "evil councils".

However, this is another dishonest game, or rather, an outright distortion and falsification of existing documents, when they see not what is written, but what they want and need to see. And they do it openly and without any remorse.

All the numerous - and we emphasize - the official documentation of the NKVD opened to date on the cases of Polish prisoners of war of 1939-1945 does not contain even a hint of any execution - especially mass - it only talks about their natural "movement" from the camp to camp and more. Of course, if you read these documents more or less objectively, and not with the "politically necessary" result predetermined by Warsaw, when the "white" is called "black" and anyone who tries to think otherwise is declared an "NKVD agent".

The example of 14.5 thousand prisoners of war employed in the construction of the Rivne-Lviv road has already been mentioned.

Other equally persuasive examples can be cited. So, in the Note of the head of the UPVI Soprunenko addressed to People's Commissar Beria dated February 20, 1940, on the issue of the upcoming "unloading" of Starobelsky and Kozelsky prisoner of war camps, it is proposed to "let go home" several hundred (700-800) officers: seriously ill, disabled, 60 years old and older, reserve officers from among the inhabitants of the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, and for 400 officers of the "Border Guard Corps" (KOP), intelligence officers and some other categories, file cases for transfer to a Special Meeting (hereinafter - SSO) at the NKVD.

I draw attention to the words "let you go home" - is that an "encrypted command" to be shot? (See: VIZH. No. 6. 1990. S. 53-54).

An even more characteristic document: a report from the special officer of the Ostashkov camp addressed to the head of the Special Department of the UNKVD for the Kalinin Region on a similar issue dated March 1940, which, in particular, reads:

“The decision of the Special Conference is here with us, in order to avoid various kinds of excesses and bagpipes, in no case to announce, but to announce such in the camp where they will be kept. they are being transported, then the convoy can explain one thing to them: "To work in another camp" and then the specific terms of condemnation for "3-5-8 years in the camps (emphasis added by me. - A.P.)" are directly called.

Is this also a certificate of being sent to execution? The answer seems quite obvious, but the compilers of the collection "Prisoners of an undeclared war" in the footnote to the document, without batting an eyelid, write: "It is dated according to the text of the document and the day the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to be shot (!)" (highlighted by me. - A.P.) (see: From the report of the head of the Special Department of the Ostashkov camp, March 1940 / Central Administration of the FSB of the Russian Federation. Collection of documents. // Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. Documents and materials. - M., 1999, p. 382 -384; http://katynbooks.narod.ru/prisoners/Docs/215.html).

Finally, we can cite the "Special message of L.P. Beria to I.V. Stalin about prisoners of war Poles and Czechs" dated November 2, 1940, which refers to 18,297 Polish prisoners of war held in the camps (as well as in the inner prison of the NKVD), including family-listed generals and senior officers (see: AP RF. F. 3. Op. 50. D. 413. L. 152-157. Original. Typewritten).

This is after the execution of two tens of thousands in Katyn, Kharkov and Medny?

The examples can be continued, although the conclusions, it seems, are already quite obvious - of course, for everyone except Poland - and do not require special comments.

So what really happened? What kind of "OSO at the NKVD" is this, and what decision did it make?

In fact, in the conditions of the formidable pre-war 1940 (everyone understood that the war with Germany was inevitable), it was decided to send Poles prisoners of war - including officers - to the construction of strategic facilities (roads, airfields, etc.), in particular , the Moscow-Minsk highway, which later played an important role in the liberation of the same Poland.

For these purposes, part of the prisoners of war - including most of the officers held in the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps - were sentenced by the Special Meeting of the NKVD to 5-8 years (the maximum term) of the camps, as a result of which they ceased to be prisoners of war, turning into convicts.

Accordingly, these prisoners of war were deregistered in the UPVI and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Gulag, which dealt with those convicted under criminal articles.

Most importantly, and this should be emphasized, the OSO could not condemn to the highest measure - execution (more on this below).

This, as was shown, is directly evidenced by all the mentioned official correspondence of the UPVI.

It should also be clarified here that the captured Polish officers were kept mainly in the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps.

UPVI; Ostashkovsky, on the other hand, was predominantly "soldier", there were no more than 400 officers in it. In total, about 9500-9600 officers were kept in three camps, which is confirmed by almost all sources, including Polish ones, and, most importantly, NKVD documents (see, for example: Swiatek Romuald. The Katyn forest. - London: Panda press, 1988. C. 13-15).

Convicts from the OSO from the Kozelsky (and also, as recent studies show, from the Starobelsky) camp were sent to three special camps (Special Purpose Camps - LONs), located west of Smolensk, for the construction of the aforementioned Moscow-Minsk highway, where they worked until July 1941, up to the capture of these camps by the Germans (see: Communication of the special Commission for establishing and investigating the circumstances of the execution of captured Polish officers by the Nazi invaders // Pravda, March 3, 1952).

Was it a violation of international law ( Geneva Convention on the maintenance of prisoners of war in 1929, to which the Soviet Union was not a participant, but whose provisions were observed), which did not allow criminal prosecution of prisoners of war?

It was, but against the background of the atrocities of the Poles against captured Red Army soldiers in the 1920s (according to incomplete information, from 40 to 60 thousand Red Army soldiers died in Polish captivity) and what the USSR did to liberate Poland in World War II (recall, during During the liberation of Poland, more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers and officers perished), really, a forgivable violation.

For everyone except Poland, whose authorities, as history shows, have never been distinguished by either gratitude or nobility. In relation to Russia, especially.

In any case, this was not an execution, in which Warsaw and their Russian "comrades-in-arms" accuse us with such frenzy.

This was the same "unloading" of the camps, which was mentioned above, and the truth that the Polish falsifiers of history are so "afraid" of, calling the transfer of Polish military personnel to the camps near Smolensk to work as convicts nothing more than "delivery to the edge of the execution ditch in the Katyn forest for a shot in the back of the head. Shot from a German pistol with a German bullet.

In connection with the last remark, let us once again consider the main facts and arguments that contradict the only correct version aggressively propagated by the interested forces (any attempts to question which are subjected to malicious and hysterical defamation by Poland) about the execution of the Poles by the NKVD of the USSR and which cannot be ignored, if you analyze the case more or less objectively, and not with a previously known politically desired result.

However, before that, let's pay attention to the following.

The main thing on which the "Polish version" of the accusation is based is the so-called "troika of documents", unexpectedly discovered in the fall of 1992 (an audit carried out earlier on this issue on behalf of M. Gorbachev by the USSR Prosecutor General N.S. Trubin did not give any results), the main of which, in turn, is the "Note of Beria" in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 1940, in which, allegedly, it is proposed to shoot captured officers.

The word "supposedly" was not used by chance, since as the content of the "note" itself - as well as two other "evidence" documents: extracts from the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of March 5, 1940 and Notes of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR A.N. Shelepin addressed to N.S. .Khrushchev 1959), - replete with a huge number of semantic and spelling errors, as well as design errors that are unacceptable for documents of this level, and the circumstances of their "unexpected" appearance, raise legitimate doubts about their authenticity, not counting the absence of the Soviet leadership political motivation for such a decision (recall, we are talking about the mass execution of foreign prisoners of war).

So, the main documented facts and evidence, including "material evidence" that is obvious to any investigator and simply a conscientious researcher, directly indicating the involvement in the execution of Polish officers of the German occupation authorities in the fall of 1941, after the Wehrmacht occupied Smolensk and the Smolensk region, and not the NKVD in the spring of 1940, boil down to the following:

1. German-made cartridge cases of 6.35 and 7.65 mm caliber (by GEKO / GECO and RWS) found at the site of the execution, indicating that the Poles were killed with German pistols, since weapons of such calibers were not in service with our army and the NKVD troops. Attempts by the Polish side to "prove" the purchase in Germany of such pistols specifically for the execution of the Poles are untenable, since there is no documentary evidence of this (and cannot exist, since executions by the NKVD, of course, were always carried out from standard weapons, which were Nagans and - only for officers - TT, both calibers 7.62 mm).

2. The hands of some of the executed officers were tied with paper twine, which was not produced in the USSR, which clearly indicates their foreign origin.

3. The absence in the archives of any documents on the execution of the sentence (namely, the court sentence, and not the "decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee", which made only political decisions), despite the fact that a detailed, documented description of the process of transferring (delivering) Polish prisoners of war to the order of the UNKVD for the Smolensk region (the documents were handed over to the Polish side in the early 1990s) is a real confirmation that there was nothing to hide here (except for the fact that prisoners of war were sent to camps near Smolensk for work), the Soviet government had nothing to do, since, if they wanted to destroy all traces, as they allegedly destroyed the "documents on execution", they would also destroy the documentation on the transfer.

4. Documents found on parts of the corpses of the Poles shot in Katyn (both by the Germans during the exhumation in February-May 1943, and by our "Burdenko Commission" in 1944 - in particular, passports, officer certificates and other identification documents (receipts, postcards etc.) for any investigator, they definitely testify to our non-involvement in the execution. Firstly, because the NKVD would never have left such documentary evidence (as well as the newspapers of the "Germans in the graves), since there was a special instruction on this matter; secondly, because if the documents had been left for some reason, then they would have been with all the executed, and not with the "selected" contingent (recall, of the 4,123 bodies exhumed by the Germans, only 2,730 had documents).

Here, it should be emphasized that out of the total number of exhumed officers there were only 2,151 people, the rest were priests, privates or in unmarked uniforms, as well as 221 civilians, who are never remembered in Poland.

The Germans, in 1941, could well leave documents with the executed, they then had no need to be afraid of anything: they believed that they had come forever, and earlier (in the spring - summer of 1940) openly and completely without hiding, they destroyed about 7000 representatives of the "Polish elite "(in particular, in the Palmyra forest near Warsaw - the so-called" Palmyra massacre "of 1940).

5. Confirmed by numerous testimonies (both ours and Polish) evidence of the presence of captured Polish officers near Smolensk in the second half of 1940 - 1941.

6. Finally, the lack of a real “technical” possibility to “imperceptibly” shoot several thousand people there in 1940: the Kozy Gory tract, located not far from the Gnezdovo railway station, was an open and visited place before the start of the war (17 km from Smolensk), a favorite a place of rest for the townspeople, an area where pioneer camps were located, where there were "many paths in the forest" and there was a dacha of the NKVD (burned down by the Germans during the retreat in 1943), located just 700 meters from the busy Vitebsk highway, with regular - including bus - traffic (the burial sites themselves are only 200 meters from the highway). What is fundamentally important: the place was never closed to the public until 1941, when the Germans surrounded it with barbed wire and placed armed guards.

7. It should also be specially noted that in the USSR there was never a mass execution of foreign prisoners of war (excluding those individually convicted under the law for the crimes of the same Poles in 1939-41, which will be discussed below). Tembolee, officers.

Here they are trying to convince everyone that several thousand foreign citizens were shot by decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, that is, the leadership of a political party (albeit a ruling one), which, we repeat, could take - and did - only political decisions that received mandatory formal legal registration, which is not.

All these arguments and facts, however, are either deliberately ignored and distorted, or simply frankly hushed up by interested anti-Russian Polish and Western forces and their supporters in the Russian Federation (first of all, those who actively contributed to the spread of the "Katyn myth" in our country at the end of 1980 -x - the first half of the 1990s).

In this regard, let us once again pay attention to the meaning of the main "evidence" document, on which the version about the execution of the Poles by "Beria's henchmen" is based - "Beria's Notes in the PB of the Central Committee No. 794 / b of March 1940."

And the meaning is that two tens of thousands of Poles are proposed to be shot "in a special" order by the decision of the "troika" of the NKVD personnel. As has been repeatedly noted in numerous studies and publications, such a procedure for sentencing to death is a complete legal absurdity.

Firstly, because the "troikas" that had the right to condemn to death - and had official, not personal composition - were abolished back in November 1938, and in 1940 there were simply no such "execution" triplets.

Secondly, because the "Special Meeting" under the NKVD (OSO), which is meant by the "special procedure", could condemn the corrective labor camps (ITL) for a maximum of 8 years - which, in fact, Poles prisoners of war were sentenced to , who participated in the construction of the Moscow-Minsk highway in 1940-41 - since, we repeat, the Special Meeting did not have the right to condemn to death.

This is directly stated in the Regulations on the OSO under the NKVD, which is stubbornly ignored by both Poland and official Moscow, and which for this reason should be quoted. So:

POSITION

ABOUT THE SPECIAL MEETING

UNDER THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSARIATE FOR INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF THE USSR

Annex to paragraph 3 of Protocol No. 48

1. Grant the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs the right, in relation to persons recognized as socially dangerous, to exile for a period of up to 5 years under public supervision in the area, the list of which is established by the NKVD, to deport for a period of up to 5 years under public supervision with a ban on living in the capitals, large cities and industrial centers USSR, to imprison in forced labor camps and in isolation rooms at camps for up to 5 years, and also to deport foreign nationals who are socially dangerous outside the USSR.

2. Grant the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs the right to imprison persons suspected of espionage, sabotage, sabotage and terrorist activities for a term of 5 to 8 years.

3. For the implementation of the specified in paragraphs. 1 and 2, under the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, under his chairmanship, there is a Special Conference consisting of:

a) deputies People's Commissar Internal Affairs;

b) Commissioner of the NKVD for the RSFSR;

c) Head of the Main Directorate of the Workers' and Peasants' Militia;

d) the People's Commissar of the Federal Republic in whose territory the case arose.

4. The meetings of the Special Conference must be attended by the Prosecutor of the USSR or his deputy, who, in case of disagreement both with the decision of the Special Conference itself and with sending the case for consideration by the Special Conference, has the right to protest to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

In these cases, the decision of the Special Conference is suspended pending a decision on this issue by the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee.

5. The decision of the Special Conference on the exile and imprisonment in a forced labor camp and prison of each individual must be accompanied by an indication of the reason for the application of these measures, the area of ​​exile and the period. (Approved by the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR "On the Special Meeting at the NKVD of the USSR" dated 11/05/1934; changes were made in 1937. First published in the "Military History Journal", 1993, No. 8. P. 72; RGASPI (until 1999 - RTSKHIDNI) F. 17. Op. 3. D. 986. L. 4, 24. Original.

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

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

Katyn massacre

For many, Katyn has become a symbol of brutal murders. The shooting of Polish officers is impossible to justify or understand. It was here, in the Katyn forest in the spring of 1940, that thousands of Polish officers were killed. The mass murder of Polish citizens was not limited to this place. Documents were made public according to which, during April-May 1940, more than 20,000 Polish citizens were killed in various camps of the NKVD.

The shooting at Katyn complicated Polish-Russian relations for a long time. Since 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the State Duma have recognized that the massacre of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest was the activity of the Stalinist regime. This was made public in the statement "On the Katyn tragedy and its victims." However, not all public politicians Russia agrees with this statement.

Capture of Polish officers

Second World War for Poland began on 09/01/1939, when Germany entered its territory. England and France did not enter into conflict, waiting for the outcome of further events. Already on September 10, 1939, Soviet troops entered Poland with the official goal of protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian population of Poland. Modern historiography calls such actions of the aggressor countries the "fourth partition of Poland." The troops of the Red Army occupied the territory of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus. By decision, these lands became part of Poland.

The Polish military, who defended their lands, could not resist the two armies. They were quickly defeated. On the ground, under the NKVD, eight camps for Polish prisoners of war were created. They are directly related to the tragic event, called the "execution in Katyn".

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

• Starobelsky (Lugansk) - officers in the amount of 4 thousand.
• Kozelsky (Kaluga) - officers in the amount of 5 thousand.
• Ostashkovsky (Tver) - gendarmes and policemen in the amount of 4700 people.
• directed to the construction of roads - privates in the amount of 18 thousand.
• sent to work in the Krivoy Rog basin - privates in the amount of 10 thousand.

By the spring of 1940, letters to their relatives had ceased to come from prisoners of war from three camps, which had previously been regularly transmitted through the Red Cross. The reason for the silence of the prisoners of war was Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which tied the fate of tens of thousands of Poles.

Execution of prisoners

In 1992, a proposal document dated 08/03/1940 by L. Beria to the Politburo was published, which considered the issue of the execution of Polish prisoners of war. The decision on capital punishment was made on March 5, 1940.

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

In April, the prisoners began to be taken out for execution by 350-400 people. Those sentenced to death assumed that they were set free. Many left in the wagons in high spirits, not even knowing about the imminent death.

How did the execution near Katyn take place:

• prisoners were tied up;
• they put a greatcoat over their heads (not always, only for especially strong and young people);
• led to a dug ditch;
• killed with a shot in the back of the head from a Walter or Browning.

Exactly last fact testified for a long time that the crimes against Polish citizens were German troops.

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

From April to May 1940, the following were shot:

• in Katyn - 4421 prisoners;
• in Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps - 10131;
• in other camps - 7305.

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

"Missing" Officers

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

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

They were able to find the officers, or rather, their bodies, only in 1943. Mass graves of executed Polish citizens were discovered in Katyn.

German side investigation

The first mass graves in the Katyn forest were discovered by German troops. They carried out the exhumation of the unearthed bodies and conducted their own investigation.

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

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

• As a result of the excavations, eight mass graves were discovered, 4143 people were taken out of them and reburied again. Most of the dead have been identified. In graves No. 1-7, people were buried in winter clothes (fur jackets, overcoats, sweaters, scarves), and in grave No. 8 - in summer clothes. Also, fragments of newspapers dated April-March 1940 were found in graves No. 1-7, and there were no traces of insects on the corpses. This testified that the execution of the Poles in Katyn took place in the cool season, that is, in the spring.
• Many personal belongings were found on the dead, they testified that the victims were in the Kozelsk camp. For example, letters from home addressed to Kozelsk. Also, many had snuffboxes and other items with the inscriptions "Kozelsk".
• Tree sections showed that they were planted on the graves about three years ago from the time of discovery. This indicated that the pits were filled in in 1940. At that time, the territory was under the control of Soviet troops.
• All Polish officers at Katyn were shot in the back of the head with German-made bullets. However, they were produced in the 20-30s of the XX century and were exported in large quantities to the Soviet Union.
• The hands of the executed were tied with a cord in such a way that when trying to separate them, the loop tightened even more. The victims from grave No. 5 had their heads wrapped in such a way that when they tried to make any movement, the noose strangled the future victim. In other graves, the heads were also tied, but only those who stood out with sufficient physical strength. On the bodies of some of the dead, traces of a four-sided bayonet, like those of Soviet weapons, were found. The Germans used flat bayonets.
• The commission interviewed local residents and found that in the spring of 1940, a large number of Polish prisoners of war arrived at the Gnezdovo station, who were loaded into trucks and taken away towards the forest. The locals never saw these people again.

The Polish commission, which was during the exhumation and investigation, confirmed all the German conclusions in this case, finding no obvious signs of document fraud. The only thing that the Germans tried to hide about Katyn (the execution of Polish officers) was the origin of the bullets used to carry out the murders. However, the Poles understood that representatives of the NKVD could also have such weapons.

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

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

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

The Soviet commission, which carried out repeated excavations, falsified some documents, and completely destroyed some of the graves. But Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which did not give rest to Polish citizens, nevertheless revealed its secrets.

Katyn case at the Nuremberg Trials

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

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

Official recognition of responsibility for Katyn

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

After the collapse of the USSR in Russian Federation also revisited this issue. Since 1990, the investigation of the criminal case by the military prosecutor's office began. It received number 159. In 2004, the criminal case was terminated due to the death of the persons accused in it.

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

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

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

Polish-Russian relations

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

In 2008, the Moscow court rejected a complaint about the execution of Polish officers by their relatives. As a result of the refusal, they filed a complaint against the Russian Federation with the European Court. Russia was accused of ineffective investigations, as well as neglect of close relatives of the victims. In April 2012, he qualified the execution of prisoners as a war crime and ordered Russia to pay 10 out of 15 plaintiffs (relatives of 12 officers killed in Katyn) 5,000 euros each. This was compensation for the plaintiffs' legal costs. It is difficult to say whether the Poles, for whom Katyn has become a symbol of family and national tragedy, have achieved their goal.

The official position of the Russian authorities

The modern leaders of the Russian Federation, V.V. Putin and D.A. Medvedev, adhere to the same point of view on the Katyn massacre. They made several statements condemning the crimes of the Stalinist regime. Vladimir Putin even expressed his own assumption, which explained the role of Stalin in the murder of Polish officers. In his opinion, the Russian dictator thus avenged the defeat in 1920 in the Soviet-Polish war.

In 2010, D. A. Medvedev initiated the publication of classified Soviet time documents from the "package No. 1" on the website of the Federal Archives. The execution in Katyn, whose official documents are available for discussion, is still not fully disclosed. Some volumes of this case are still classified, but D. A. Medvedev told the Polish media that he condemns those who doubt the authenticity of the documents presented.

11/26/2010 The State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted the document "On the Katyn tragedy ...". This was opposed by representatives of the Communist Party faction. According to the adopted statement, the Katyn execution was recognized as a crime that was committed on the direct orders of Stalin. The document also expresses sympathy for the Polish people.

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

Memory of Katyn

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

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

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

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

The fate of the 1981 monument at the Military Cemetery was tragic. After installation at night, unknown people took it out using a construction crane and cars. The monument was in the form of a cross with the date "1940" and the inscription "Katyn". Two pillars with the inscriptions "Starobelsk", "Ostashkovo" adjoined the cross. At the foot of the monument were the letters "V. P.", meaning "Eternal memory", as well as the coat of arms of the Commonwealth in the form of an eagle with a crown.

The memory of the tragedy of the Polish people was well illuminated in his film "Katyn" by Andrzej Wajda (2007). The director himself is the son of Yakub Vaide, a career officer who was shot in 1940.

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

The plot of the picture is written based on the story of Andrzej Mulyarchik. The period from September 1939 to autumn 1945 is described. The film tells about the fate of four officers who got into soviet camp, as well as about their close relatives who do not know the truth about them, although they guess the worst. Through the fate of several people, the author conveyed to everyone what the real story was.

"Katyn" cannot leave the viewer indifferent, regardless of nationality.

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

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

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

What preceded the execution

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-commissioned officers and privates (approximately 25,000 Poles) remained in captivity of the Red Army. However, the prisoners of the NKVD included not only prisoners of war. There were mass arrests due to political motives. Members affected public organizations, political parties, large landowners, industrialists, merchants, violators of borders and other "enemies of the Soviet regime." Before the verdicts were handed down, those arrested were in the prisons of the western BSSR and the Ukrainian SSR for months.

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

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

Execution of prisoners

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

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

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

A short time after the execution of prisoners of war, the NKVD carried out an operation: the families of the repressed were sent to Kazakhstan.

Consequences of the tragedy

Throughout the time after the terrible crime that happened, the USSR tried to do everything possible to shift its blame to the German army. Allegedly, it was German soldiers who shot Polish prisoners and prisoners. Propaganda worked with might and main, there were even "evidence" of this. At the end of March 1943, the Germans, together with the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross, exhumed the remains of 4243 killed. The commission was able to establish the names of half of the dead.
However " Katyn lie» The USSR is not only trying to impose its version of what happened on all countries of the world. The communist leadership of the then Poland, which was put in power by the Soviet Union, also led this domestic policy.
Only after half a century did the USSR take the blame. On April 13, 1990, a TASS statement was published, which dealt with "the direct responsibility for the atrocities in the Katyn forest of Beria, Merkulov and their henchmen."
In 1991, Polish specialists and the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP) carried out a partial exhumation. The places of burial of prisoners of war were finally established.
On October 14, 1992, B. N. Yeltsin made public and handed over to Poland evidence confirming the guilt of the USSR leadership in the "Katyn crime". A lot of the materials of the investigation are still classified.
On November 26, 2010, the State Duma, despite the opposition of the Communist Party faction, decided to adopt a statement on the "Katyn tragedy and its victims." This incident in history was recognized as a crime, the commission of which was a direct indication of Stalin and other leaders of the USSR.
In 2011, Russian officials made a statement about their readiness to consider the issue of rehabilitation of the victims of the tragedy.

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

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

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

However, thousands of "former officers of the Polish army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, members of exposed counter-revolutionary insurgent organizations, defectors, etc.", the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, proposed to consider them "hardened, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power" and apply to them capital punishment - execution.

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

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

After the liberation of the Smolensk region by the Soviet troops, a special commission conducted an investigation, which established that the captured Poles were shot by the Germans in 1941. This version became official in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries until 1990. The Soviet side also filed accusations about Katyn at the end of the war as part of the Nuremberg Trials, but it was not possible to provide convincing evidence of the Germans' guilt, as a result, this episode did not appear in the indictment.

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

Mikhail Gorbachev handed over to Jaruzelsky the lists of officers sent along the stage - in fact, to the place of execution, from the camps in Kozelsk. Ostashkov and Starobelsk, and the Soviet Prosecutor General's Office soon began an official investigation. In the early 1990s, during a visit to Warsaw, Russian President Boris Yeltsin apologized to the Poles. Representatives Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that they share the grief of the Polish people for those who died in Katyn.

In 2000, a memorial to the victims of repressions was opened in Katyn, a common one - not only for Poles, but also for Soviet citizens, whom the NKVD shot in the same Katyn forest.

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

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in an article published in the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza on the eve of his working visit in August 2009: to rid Russian-Polish relations of the burden of distrust and prejudice that we inherited, to turn the page and start writing a new one."

According to Putin, "the people of Russia, whose fate was distorted by the totalitarian regime, are well aware of the heightened feelings of the Poles associated with Katyn, where thousands of Polish soldiers are buried." "We are obliged together to preserve the memory of the victims of this crime," the Russian prime minister urged. Chapter Russian government I am sure that "the Katyn and Mednoye memorials, as well as the tragic fate of Russian soldiers taken prisoner by Poland during the 1920 war, should become symbols of common sorrow and mutual forgiveness."

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

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

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

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

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