Briefly about Katyn in Polish. Katyn: execution of Polish officers

Katyn massacre - massacres of Polish citizens (mainly captured officers of the Polish army), carried out in the spring of 1940 by the NKVD of the USSR. According to documents published in 1992, the executions were carried out by decision of the troika of the NKVD of the USSR in accordance with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940. According to published archival documents, a total of 21,857 Polish prisoners were shot.

During the partition of Poland, the Red Army captured up to half a million Polish citizens. Most of them were soon released, and 130,242 people ended up in NKVD camps, including both members of the Polish army and others whom the leadership of the Soviet Union considered "suspicious" because of their desire to restore Poland's independence. The servicemen of the Polish army were divided: the highest officers were concentrated in three camps: Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky.

And on March 3, 1940, the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, proposed to the Politburo of the Central Committee to destroy all these people, since "They are all sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, full of hatred for the Soviet system." In fact, according to the ideology that existed in the USSR at that time, all nobles and representatives of wealthy circles were declared class enemies and were subject to destruction. Therefore, the death sentence was signed for the entire officer corps of the Polish army, which was soon carried out.

Then the war between the USSR and Germany began, and Polish units began to form in the USSR. Then the question arose about the officers who were in these camps. Soviet officials responded vaguely and evasively. And in 1943, the Germans found the burial places of the "missing" Polish officers in the Katyn forest. The USSR accused the Germans of lying, and after the liberation of this area, a Soviet commission headed by N. N. Burdenko worked in the Katyn forest. The conclusions of this commission were predictable: they blamed the Germans for everything.

In the future, Katyn has repeatedly become the subject of international scandals and high-profile accusations. In the early 90s, documents were published that confirmed that the execution in Katyn was carried out by decision of the top Soviet leadership. And on November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation, by its decision, recognized the guilt of the USSR in the Katyn massacre. Seems like enough has been said. But it's too early to make a point. Until a full assessment of these atrocities is given, until all the executioners and their victims are named, until the Stalinist legacy is overcome, until then we will not be able to say that the case of the execution in the Katyn Forest, which took place in the spring of 1940, is closed.

Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940, which determined the fate of the Poles. It states that “cases of 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siegemen and jailers who are in the camps of prisoners of war, as well as cases of 11 arrested and in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus 000 members of various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, manufacturers, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution.

The remains of General M. Smoravinsky.

Representatives of the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish Red Cross inspect the corpses removed for identification.

The delegation of the Polish Red Cross examines the documents found on the corpses.

Identity card of the chaplain (military priest) Zelkovsky, who was killed in Katyn.

Members of the International Commission interview the local population.

Local resident Parfen Gavrilovich Kiselev talks with a delegation of the Polish Red Cross.

N. N. Burdenko

Commission headed by N.N. Burdenko.

Executioners who "distinguished themselves" during the Katyn execution.

Chief Katyn executioner: V. I. Blokhin.

Hands tied with rope.

A memorandum from Beria to Stalin, with a proposal to destroy the Polish officers. On it are the paintings of all members of the Politburo.

Polish prisoners of war.

The international commission examines the corpses.

Note from the head of the KGB Shelepin to N.S. Khrushchev, which says: “Any unforeseen accident can lead to the disclosure of the operation, with all the consequences undesirable for our state. Moreover, with regard to those shot in the Katyn Forest, there is an official version: all the Poles liquidated there are considered to be destroyed by the German invaders. Based on the foregoing, it seems appropriate to destroy all records of the executed Polish officers.

Polish order on the found remains.

Captured British and Americans are present at the autopsy, which is performed by a German doctor.

Excavated common grave.

The bodies were piled up.

The remains of a major of the Polish army (Brigade named after Pilsudski).

A place in the Katyn forest where burials were discovered.

Adapted from http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_ %D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB

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(mostly captured officers of the Polish army) on the territory of the USSR during the Second World War.

The name comes from the small village of Katyn, located 14 kilometers west of Smolensk, in the area of ​​the Gnezdovo railway station, near which mass graves of prisoners of war were first discovered.

As evidenced by the documents handed over to the Polish side in 1992, the executions were carried out in accordance with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940.

According to an extract from the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee No. 13, more than 14 thousand Polish officers, policemen, officials, landowners, manufacturers and other "counter-revolutionary elements" who were in camps and 11 thousand imprisoned in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, were sentenced to death.

Prisoners of war from the Kozelsky camp were shot in the Katyn forest, not far from Smolensk, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky - in nearby prisons. As follows from a secret note sent to Khrushchev in 1959 by the chairman of the KGB Shelepin, in total about 22 thousand Poles were killed then.

In 1939, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army crossed the eastern border of Poland and the Soviet troops were taken prisoner, according to various sources, from 180 to 250 thousand Polish troops, many of whom, mostly privates, were then released. 130,000 servicemen and Polish citizens were imprisoned in the camps, whom the Soviet leadership considered "counter-revolutionary elements." In October 1939, residents of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were liberated from the camps, and more than 40,000 residents of Western and Central Poland were transferred to Germany. The remaining officers were concentrated in the Starobelsky, Ostashkovsky and Kozelsky camps.

In 1943, two years after the occupation of the western regions of the USSR by German troops, there were reports that the NKVD officers shot Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. For the first time, the Katyn graves were opened and examined by the German doctor Gerhard Butz, who headed the forensic laboratory of the Army Group Center.

On April 28-30, 1943, an International Commission consisting of 12 forensic medicine specialists from a number of European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Croatia, Holland, Slovakia, Romania, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Czech Republic) worked in Katyn. Both Dr. Butz and the international commission gave a conclusion on the involvement of the NKVD in the execution of captured Polish officers.

In the spring of 1943, a technical commission of the Polish Red Cross worked in Katyn, which was more cautious in its conclusions, but the fault of the USSR also followed from the facts recorded in its report.

In January 1944, after the liberation of Smolensk and its environs, the Soviet "Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of War by the Nazi Invaders in the Katyn Forest" was working in Katyn, headed by the Chief Surgeon of the Red Army Academician Nikolai Burdenko. During the exhumation, inspection of physical evidence and autopsy, the commission found that the executions were carried out by the Germans no earlier than 1941, when they occupied this area of ​​the Smolensk region. The Burdenko Commission accused the German side of shooting the Poles.

The question of the Katyn tragedy remained open for a long time; the leadership of the Soviet Union did not recognize the fact of the execution of Polish officers in the spring of 1940. According to the official version, the German side in 1943 used the mass grave for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union in order to prevent the surrender of German soldiers as prisoners and to attract the peoples of Western Europe to participate in the war.

After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, they returned to the Katyn case again. In 1987, after the signing of the Soviet-Polish Declaration on Cooperation in the Field of Ideology, Science and Culture, a Soviet-Polish Commission of Historians was established to investigate this issue.

The Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR (and then the Russian Federation) was entrusted with an investigation, which was conducted simultaneously with the Polish prosecutor's investigation.

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 April 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev handed over to Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski the lists of Polish prisoners of war sent by stage from the Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky camps, as well as those who left the Starobelsky camp, who were considered to be shot. At the same time, cases were opened in Kharkov and Kalinin regions. On September 27, 1990, both cases were merged into one by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

On October 14, 1992, the personal representative of Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa copies of archival documents about the fate of Polish officers who died on the territory of the USSR (the so-called "Package No. 1").

Among the documents handed over, in particular, was the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on March 5, 1940, at which it was decided to propose punishment to the NKVD.

On February 22, 1994, a Russian-Polish agreement "On burials and places of memory of victims of wars and repressions" was signed in Krakow.

On June 4, 1995, a memorial sign was erected at the site of the executions of Polish officers in Katyn Forest. 1995 was declared the year of Katyn in Poland.

In 1995, a protocol was signed between Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Poland, according to which each of these countries independently investigates crimes committed on their territory. Belarus and Ukraine provided the Russian side with their data, which were used in summing up the results of the investigation by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

On July 13, 1994, the head of the investigation group of the GVP Yablokov issued a decision to dismiss the criminal case on the basis of paragraph 8 of article 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR (for the death of the perpetrators). However, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation canceled Yablokov's decision three days later, and another prosecutor was assigned to continue the investigation.

As part of the investigation, more than 900 witnesses were identified and questioned, more than 18 examinations were carried out, during which thousands of objects were examined. More than 200 bodies were exhumed. During the investigation, all the people who worked at that time in state bodies were interrogated. Director of the Institute of National Remembrance - Deputy Prosecutor General of Poland Dr. Leon Keres was notified of the results of the investigation. In total, there are 183 volumes in the case, of which 116 contain information constituting state secrets.

The chief military prosecutor's office of the Russian Federation reported that during the investigation of the "Katyn case" the exact number of people who were kept in the camps "and in respect of whom decisions were made" was established - a little more than 14,540 people. Of these, more than 10 thousand 700 people were kept in camps on the territory of the RSFSR, and 3 thousand 800 people - in Ukraine. The death of 1,803 people (out of those held in the camps) was established, 22 people were identified.

On September 21, 2004, the GVP RF again, now definitively, terminated criminal case No. 159 on the basis of paragraph 4 of part 1 of Article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation (due to the death of the perpetrators).

In March 2005, the Sejm of Poland demanded that Russia recognize the mass executions of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest in 1940 as genocide. After that, the relatives of the dead, with the support of the "Memorial" society, joined the struggle for the recognition of those who were shot as victims of political repressions. The Chief Military Prosecutor's Office does not see reprisals, answering that "the actions of a number of specific high-ranking officials of the USSR are qualified under paragraph "b" of Article 193-17 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1926) as an abuse of power that had serious consequences in the presence of particularly aggravating circumstances, 21.09 .2004, the criminal case against them was terminated on the basis of clause 4, part 1, article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation due to the death of the perpetrators.”

The decision to terminate the criminal case against the perpetrators is secret. The military prosecutor's office classified the events in Katyn as ordinary crimes, and classified the names of the perpetrators on the grounds that the case contained documents constituting state secrets. According to a representative of the GVP of the Russian Federation, out of 183 volumes of the "Katyn case", 36 contain documents classified as "secret", and 80 volumes - "for official use." Therefore, access to them is closed. And in 2005, employees of the Polish prosecutor's office were familiarized with the remaining 67 volumes.

The decision of the GVP of the Russian Federation to refuse to recognize those shot as victims of political repression was appealed in 2007 in the Khamovnichesky Court, which confirmed the refusals.

In May 2008, relatives of the victims of Katyn filed a complaint with the Khamovniki Court of Moscow against what they considered to be an unjustified termination of the investigation. On June 5, 2008, the court refused to consider the complaint, arguing that the district courts had no jurisdiction to consider cases that contain information constituting a state secret. The Moscow City Court recognized this decision as legal.

The cassation appeal was submitted to the Moscow District Military Court, which dismissed it on 14 October 2008. On January 29, 2009, the decision of the Khamovnichesky Court was upheld by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

Since 2007, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) from Poland began to receive claims from relatives of the victims of Katyn against Russia, which they accuse of failing to conduct a proper investigation.

In October 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted for consideration a complaint in connection with the refusal of the Russian legal authorities to satisfy the claim of two Polish citizens who are descendants of Polish officers shot in 1940. The son and grandson of officers of the Polish Army Jerzy Yanovets and Anthony Rybovsky reached the Strasbourg court. Polish citizens justify their appeal to Strasbourg by saying that Russia violates their right to a fair trial by not fulfilling the provision of the UN Convention on Human Rights, which obliges countries to ensure the protection of life and explain each death. The ECtHR accepted these arguments, taking the complaint of Yanovets and Rybovsky into proceedings.

In December 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided to consider the case on a priority basis and also sent a number of questions to the Russian Federation.

At the end of April 2010, at the direction of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev, the Rosarkhiv for the first time posted on its website electronic samples of the original documents about the Poles shot by the NKVD in Katyn in 1940.

On May 8, 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev handed over to the Polish side 67 volumes of criminal case No. 159 on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. The transfer took place at a meeting between Medvedev and Acting President of Poland Bronisław Komorowski in the Kremlin. The President of the Russian Federation also handed over a list of materials for individual volumes. Previously, the materials of the criminal case had never been transferred to Poland - only archival data.

In September 2010, as part of the execution by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation of a request from the Polish side for legal assistance, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation handed over another 20 volumes of materials from the criminal case on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn to Poland.

In accordance with the agreement between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, the Russian side continues to work on declassifying the materials of the Katyn case, which was conducted by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office. On December 3, 2010, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation handed over another significant batch of archival documents to Polish representatives.

On April 7, 2011, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation handed over to Poland copies of 11 declassified volumes of the criminal case on the execution of Polish citizens in Katyn. The materials contained requests from the main research center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, certificates of criminal records and places of burial of prisoners of war.

On May 19, Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika announced that Russia had practically completed the transfer to Poland of the materials of the criminal case initiated on the fact of the discovery of mass graves of the remains of Polish servicemen near Katyn (Smolensk region). As of May 16, 2011, the Polish side .

In July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) declared admissible two complaints of Polish citizens against the Russian Federation related to the closure of the case on the execution of their relatives near Katyn, in Kharkov and in Tver in 1940.

The judges decided to combine two lawsuits filed in 2007 and 2009 by relatives of the deceased Polish officers into one proceeding.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

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

german rigging

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

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

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

Goebbels, speaking on April 17 at a regular conference at which the press and radio were instructed, noted with satisfaction that "the Katyn case took on such a scale that he did not expect at first." to the front of the enemy. The main idea that should become the leitmotif of propaganda is that “the Bolsheviks have not changed (…) that they are the same bloodthirsty dogs who attacked the Russian nobility, who killed the Latvian nobility and the Latvian bourgeoisie (…) who would have become so in other parts of Europe to rage." .At the same time, Goebbels stated: “Some of our people should be there earlier so that everything is prepared when the Red Cross arrives and so that during the excavations they would not come across things that do not correspond to our line. It would be expedient to elect one person from us and one from the OKW, who would already now prepare a kind of minute-by-minute program in Katyn.. The main circumstance, "not corresponding to our line" and exposing the German participation in the execution of the Poles, was the German origin of the cartridges with which the Poles were shot.

Falsification of archival documents

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

The original date was "corrected" by unknown criminals. This was expressed in the fact that an indication of the number was etched out of the “note” to Comrade Stalin, and the number “5” failed in no one knows where: it was “March 5, 1940”, and it became “... March 1940”. In this form, the "note" ended up in the sixth volume of the "Materials of the case on the verification of the constitutionality of the decrees of the President of the Russian Federation concerning the activities of the CPSU and the Communist Party of the RSFSR, as well as on the verification of the constitutionality of the CPSU and the Communist Party of the RSFSR".

In fact, Beria's note is not dated at all (the place of the date on the form is not filled in: ".." March), but in the upper right corner, under the words "Top Secret" and among other official marks, there is a note: "from 5.III.40 ." .". The mark arose when the document was attached to the case and means its connection with the decision of the Politburo.

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

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

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

Naturally, the letter with the outgoing number 794/B could only be signed and registered with the secretariat of the NKVD of the USSR on February 29, 1940. However, it contains updated statistics on the number of prisoners of war officers in the special camps of the UPV (Department of Prisoners of War) of the NKVD, which arrived in Moscow on the night of March 2-3 and were issued by the head of the NKVD UPV P.K. These data could not get into the text of the document registered on February 29, 1940.

From the ratio of outgoing document numbers and the dates on them, it follows that from 15 to 20 documents were received from the central apparatus of the NKVD per day. The question is: what period of time can a document with outgoing number 794/B refer to? Just between Feb 22 (because 794 is more than 641 :-) and March 2 (because 794 is LESS than 810 :-) And 794/B is not just somewhere BETWEEN Feb 22 and March 2, and falls either on March 1, or even on February 29. At the same time, the “note of Beria” (as other Katyn scholars reasonably object to N. S. Lebedeva) contains figures from Soprunenko’s notes written on March 2 and 3. This data could not get into the document written on March 1 - because they did not exist in nature then. About the mention in the "note of Beria" dated March 1 (or February 29?) Bashtakov's position, which he took only on March 5 - I generally keep quiet. Thus, in note number 749/Bazhe, in two cases there are references to data and positions that could not have been included in the original document with this number. So - "Beria's note" is a fake. The "Decree of the PB", repeating it word for word, is also a fake. "Shelepin's note", which contains a mention of the "Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU (!) of March 5, 1940" - all the more fake. That is, ALL documents that talk about the execution of Poles are fakes. According to supporters of the alternative version, all the original documents found by scientists in the archives speak of the formalization of the affairs of the Poles through the Special Conference. Which, according to this opinion, could not sentence anyone to death due to lack of authority. Moreover, the researchers of the Katyn issue found the verdicts of the OSO (for example, the verdicts of Oleinik and Svyanevich), which confirm and documents that at least 26 Poles listed on the so-called “Katyn List” (a list of Poles killed and missing in captivity ) were alive after May 1940. In addition, the location of the OH1 and OH2 camps is still unknown to this day, and whether they existed at all. There are other claims as well.

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

The treacherous "confession" of M. S. Gorbachev

On February 22, 1990, he sent it to M. S. Gorbachev, in which he reported on new archival finds proving the connection between the sending of Poles from the camps in the spring of 1940 and their execution. He pointed out that the publication of such materials would completely undermine the official position of the Soviet government (about “unproven” and “lack of documents”), and therefore recommended that a new position be urgently decided. In this regard, it was proposed to inform Jaruzelsky that no direct evidence (orders, orders, etc.) was found that would allow us to name the exact time and specific perpetrators of the Katyn tragedy, but based on the “discovered indications”, we can conclude that the death of Polish officers in the Katyn region - the work of the NKVD and personally Beria and Merkulov.

On April 13, 1990, during Jaruzelsky's visit to Moscow, the Katyn tragedy was published, which read:

The revealed archival materials in their totality allow us to conclude that Beria, Merkulov and their henchmen were directly responsible for the atrocities in the Katyn forest.

The Soviet side, expressing deep regret over the Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism.

Gorbachev handed over to Jaruzelsky the discovered milestone lists of the NKVD from Kozelsk, from Ostashkov and from Starobelsk.

Following that, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR launched an investigation into the so-called "Katyn murder".

Notes

1. "Closed Package #1"
2. Decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940
3. Official website of the State Memorial Complex "Katyn"
4. Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
5. (English) Sanford, George. "

On April 13, 1943, thanks to a statement by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, a new “sensational bomb” appears in all German media: German soldiers during the occupation of Smolensk found tens of thousands of corpses of captured Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. According to the Nazis, the brutal execution was carried out by Soviet soldiers. Moreover, almost a year before the start of the Great Patriotic War. The sensation is intercepted by the world media, and the Polish side, in turn, declares that our country has destroyed the “color of the nation” of the Polish people, since, according to their estimates, the bulk of Poland’s officers are teachers, artists, doctors, engineers, scientists and other elites . The Poles actually declare the USSR criminals against humanity. The Soviet Union, in turn, denied any involvement in the execution. So who is to blame for this tragedy? Let's try to figure it out.

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

During this offensive, we regained Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and about 150,000 Poles dressed in military uniform were captured by the Red Army. Here again, it is worth noting that the representatives of the lower class were immediately released, and later, in the 41st year, 73 thousand Poles were transferred to the Polish general Anders, who fought against the Germans. We still had that part of the prisoners who did not want to fight against the Germans, but refused to cooperate with us either.

Polish prisoners taken by the Red Army

Of course, executions of Poles took place, but not in the amount that fascist propaganda presents. To begin with, it is necessary to remember that during the Polish occupation of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine in 1921-1939, Polish gendarmes mocked the population, whipped with barbed wire, sewed live cats into people's stomachs and killed hundreds for the slightest violation of discipline in concentration camps. And the Polish newspapers did not hesitate to write: “A horror must fall on the entire local Belarusian population from top to bottom, from which blood will freeze in their veins.” And this Polish "elite" was captured by us. Therefore, part of the Poles (about 3 thousand) was sentenced to death for committing grave crimes. The rest of the Poles worked at the construction site of the highway in Smolensk. And already at the end of July 1941, the Smolensk region was occupied by German troops.

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

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


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

The first version is based on the “independent” German expertise under the leadership of Goebbels on April 28, 1943. It is worth paying attention to how this examination was carried out and how “independent” it really was. To do this, let us turn to the article of the Czechoslovak professor of forensic medicine F. Gaek, a direct participant in the German examination of 1943. Here is how he describes the events of those days: “The way in which the Nazis organized a trip to the Katyn Forest for 12 expert professors from countries occupied by the Nazi invaders is already characteristic. The Protectorate Ministry of the Interior at that time gave me an order from the Nazi occupiers to go to the Katyn forest, pointing out that if I did not go and pleaded illness (which I did), then my act would be considered as sabotage and, at best, I would be arrested and arrested. sent to a concentration camp. Under such conditions, there can be no talk of any “independence”.

The remains of the executed Polish officers

F. Gaek also gives the following arguments against the accusation of the Nazis:

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


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


• surprisingly good preservation of shape (the fabric on the corpses did not decay; the metal parts were somewhat rusty, but in some places they retained their luster; the tobacco in the cigarette cases was not spoiled, although both tobacco and the fabric had to be badly damaged by dampness after 3 years of lying in the ground) ;


• Polish officers were shot with German-made revolvers;


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

The reader will rightly ask the question: “Why did the Czech expert decide to speak out only after the end of the Second World War, why in 1943 he subscribed to the version of the Nazis, and later began to contradict himself?”. The answer to this question can be found in the bookformer Chairman of the Security Committee of the State DumaViktor Ilyukhin"Katyn case. Test for Russophobia":

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

In addition, the facts are already known that experts from the German commission in 1943 found a significant number of cartridge cases from German cartridges in the Katyn burials.Geco 7.65 D”, which were badly corroded. And this suggests that the sleeves were steel. The fact is that at the end of 1940, due to a shortage of non-ferrous metals, the Germans were forced to switch to the production of varnished steel sleeves. Obviously, in the spring of 1940, this type of cartridges could not have appeared in the hands of the NKVD officers. This means that a German trace is involved in the execution of Polish officers.

Katyn. Smolensk. Spring 1943 German doctor Butz demonstrates to the commission of experts the documents found in the possession of the murdered Polish officers. On the second photo: Italian and Hungarian "experts" inspect the corpse.

The now declassified documents from the Special Folder No. 1 are also “proof” of the USSR’s guilt. In particular, there is a letter from Beria No. 794 / B, where he gives a direct decree to the execution of more than 25 thousand Polish officers. But on March 31, 2009, the forensic laboratory of one of the leading specialists of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, E. Molokov, carried out an official examination of this letter and revealed the following:

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


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

In addition, the document does not contain the number of the day of the week, only the month and year are indicated (“” March 1940), and the letter was registered in the Central Committee in general on February 29, 1940. This is unbelievable for any office work, especially for Stalin's time. It is especially alarming that this letter is just a color copy, and no one could ever find the original. In addition, more than 50 signs of forgery have already been found in the documents of the Special Package No. 1.For example, how do you like Shelepin's extract dated February 27, 1959, signed by Comrade Stalin, already deceased at that time, and at the same time containing the seals of both the CPSU (b), which no longer existed, and the CPSU Central Committee? Only on this basis can we say that the documents from the Special Folder No. 1 are more likely to be fakes. Needless to say, these documents first appeared in circulation during the Gorbachev/Yeltsin era?

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

The Commission of Academician Nikolai Burdenko works in Katyn.

Forensic experts of the Burdenko Commission examined 925 corpses and made the following conclusions:

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


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


• the fabric of clothing, especially overcoats, uniforms, trousers and overshirts, is well preserved and is very difficult to tear with hands;


• the execution was carried out with German weapons;


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


• found valuables and documents dated 1941;


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


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


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

Based on all of the above, the commission concluded: the Polish prisoners of war, who were in three camps west of Smolensk and were engaged in road construction work before the start of the war, remained there after the German invaders invaded Smolensk until September 1941 inclusive, and the execution was carried out between September - December 1941.

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

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

worldnegative public opinion from Germany to the USSR, followed by their aggression.

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

However, today it is the Goebbels version that is the official version in Russia.April 7, 2010 at conferences in KatynPutin said that Stalin carried out this execution out of a sense of revenge, since in the 1920s Stalin personally commanded the campaign against Warsaw and was defeated. And on April 18 of the same year, on the day of the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, today's Prime Minister Medvedev called the Katyn massacre "a crime of Stalin and his henchmen." And this is despite the fact that there is no legal court decision on the guilt of our country in this tragedy, neither Russian nor foreign. But there is a decision of the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945, where the Germans were found guilty. In turn, Poland, unlike us, does not repent for its atrocities of 21-39 years in the occupied territories of Ukraine and Belarus. Only in 1922 there were about 800 uprisings of the local population in these occupied territories, a concentration camp was created in Berezovsko-Karatuzskaya, through which thousands of Belarusians passed. Skulsky, one of the leaders of the Poles, said that in 10 years there would not be a single Belarusian on this land. Hitler had the same plans for Russia. These facts have long been proven, but only our country is forced to repent. And in those crimes that we probably did not commit.