The dead film crew of Sergei Bodrov. What was found next to Bodrov’s body was terrifying...

- Alexey Yurievich, what was she like? total number Polish prisoners of war?

There are several sources, and there are discrepancies between them. According to various estimates, 450-480 thousand Polish soldiers were captured by the Germans in 1939. In the USSR there were 120-150 thousand of them. The data cited by a number of experts - primarily Polish - about the internment of 180 or even 220-250 thousand Poles is not supported by documents. It should be emphasized that at first these people - from a legal point of view - were in the position of internees. This is explained by the fact that there was no war between the Soviet Union and Poland. But after the Polish government in exile declared war on the Soviet Union on December 18, 1939 (the so-called Angers Declaration) over the transfer of Vilna and the Vilna region to Lithuania, the internees automatically turned into prisoners of war. In other words, legally, and then actually, prisoners of war, they were made by their own emigrant government.

- How did their destinies turn out?

Differently. Natives of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, privates and sergeants, were sent home even before the emigrant government declared war on the USSR. It is not known exactly how many there were. Then the USSR and Germany entered into an agreement under which all prisoners of war conscripted into the Polish army from territory ceded to the USSR, but captured by the Germans, were transferred to the Soviet Union, and vice versa. As a result of the exchange in October and November 1939, about 25 thousand prisoners of war were transferred to the USSR - citizens of the former Poland, natives of territories ceded to the Soviet Union, and more than 40 thousand to Germany. Most of them, privates and sergeants, were sent home. The officers were not released. Employees of the border service, police and punitive structures were also detained - those who were suspected of involvement in sabotage and espionage activities against the USSR. Indeed, in the 1920-1930s, Polish intelligence was very active in the western regions of the Soviet Union.
By the beginning of 1940, no more than 30 thousand Polish prisoners of war remained in the USSR. Of these, approximately 10 thousand are officers. They were distributed to specially created camps. There were 4,500 Polish prisoners of war in the Kozelsky camp (in 1940 - Western, now Kaluga region), 6,300 in Ostashkovsky (Kalinin, now Tver region), and 3,800 in the Starobelsky camp (Voroshilovgrad, now Lugansk region). At the same time, captured officers were kept mainly in the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps. Ostashkovsky was predominantly “soldiers”, there were no more than 400 officers. Some Poles were in camps in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. These are the original numbers.

On July 30, 1941, the Kremlin and the Sikorsky government signed a political agreement and an additional protocol to it. It provided for the provision of an amnesty to all Polish prisoners of war. These allegedly turned out to be 391,545 people. How does this compare with the numbers you provided?

Indeed, about 390 thousand Poles were included in the amnesty in August 1941. There is no contradiction here, since along with prisoners of war in 1939-1940, civilians were also interned. This is a separate topic. We are talking about prisoners of war - former Polish soldiers of the Polish Army.

- Where and how many, besides Katyn, were Polish prisoners of war shot during the Great Patriotic War?

It’s unlikely that anyone will name it exactly. If only because some of the archival documents are still classified. I will only say about two burials not far from Katyn (Goat Mountains). The first was located in Serebryanka (Dubrovenka) near Krasny Bor, the second - not yet documented - to the west of the village of Katyn. Information about him is contained in the memoirs of the daughter of one of the dead Poles, Shchiradlovskaya-Petsa.

Your opponents claim that Polish prisoners of war in Katyn were shot on the orders of Stalin. Why don't you agree with them?

Supporters of the Polish (it would be more honest to say - Goebbels) version do not explain, but ignore or openly suppress facts that are inconvenient for themselves.
I will list the main ones. First of all, it has been proven: German-made cartridges of 6.35 and 7.65 mm caliber (GECO and RWS) were found at the scene of the execution. This indicates that the Poles were killed with German pistols. The Red Army and the NKVD troops did not have weapons of such calibers. Attempts by the Polish side to prove the purchase of such pistols in Germany specifically for the execution of Polish prisoners of war are untenable. The NKVD used its own standard weapons. These are revolvers, and the officers have TT pistols. Both are 7.62 mm caliber.
In addition, and this is also documented, the hands of some of those executed were tied with paper twine. This was not produced in the USSR at that time, but it was produced in Europe, including Germany.
Another important fact: documents on the execution of the sentence were not found in the archives, just as the execution sentence itself was not found, without which no execution would be possible in principle.
Finally, documents were found on individual corpses. Moreover, both by the Germans during the exhumation in February-May 1943, and by the Burdenko commission in 1944: officer IDs, passports, and other identification documents. This also indicates that the USSR was not involved in the execution. The NKVD would not have left such evidence - it was strictly prohibited by the relevant instructions. There would be no newspapers left that were printed precisely in the spring of 1940, but they were “found” by the Germans in burial places in large quantities. In the fall of 1941, the Germans themselves could leave documents with those executed: then, in their opinion, they had nothing to fear. Back in 1940, the Nazis, without hiding, destroyed several thousand representatives of the Polish elite. For example, in the Palmyra Forest near Warsaw. It is noteworthy that the Polish authorities rarely remember these victims.

- So it won’t be possible to declare them victims of the NKVD.

Will not work. The Polish version is untenable for a number of reasons. It is known that many witnesses saw the Poles alive in 1940-1941.
Archival documents have also been preserved about the transfer of cases against Polish prisoners of war to the Special Meeting (OSO) of the NKVD of the USSR, which did not have the right to sentence them to death, but could sentence them to a maximum of eight years in the camps. In addition, the USSR never carried out mass executions of foreign prisoners of war, especially officers. Especially in an out-of-court manner without completing the relevant procedures provided for by law. Warsaw stubbornly ignores this. And one more thing. Until the fall of 1941, there was no technical feasibility quietly shoot several thousand people. This tract is located 17 kilometers from Smolensk, not far from the Gnezdovo station, and until the war it remained an open recreation area for townspeople. There were pioneer camps here, an NKVD dacha burned by the Germans during their retreat in 1943. It was located 700 meters from the busy Vitebsk highway. And the burial sites themselves are located 200 meters from the highway. It was the Germans who surrounded this place with barbed wire and set up guards.

- Mass graves in Medny, Tver region... There is no complete clarity here either?

Tver (more precisely, the village of Mednoe near Tver) is the second point on the “Katyn map”, where Polish prisoners of war were allegedly buried. Recently about this in full voice The local community spoke up. Everyone is tired of the lies that the Poles and some of our fellow citizens are spreading. It is believed that Polish prisoners of war who were previously held in the Ostashkov camp are buried in Mednoye. Officers, let me remind you, there were no more than 400 people from total number 6,300 Polish prisoners of war. The Polish side categorically claims that they all lie in Medny. This contradicts the data contained in the memorandums of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. They were sent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in connection with the consideration in 2010-2013 of the “Case of Yanovets and others against Russia”. The memorandums of the Ministry of Justice - and they reflect our official position - clearly indicate that during the exhumation carried out in 1991 in Medny, the remains of only 243 Polish military personnel were discovered. Of these, 16 people were identified (identified by badges).

- To put it mildly, significant differences.

We must say frankly: this is obvious and unprincipled manipulation. Despite this, the Poles erected a memorial in Mednoye and hung signs with the names of the 6,300 Poles allegedly shot and buried there. The figures I have mentioned allow us to imagine the scale of cynicism and falsification that the Poles have resorted to and continue to resort to. It's sad that they have like-minded people in our country. We won’t speculate about their motives. But they have no arguments! This is the jesuitism and shamelessness of the position of the current Warsaw: to reject and ignore inconvenient facts and talk about its position as the only correct one and not subject to doubt.

- There is a lot of controversy in this regard in the so-called “Katyn No. 3” - Kyiv Bykivna.

In 2012, in Bykivna, the then presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Komorowski and Yanukovych, opened a memorial in memory of the three and a half thousand Polish officers allegedly shot there (please note: again, it was the officers). However, this has not been confirmed by anything. There are not even milestone lists that exist in the “Katyn case”. It is unfoundedly alleged that 3,500 Polish officers were kept in prisons in Western Ukraine. And supposedly they were all shot in Bykovnya.
The opponents' method of conducting discussions is amazing. We are used to presenting facts and arguments. And they give us figures taken from the ceiling, not supported by documents, and present them as indisputable evidence.

Have you ever had a personal discussion with those domestic historians who adhere to the Polish position?

I would be glad! We are always open for discussion. But our opponents avoid discussions and contacts. They operate on the principle of “a scorpion under a stone.” He usually sits for a long time, and at some point he crawls out, bites and hides again.

At the beginning of the year, the Polish Sejm received a bill from Deputy Zielinski. He proposed declaring July 12 as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the 1945 “August Raid.” In Poland it is called Lesser Katyn or New Katyn. The feeling that the Poles bake their “Katyn” like pancakes...

This once again confirms that « Katyn” as such has long been a tool and at the same time a “source” of the information war against Russia. For some reason this is underestimated here. But in vain.
On July 9, the Polish Sejm adopted the law proposed by Zelinsky on “Remembrance Day on July 12.” So now official Warsaw has another “anti-Russian bogeyman”...
The history of “Little Katyn” is as follows. In July 1945, a military and security operation was carried out against gangs that committed murders and sabotage in the rear of the 1st Belorussian Front. During the operation, more than seven thousand armed people were detained. Approximately 600 of them turned out to be associated with the Home Army (AK). The Polish side claims that everyone was shot immediately. In Warsaw, they refer to one document - a coded telegram from the head of Smersh, Viktor Abakumov, to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Lavrenty Beria, No. 25212 dated July 21, 1945. It allegedly talks about the liquidation of anti-Soviet formations and contains a “proposal to shoot” the mentioned 592 Poles. But in the USSR, I repeat once again, such extrajudicial executions have never been carried out - especially foreign prisoners of war.
At that time, the employees of the GUKR “Smersh” NGO of the USSR did not have any legal grounds for shooting the Poles. Order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 0061 of February 6, 1945, which introduced at the final stage of the war in the front line the right to shoot bandits and saboteurs captured at the scene of a crime, became invalid after the end of hostilities. It was officially canceled even before the start of the “August Operation”. This alone calls into question the reliability of the encryption provided by the Poles.
The indiscriminate, “equalizing” nature of the application of mass execution to all 592 arrested “Akovites” without exception, and only to them, also raises great doubts. The usual practice of law enforcement agencies of the USSR at that time was to divide those arrested according to contingents, categories and other criteria with individual application of appropriate measures.
It is noteworthy that the above encryption was compiled in gross violation of the norms of official subordination. GUKR "Smersh" was not subordinate to the NKVD of the USSR and for this reason its chief, Colonel General Viktor Abakumov, who reported directly to Stalin, in principle should not have asked for "instructions" from the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Moreover, instructions about execution.
A recent examination of the “cipher telegram” clearly shows that we are dealing with a fake. If only because part of the document was printed on one typewriter, and part on another. The publication of the data from this examination, I hope, will put an end to Polish myth-making on these events. However, there is no doubt that “Malye”, “New” and other Katyns will be followed by others. Polish falsifiers of history have lost their sense of reality and are unlikely to stop.

- What can you say about the so-called grave No. 9, discovered in Katyn in the spring of 2000?

Indeed, in 2000, during the construction of a transformer station in Katyn, a previously unknown burial place was discovered. Based on their uniforms and other signs, they established that there were Polish military personnel there. At least two hundred remains. Poland responded to the news of the discovery of a new grave by saying that the wife of then Polish President Kwasniewski arrived in Katyn and laid flowers. But the Polish side did not respond to the proposal to carry out joint exhumation work. Since then, “Grave No. 9” has been a figure of “silence” for the Polish media.

- What, there are “other” Poles lying there?

It’s a paradox, but official Warsaw does not need the remains of “unverified” compatriots. She only needs “correct” burials, which confirm the Polish version of the execution by the “evil NKVD”. After all, during the exhumation of the “unknown grave”, there is almost no doubt that further evidence will be discovered pointing to German perpetrators. To complete the picture, it is necessary to say something about the actions of our authorities. Instead of initiating exhumation, they classified all materials. Russian researchers have not been allowed to visit “Grave No. 9” for sixteen years now. But I am sure: the truth will triumph sooner or later.

- If we summarize the conversation, what issues are among the unresolved?

I have already said most of it. The main thing is that the collected facts and evidence confirming the guilt of the Germans in the execution of Poles in Katyn are ignored by Warsaw and somehow “shamefully” kept silent by our authorities. It’s time to finally understand that the Polish side in the “Katyn issue” has long been not only biased, but also incapable of negotiating. Warsaw does not accept and will not accept any “inconvenient” arguments. The Poles will continue to call white black. They have driven themselves into the Katyn dead end, from which they cannot and do not want to get out. Russia must show political will here.

In my opinion, the falsifiers who fabricated the investigation into the execution of Polish officers by the NKVD troops faced, in my opinion, two delicate problems at the final stage:

1. How to eliminate the discrepancy between the statement of the Nazis, who announced in 1943 that about 12 thousand Polish officers were shot in Katyn, and the current Russian-Polish “investigation”, which determined that 6 thousand Poles were “shot” near Medny, and 4 thousand near Kharkov and in Katyn - a little more than 4 thousand people.

2. Which state body of the USSR should be held responsible for the decision to shoot Polish officers, if all attempts to drag the Special Meeting under the NKVD into this turned out to be so untenable that only complete cretins and complete scoundrels can insist on them. (However, if Polish President Kwasniewski is satisfied with the “investigation” and radiates joy over its results, then we are dealing with both of them at the same time).

After the entry of Soviet troops into the territory of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine in September-October 1939 as internees, and after the emigrant government of Poland declared a state of war with the USSR in November 1939 - as prisoners of war - about 10 thousand officers of the former the Polish army and about the same number of gendarmes, police officers, intelligence officers, prison workers - in total about 20 thousand people (not counting privates and non-commissioned officers). By the spring of 1940 they were divided into three categories.

The first category is dangerous criminals convicted of murdering communists in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, sabotage, espionage and other serious crimes against the USSR. After their arrest by the judicial authorities of the USSR, they were sentenced - some to imprisonment with serving their sentences in forced labor camps, and some to execution. Taking into account the data that, as a result of various kinds of slips and slips, the Russian-Polish Goebbelsites tell us, the total number of those sentenced to death penalty amounted to about one thousand people. It is impossible to give an exact figure due to the fact that Russian falsifiers destroyed the files on all Polish criminals in the archives they inherited, so that it would be easier for them, together with their Polish accomplices, to build a version of the shooting of Polish officers by the “Stalinist regime.”

The second category - persons from among the Polish officers, who for the world community were supposed to designate Polish prisoners of war - about 400 people in total. They were sent to the Gryazovets prison camp in the Vologda region. Most of them were released in 1941 and handed over to General Anders, who began forming a Polish army on the territory of the USSR. General Anders, with the consent of the Soviet leadership, who was convinced that the Andersites did not want to fight against the Nazis on the Eastern Front along with the Red Army, took this army, which consisted of several divisions, through Turkmenistan and Iran to the Anglo-Americans in 1942. By the way, the British, who had Anders’ units at their disposal, did not stand on ceremony with the arrogant Poles and in the spring of 1944 threw them under German machine guns into the mountainous neck of the Italian town of Montecasino, where they died in large numbers.

The third category consisted of the bulk of Polish army officers, gendarmes and police officers, who could not be released for two reasons. Firstly, they could join the ranks of the Home Army, which was subordinate to the Polish émigré government and launched semi-partisan military operations against the Red Army and Soviet power structures. Secondly, based on the inevitability of war with Nazi Germany, about which the Soviet leadership had no illusions, the normalization of relations with the Polish government in exile and the subsequent use of the Poles for a joint fight against fascism was not ruled out.

A painful and painful solution to the fate of the third, main part of the Polish prisoners of war was found in the fact that they were recognized as socially dangerous by a special meeting under the NKVD of the USSR, convicted and imprisoned in forced labor camps. They were sent from Kozelsky, Ostashsky and Starobelsky prisoner of war camps (prisoner of war camps and forced labor camps are completely different in nature, since the latter only house convicts) took place in April-May 1940. Convicted Poles were transported to special-purpose forced labor camps located west of Smolensk, of which there were three. The Poles held in these camps were used in the construction and repair of highways until the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The beginning of the war was extremely unfavorable for the Soviet Union. Already on July 16, 1941, German troops captured Smolensk, and they had camps with Polish prisoners of war even earlier. In an atmosphere of confusion and elements of panic, it was not possible to evacuate the Poles deep into Soviet territory by rail or road transport, and they refused to leave for the East on foot along with a small number of guards. Only a few of the Polish Jewish officers did this. In addition, the most decisive and courageous of the officers began to make their way to the West, thanks to which some of them managed to survive.

The Nazis ended up with the entire file on the Poles, which they kept in the forced labor camps. This allowed them to announce in 1943 that the number of those executed was about 12 thousand. Using the file data, they published the “Official Materials...” of their investigation, where they included various “documents” to support their slanderous version of the execution of Polish officers by the Soviets. But, despite the German pedantry, among the documents cited there were those that showed that their owners were alive as of October 1941. This is what, for example, V.N. wrote about the “Official Materials...” of the Germans. Pribytkov, who worked as director of the Central Special Archive of the USSR before it came under the control of the Yeltsinists: “...The decisive document given is a certificate of citizenship issued to Captain Stefan Alfred Kozlinsky in Warsaw on October 20, 1941. That is, this document contained in the official German publication and extracted from the Katyn grave, completely negates the Nazi version that the executions were carried out in the spring of 1940, and shows that the executions were carried out after October 20, 1941, that is, by the Germans." Available data convincingly indicate that the Germans began executing Poles in the Katyn Forest in September 1941 and completed the action by December of the same year. In the materials of the investigation conducted by the commission of Academician N.N. Burdenko, there is also evidence that the Germans, before demonstrating burials in the Katyn Forest in 1943 to various “semi-official” organizations and individuals, opened the graves and brought into them the corpses of Poles they had shot in other places. Soviet prisoners of war, involved in this work in the amount of 500 people, were destroyed. Next to the graves of Poles executed in the Katyn Forest there are mass graves of Russians. Dating mainly to 1941 and partly to 1942, they contain the ashes of 25 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and civilians. It’s hard to believe, but “academic experts” and would-be investigators suffering from Smerdyakovism syndrome, having produced mountains of papers over 14 years of “investigation,” do not even mention this!

In the story of the Polish prisoners of war, the actions of the then political leadership led by Stalin do not look legally impeccable. Some norms of international law were violated, namely the relevant provisions of the 1907 Hague and 1929 Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war in general and officer prisoners of war in particular. There is no need to deny this, because denial is in this case plays into the hands of our enemies, who, with the help of the “Katyn affair,” want to finally rewrite the history of the Second World War. We must admit that the condemnation of Polish officers by a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR and their sending to forced labor camps with a change in their status from prisoners of war to prisoners, although it can be justified from the standpoint of political and economic expediency, is in no way justified from the standpoint of international law . We must also recognize that sending Polish officers to camps near the western border of the USSR deprived us of the opportunity to provide them with adequate security in connection with the treacherous attack of Nazi Germany. And it becomes clear why Stalin and Beria in November-December 1941 could not say anything definite to Generals Sikorski, Anders and the Polish Ambassador Kot about the fate of the Polish officers captured by the Red Army in September-October 1939. They really did not know what happened to them after the Nazis occupied a significant part of the territory of the USSR. And to say that at the time of the German invasion the Poles were in forced labor camps west of Smolensk would mean an international scandal and would create difficulties in creating an anti-Hitler coalition. Meanwhile, the London Polish government already at the beginning of December 1941 received reliable information about the execution of Polish officers by the Germans near Katyn. But they did not bring this information to the Soviet leadership, but mockingly continued to “find out” where their compatriot officers had gone. Why? The first reason is that the Poles in 1941-1942 and even in 1943 were confident that Hitler would defeat the Soviet Union. The second reason, stemming from the first, is the desire to blackmail the Soviet leadership for subsequent refusal to participate in military operations against the Germans on the Soviet-German front.

Goebbels's falsification of the "Katyn case" was exposed during an investigation conducted from October 5, 1943 to January 10, 1944 by the Extraordinary State Commission chaired by Academician N.N. Burdenko. The main results of the work of the Commission N.N. Burdenko were included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal as “Document USSR-48”. During the investigation into the case of Polish officers, 95 witnesses were questioned, 17 statements were verified, the necessary examination was carried out, and the location of the Katyn graves was examined.

As indirect evidence of their version, all modern Goebbelsites cite the fact that the Nuremberg Tribunal excluded the Katyn episode from the list of crimes of the leaders of Nazi Germany. The conclusion of the Burdenko commission was presented as an accusation document, which, as an official document, according to Article 21 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, did not require additional evidence. After all, the leaders of Nazi Germany were not accused of personally shooting someone or burning them alive in huts. They were accused of pursuing a policy that resulted in such massive crimes as have never been known to humanity. The prosecutors showed that the genocide against the Poles, which also manifested itself at Katyn, was the official policy of the Nazis. However, the judges of the Nuremberg Tribunal, without taking into account the conclusions of the Burdenko Commission, only imitated the judicial investigation into the execution of Polish officers near Katyn. After all, the coals were already smoldering cold war! Several years later, in 1952, the American member of the Nuremberg Tribunal, Robert H. Jackson, admitted that his position on Katyn was determined by the corresponding instructions from the government of President G. Truman. In 1952, a US Congressional commission fabricated the version of the Katyn case they wanted and in its conclusion recommended that the US government transfer the case to the UN for investigation. However, as the Polish Goebbelsites complain, “...Washington did not consider it possible to do this.” Why? Yes, because the question of who killed the Poles has never been a secret for the Americans. And in 1952, Washington found itself in the position of the current Goebbelsites, who were afraid to take the case to court: it was beneficial for the US government to chew up this case in the press, but it could not allow it to be tried in court. The American government was smart enough not to bring fakes to the UN. But our stupid provincials, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, rushed to Warsaw to the Polish presidents with any fake. But this is not enough: Yeltsin ordered his guardsmen to lay out the forgeries before the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and, together with them, was caught in the forgery. Result: The Constitutional Court did not say a word about the Katyn tragedy, and according to the logic of the Russian-Polish Goebbelsites, this should be interpreted as an acquittal verdict for the Soviet Union and its leadership. One cannot but agree with Nobel, who once said: “Any democracy very quickly turns into a dictatorship of scum.” The current investigation of the Katyn case by two “big democracies” - Russian and Polish - confirms the truth of the words of the famous Swede.

Yuri Slobodkin,
Candidate of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor

Katyn: Chronicle of events

The term “Katyn crime” is a collective one; it refers to the execution in April–May 1940 of almost 22 thousand Polish citizens held in various camps and prisons of the NKVD of the USSR:

– 14,552 Polish officers and police captured by the Red Army in September 1939 and held in three NKVD prisoner of war camps, including –

– 4421 prisoners of the Kozelsky camp (shot and buried in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, 2 km from Gnezdovo station);

– 6311 prisoners of the Ostashkovsky camp (shot in Kalinin and buried in Medny);

– 3820 prisoners of the Starobelsky camp (shot and buried in Kharkov);

– 7,305 arrested, held in prisons in the western regions of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSR (apparently shot in Kyiv, Kharkov, Kherson and Minsk, possibly in other unspecified places on the territory of the BSSR and Ukrainian SSR).

Katyn - just one of a number of execution sites - became a symbol of the execution of all of the above groups of Polish citizens, since it was in Katyn in 1943 that the burials of murdered Polish officers were first discovered. Over the next 47 years, Katyn remained the only reliably famous place burials of the victims of this “operation”.

Background

On August 23, 1939, the USSR and Germany entered into a non-aggression pact - the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. The pact included a secret protocol on the delimitation of spheres of interest, according to which, in particular, the eastern half of the territory of the pre-war Polish state was given to the Soviet Union. For Hitler, the pact meant the removal of the last obstacle before attacking Poland.

September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany attacked Poland, thereby unleashing the Second world war. September 17, 1939, in the midst of bloody battles of the Polish Army, desperately trying to stop the rapid advance German army deep into the country, in agreement with Germany, the Red Army invaded Poland - without a declaration of war by the Soviet Union and contrary to the existing non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Poland. Soviet propaganda declared the Red Army operation a “liberation campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.”

The advance of the Red Army came as a complete surprise to the Poles. Some did not even rule out that the entry of Soviet troops was directed against German aggression. Realizing that Poland was doomed in a war on two fronts, the Polish commander-in-chief issued an order not to engage in battle with Soviet troops and resist only when attempting to disarm Polish units. As a result, only a few Polish units resisted the Red Army. Until the end of September 1939, the Red Army captured 240–250 thousand Polish soldiers and officers, as well as border guards, police, gendarmerie, prison guards, etc. Unable to contain such a huge mass of prisoners, immediately after disarmament, half of the privates and non-commissioned officers were sent home, and the rest were transferred by the Red Army to a dozen specially created prisoner of war camps of the NKVD of the USSR.

However, these NKVD camps were also overloaded. Therefore, in October - November 1939, the majority of privates and non-commissioned officers left the prisoner of war camps: the inhabitants of the territories occupied by the Soviet Union were sent home, and the inhabitants of the territories occupied by the Germans were handed over to Germany under an agreement on the exchange of prisoners (Germany in return handed over to the Soviet Union those captured by German troops Polish military personnel - Ukrainians and Belarusians, residents of territories ceded to the USSR).

The exchange agreements also concerned civilian refugees who found themselves in territory occupied by the USSR. They could apply to the German commissions operating on the Soviet side in the spring of 1940 for permission to return to permanent places residence in Polish territories occupied by Germany.

About 25 thousand Polish privates and non-commissioned officers were left in Soviet captivity. In addition to them, army officers (about 8.5 thousand people), who were concentrated in two prisoner of war camps - Starobelsky in the Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk) region and Kozelsky in the Smolensk (now Kaluga) region, as well as border guards, were not subject to dissolution to their homes or transfer to Germany. police officers, gendarmes, prison guards, etc. (about 6.5 thousand people), who were gathered in the Ostashkovsky prisoner of war camp in the Kalinin (now Tver) region.

Not only prisoners of war became prisoners of the NKVD. One of the main means of “Sovietization” of the occupied territories was a campaign of continuous mass arrests for political reasons, directed primarily against officials of the Polish state apparatus (including officers and police officers who escaped captivity), members of Polish political parties and public organizations, industrialists, large landowners, businessmen, border violators and other “enemies of Soviet power.” Before the verdict was passed, those arrested were kept for months in prisons in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR, formed in the occupied territories of the pre-war Polish state.

On March 5, 1940, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) decided to shoot “14,700 Polish officers, officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege guards and jailers in prisoner-of-war camps,” as well as 11,000 arrested and held in Western prisons. regions of Ukraine and Belarus “members of various counter-revolutionary espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors."

The basis for the Politburo’s decision was a note from the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Beria to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to Stalin, in which the execution of the listed categories of Polish prisoners and prisoners was proposed “based on the fact that they are all inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power.” At the same time, as a solution, the final part of Beria’s note was reproduced verbatim in the minutes of the Politburo meeting.

Execution

The execution of Polish prisoners of war and prisoners belonging to the categories listed in the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of March 5, 1940, was carried out in April and May of the same year.

All prisoners of the Kozelsky, Ostashkovsky and Starobelsky prisoner of war camps (except for 395 people) were sent in stages of about 100 people to the disposal of the NKVD Directorates for the Smolensk, Kalinin and Kharkov regions, respectively, which carried out executions as the stages arrived.

At the same time, executions of prisoners in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus took place.

395 prisoners of war, not included in the execution orders, were sent to the Yukhnovsky prisoner of war camp in the Smolensk region. They were then transferred to the Gryazovets prisoner of war camp in the Vologda region, from which at the end of August 1941 they were transferred to form the Polish Army in the USSR.

On April 13, 1940, shortly after the start of executions of Polish prisoners of war and prison inmates, an NKVD operation was carried out to deport their families (as well as the families of other repressed persons) living in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR to settlement in Kazakhstan.

Subsequent events

On June 22, 1941, Germany attacked the USSR. Soon, on July 30, an agreement was concluded between the Soviet government and the Polish government in exile (located in London) to invalidate the Soviet-German treaties of 1939 concerning “territorial changes in Poland”, to restore diplomatic relations between the USSR and Poland, to establish territory of the USSR of the Polish army to participate in the war against Germany and the liberation of all Polish citizens who were imprisoned in the USSR as prisoners of war, arrested or convicted, and also held in a special settlement.

This agreement was followed by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 12, 1941 on granting amnesty to Polish citizens who were imprisoned or in a special settlement (by that time there were about 390 thousand of them), and the Soviet-Polish military agreement of August 14, 1941 on the organization Polish army on the territory of the USSR. The army was planned to be formed from amnestied Polish prisoners and special settlers, primarily from former prisoners of war; General Vladislav Anders, who was urgently released from the internal NKVD prison at Lubyanka, was appointed its commander.

In the autumn of 1941 - spring of 1942, Polish officials repeatedly turned to the Soviet authorities with requests about the fate of thousands of captured officers who did not arrive at the places where Anders' army was formed. The Soviet side replied that there was no information about them. On December 3, 1941, in a personal meeting in the Kremlin with Polish Prime Minister General Wladislaw Sikorski and General Anders, Stalin suggested that these officers may have fled to Manchuria. (By the end of the summer of 1942, Anders’ army was evacuated from the USSR to Iran, and later it took part in Allied operations to liberate Italy from the Nazis.)

On April 13, 1943, German radio officially reported the discovery of burials of Polish officers executed by Soviet authorities in Katyn near Smolensk. By order of the German authorities, the identified names of those killed began to be read out over loudspeakers in the streets and squares of occupied Polish cities. On April 15, 1943, there was an official denial by the Sovinformburo, according to which Polish prisoners of war in the summer of 1941 were engaged in construction work west of Smolensk, fell into the hands of the Germans and were shot by them.

From the end of March to the beginning of June 1943, the German side, with the participation of the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross, carried out an exhumation in Katyn. The remains of 4,243 Polish officers were recovered, and the first and last names of 2,730 of them were established from personal documents discovered. The corpses were reburied in mass graves near the original burials, and the results of the exhumation in the summer of the same year were published in Berlin in the book “Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Katyn”. The Germans handed over the documents and objects found on the corpses for detailed study to the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminalistics in Krakow. (In the summer of 1944, all of these materials, except for a small part of them, secretly hidden by employees of the Krakow Institute, were taken by the Germans from Krakow to Germany, where, according to rumors, they were burned during one of the bombings.)

On September 25, 1943, the Red Army liberated Smolensk. Only on January 12, 1944, the Soviet “Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Circumstances of the Execution of Polish Officers of Prisoners of War in the Katyn Forest” by the Nazi invaders was created, the chairman of which was appointed Academician N.N. Burdenko. Moreover, already from October 1943, specially seconded employees of the NKVD-NKGB of the USSR were preparing falsified “evidence” of the responsibility of the German authorities for the execution of Polish officers near Smolensk. According to the official report, the Soviet exhumation in Katyn was carried out from January 16 to 26, 1944, at the direction of the “Burdenko Commission”. From the secondary graves left after the German exhumation, and one primary grave, which the Germans did not have time to explore, the remains of 1,380 people were extracted; from the documents found, the commission established the personal data of 22 people. On January 26, 1944, the Izvestia newspaper published an official report from the “Burdenko Commission”, according to which Polish prisoners of war, who were in three camps west of Smolensk in the summer of 1941 and remained there after the invasion of German troops in Smolensk, were shot by the Germans in the fall of 1941.

To “legalize” this version on the world stage, the USSR tried to use the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried the main Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg in 1945–1946. However, having heard the testimony of witnesses for the defense (represented by German lawyers) and prosecution (represented by the Soviet side) on July 1–3, 1946, due to the obvious unconvincingness of the Soviet version, the IMT decided not to include the Katyn massacre in its verdict as one of the crimes of Nazi Germany.

On March 3, 1959, Chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR A.N. Shelepin sent to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev received a top secret note confirming that 14,552 prisoners - officers, gendarmes, policemen, etc. persons of the former bourgeois Poland,” as well as 7,305 prisoners in prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were shot in 1940 based on the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of March 5, 1940 (including 4,421 people in the Katyn Forest). The note proposed to destroy all records of those executed.

At the same time, throughout all post-war years, until the 1980s, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs repeatedly made official demarches with the statement that the Nazis were established as responsible for the execution of Polish soldiers buried in the Katyn Forest.

But the “Katyn lie” is not only the USSR’s attempts to impose on the world community the Soviet version of the execution in the Katyn Forest. This is also one of the elements of the internal policy of the communist leadership of Poland, brought to power by the Soviet Union after the liberation of the country. Another direction of this policy was large-scale persecution and attempts to denigrate members of the Home Army (AK) - a massive anti-Hitler armed underground subordinated during the war to the Polish "London" government in exile (with which the USSR broke off relations in April 1943, after it appealed to the International Red Cross with a request to investigate the murder of Polish officers whose remains were discovered in the Katyn Forest). A symbol of the slander campaign against AK after the war was the posting of posters on the streets of Polish cities with the mocking slogan “AK is a spit-stained dwarf of reaction.” At the same time, any statements or actions that directly or indirectly questioned the Soviet version of the death of captured Polish officers were punished, including attempts by relatives to install memorial plaques in cemeteries and churches indicating 1940 as the time of death of their loved ones. In order not to lose their jobs, in order to be able to study at the institute, relatives were forced to hide the fact that a member of their family died in Katyn. Polish state security agencies were looking for witnesses and participants in the German exhumation and forced them to make statements “exposing” the Germans as the perpetrators of the execution.
The Soviet Union admitted guilt only half a century after the execution of captured Polish officers - on April 13, 1990, an official TASS statement was published about “direct responsibility for the atrocities in the Katyn Forest of Beria, Merkulov and their henchmen,” and the atrocities themselves were qualified in it as “one of serious crimes Stalinism." At the same time, USSR President M.S. Gorbachev handed over to the President of Poland W. Jaruzelski the lists of executed Polish prisoners of war (formally these were lists of orders to send convoys from the Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky camps to the NKVD in the Smolensk and Kalinin regions, as well as a list of records of former prisoners of war of the Starobelsky camp) and some other NKVD documents .

In the same year, the prosecutor's office of the Kharkov region opened criminal cases: on March 22 - on the discovery of burials in the forest park area of ​​​​Kharkov, and on August 20 - against Beria, Merkulov, Soprunenko (who was in 1939-1943 the head of the USSR NKVD Directorate for Prisoners of War and internees), Berezhkov (chief of the Starobelsky prisoner of war camp of the NKVD of the USSR) and other NKVD employees. On June 6, 1990, the prosecutor's office of the Kalinin region opened another case - about the fate of Polish prisoners of war who were held in the Ostashkov camp and disappeared without a trace in May 1940. These cases were transferred to the Main Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP) of the USSR and on September 27, 1990 they were combined and accepted for proceedings under No. 159. The GVP formed an investigation team headed by A.V. Tretetsky.

In 1991, the investigative group of the GVP, together with Polish specialists, carried out partial exhumations in the 6th quarter of the Kharkov forest park area, on the territory holiday village KGB in the Tver region, 2 km from the village of Mednoye and in the Katyn forest. The main result of these exhumations was the final procedural establishment of the burial places of the executed Polish prisoners of the Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky prisoner of war camps.

A year later, on October 14, 1992, by order of Russian President B.N. Yeltsin, documents were made public and transferred to Poland, exposing the leadership of the USSR in committing the “Katyn crime” - the above-mentioned decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940 on the execution of Polish prisoners, Beria’s “staged” note to this decision, addressed to Stalin (with handwritten signatures of Politburo members Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov and Mikoyan, as well as marks of voting “for” Kalinin and Kaganovich), a note from Shelepin to Khrushchev dated March 3, 1959 and other documents from the Presidential Archive. Thus, documentary evidence became available to the public that the victims of the “Katyn crime” were executed for political reasons - as “inveterate, incorrigible enemies of the Soviet regime.” At the same time, it became known for the first time that not only prisoners of war were shot, but also prisoners in prisons in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and BSSR. The Politburo decision of March 5, 1940 ordered, as already mentioned, the execution of 14,700 prisoners of war and 11 thousand prisoners. From Shelepin’s note to Khrushchev it follows that approximately the same number of prisoners of war were shot, but fewer prisoners were shot - 7,305 people. The reason for the "underfulfillment" is unknown.

On August 25, 1993, Russian President B.N. Yeltsin, with the words “Forgive us...”, laid a wreath at the monument to the victims of Katyn at the Powązki memorial cemetery in Warsaw.

On May 5, 1994, the Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, General A. Khomich, handed over to the Deputy Prosecutor General of Poland S. Snezhko a named alphabetical list of 3,435 prisoners in prisons in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, indicating the numbers of orders, which, as has been known since 1990, meant being sent to death. The list, immediately published in Poland, became conventionally called the “Ukrainian list.”

The “Belarusian list” is still unknown. If the “Shelepinsky” number of executed prisoners is correct and if the published “ Ukrainian list"is full, then in " Belarusian list» should be listed as 3870 people. Thus, to date we know the names of 17,987 victims of the “Katyn crime”, and 3,870 victims (prisoners of prisons in the western regions of the BSSR) remain nameless. The burial places are reliably known only for 14,552 executed prisoners of war.

On July 13, 1994, the head of the investigative group of the Main Prosecutor’s Office A.Yu. Yablokov (who replaced A.V. Tretetsky) issued a resolution to terminate the criminal case on the basis of paragraph 8 of Article 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR (due to the death of the perpetrators), and in the resolution Stalin, members of the Politburo Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Kalinin and Kaganovich, Beria and other leaders and NKVD employees, as well as the perpetrators of the executions, were found guilty of committing crimes under paragraphs “a”, “b”, “c” of Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity). It was precisely this qualification of the “Katyn affair” (but in relation to the Nazis) that was already given by the Soviet side in 1945–1946 when it was submitted to the IMT for consideration. Main Military Prosecutor's Office and General Prosecutor's Office Three days later, the Russian Federation canceled Yablokov’s decree, and further investigation was assigned to another prosecutor.

In 2000, Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Russian memorial complexes were opened at the burial sites of executed prisoners of war: June 17 in Kharkov, July 28 in Katyn, September 2 in Medny.

On September 21, 2004, the Main Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation terminated criminal case No. 159 on the basis of paragraph 4 of part 1 of Article 24 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation (due to the death of the perpetrators). Having informed the public about this only a few months later, the then Chief Military Prosecutor A.N. Savenkov, at his press conference on March 11, 2005, declared secret not only most of the investigation materials, but also the resolution itself to terminate the “Katyn case.” Thus, the personal composition of the perpetrators contained in the resolution was also classified.

From the response of the Main Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation to Memorial’s subsequent request, it is clear that “a number of specific high-ranking officials of the USSR” were found guilty, whose actions were qualified under paragraph “b” of Article 193-17 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR in force in 1926–1958 (abuse of power by a person in command composition of the Red Army, which had serious consequences in the presence of particularly aggravating circumstances).

The GVP also reported that in 36 volumes of the criminal case there are documents classified as “secret” and “top secret,” and in 80 volumes there are documents classified “for official use.” On this basis, access to 116 of the 183 volumes is closed.

In the fall of 2005, Polish prosecutors were familiarized with the remaining 67 volumes, “not containing information constituting state secrets.”

In 2005–2006, the Main Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation refused to consider applications submitted by relatives and Memorial for rehabilitation as victims political repression a number of specific executed Polish prisoners of war, and in 2007 the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow and the Moscow City Court confirmed these refusals of the GVP.
In the first half of the 1990s, our country took important steps towards recognizing the truth in the “Katyn case”. The Memorial Society believes that now we need to return to this path. It is necessary to resume and complete the investigation of the “Katyn crime”, give it an adequate legal assessment, make public the names of all those responsible (from decision-makers to ordinary executors), declassify and make public all investigation materials, establish the names and burial places of all executed Polish citizens, recognize executed by victims of political repression and rehabilitate them in accordance with the Russian Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression.”

The information was prepared by the International Society "Memorial".

Information from the brochure “Katyn”, released for the presentation of the film of the same name by Andrzej Wajda in Moscow in 2007.
Illustrations in the text: made during the German exhumation in 1943 in Katyn (published in books: Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Katyn. Berlin, 1943; Katyń: Zbrodnia i propaganda: niemieckie fotografie dokumentacyjne ze zbiorów Instytutu Za-chodniego. Poznań, 2003), photographs taken by Aleksey Pamyatnykh during the exhumation carried out by the GVP in 1991 in Medny.

In the application:

• Order No. 794/B dated March 5, 1940, signed by L. Beria, with a resolution by I. Stalin, K. Voroshilov, V. Molotov, A. Mikoyan;
• Note from A. Shelepin to N. Khrushchev dated March 3, 1959

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

During the partition of Poland, up to half a million Polish citizens were captured by the Red Army. Most of them were soon released, and 130,242 people were taken into 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 Polish independence. The military personnel of the Polish army were divided: the senior officers were concentrated in three camps: Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky.

And on March 3, 1940, the head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria proposed to the Politburo of the Central Committee to destroy all these people, since “They are all sworn enemies of the Soviet government, filled with hatred of 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 subject to destruction. Therefore, a 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 “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.

Subsequently, Katyn more than once became 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 highest Soviet leadership. And on November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation, by its decision, admitted the guilt of the USSR in the Katyn massacre. Seems like enough has been said. But it’s too early to draw a conclusion. 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 occurred 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 “the cases of 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege officers and jailers in prisoner-of-war camps, as well as the cases of 11 people arrested and in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus 000 members various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution."

The remains of General M. Smoravinsky.

Representatives of the Polish catholic church and the Polish Red Cross are examining the corpses recovered for identification.

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

Identity card of chaplain (military priest) Zelkowski, 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

The commission headed by N.N. Burdenko.

The executioners who “distinguished themselves” during the Katyn execution.

Chief Katyn executioner: V. I. Blokhin.

Hands tied with rope.

A memo from Beria to Stalin, with a proposal to destroy Polish officers. It has paintings of all members of the Politburo.

Polish prisoners of war.

An international commission examines the corpses.

Note from KGB chief Shelepin to N.S. Khrushchev, which states: “Any unforeseen accident could lead to the unraveling of the operation with all the undesirable consequences for our state. Moreover, in relation to those executed in the Katyn Forest there is official version: all Poles liquidated there are considered exterminated by the German occupiers. Based on the above, it seems advisable to destroy all records of executed Polish officers.”

Polish Order on the found remains.

British and American prisoners attend the autopsy performed by a German doctor.

An excavated common grave.

The corpses were stacked in stacks.

The remains of a major in the Polish army (Pilsudski brigade).

The place in the Katyn forest where the burials were discovered.

Based on materials 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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