Mass execution of Polish officers in Katyn. Myth and truth about Katyn (how was the myth about the Katyn tragedy created?)

Without trial or investigation

In September 1939, Soviet troops entered Polish territory. The Red Army occupied those territories that were entitled to it according to the secret additional protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, that is, the current western Ukraine and Belarus. During the march, the troops captured almost half a million Polish residents, most of whom were later released or handed over to Germany. According to the official note, about 42 thousand people remained in Soviet camps.

On March 3, 1940, in a note to Stalin, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria wrote that in camps on Polish territory there were a large number of former officers of the Polish army, former employees of the Polish police and intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, members of uncovered counter-revolutionary insurgent organizations and defectors.

People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria ordered the execution of Polish prisoners

He branded them “incorrigible enemies of Soviet power” and suggested: “The cases of prisoners of war in camps - 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siegers and jailers, as well as cases of 11,000 people arrested and in prison in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, members of 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." Already on March 5, the Politburo made a corresponding decision.

Execution

By the beginning of April, everything was ready for the destruction of prisoners of war: prisons were liberated, graves were dug. The condemned were taken away for execution in groups of 300-400 people. In Kalinin and Kharkov, prisoners were shot in prisons. In Katyn, those who were especially dangerous were tied up, an overcoat thrown over their heads, taken to a ditch and shot in the back of the head.

At Katyn, prisoners were tied up and shot in the back of the head.

As subsequent exhumation showed, the shots were fired from Walter and Browning pistols, using German-made bullets. The Soviet authorities later used this fact as an argument when they tried to blame German troops for the execution of the Polish population at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The tribunal rejected the charge, which was, in essence, an admission of Soviet guilt for the Katyn massacre.

German investigation

The events of 1940 have been investigated several times. German troops were the first to investigate in 1943. They discovered burials in Katyn. The exhumation began in the spring. It was possible to approximately establish the time of burial: the spring of 1940, since many of the victims had scraps of newspapers from April-May 1940 in their pockets. It was not difficult to establish the identities of many of the executed prisoners: some of them kept documents, letters, snuff boxes and cigarette cases with carved monograms.

At the Nuremberg Tribunal, the USSR tried to shift the blame to the Germans

The Poles were shot with German bullets, but they were supplied in large quantities to the Baltic states and the Soviet Union. Local residents also confirmed that the trains with captured Polish officers were unloaded at a station nearby, and no one ever saw them again. One of the participants in the Polish commission in Katyn, Jozef Mackiewicz, described in several books how it was no secret to any of the locals that the Bolsheviks shot Poles here.

Soviet investigation

In the fall of 1943, another commission operated in the Smolensk region, this time a Soviet one. Her report states that there were actually three work camps for prisoners in Poland. The Polish population was employed in road construction. In 1941, there was no time to evacuate the prisoners, and the camps came under German leadership, which authorized the executions. According to members of the Soviet commission, in 1943 the Germans dug up the graves, seized all newspapers and documents indicating dates later than the spring of 1940, and forced locals to testify. The famous “Burdenko Commission” largely relied on the data from this report.

Crime of the Stalinist regime

In 1990, the USSR officially admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre.

In April 1990, the USSR admitted responsibility for the Katyn massacre. One of the main arguments was the discovery of documents indicating that Polish prisoners were transported by order of the NKVD and were no longer listed in statistical documents. Historian Yuri Zorya found out that the same people were on the exhumation lists from Katyn and on the lists of those leaving the Kozel camp. It is interesting that the order of the lists for the stages coincided with the order of those lying in the graves, according to the German investigation.

Today in Russia the Katyn massacre is officially considered a “crime of the Stalinist regime.” However, there are still people who support the position of the Burdenko Commission and view the results of the German investigation as an attempt to distort Stalin’s role in world history.

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

Before writing this article, I read a lot of materials on this subject and I can say that the answer is not completely clear and, unfortunately, it is impossible to answer briefly.

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

Lech Kaczynski, at the head of the Polish delegation, was heading to the vicinity of the small village of Katyn - not far from Smolensk, where in the spring of 1940 the heinous crime of the Stalinist regime against the best sons of Poland took place. Polish officers who were captured in September 1939 were shot there. Without trial or investigation. For the first time, 4143 bodies were discovered by the Nazis in 1943, who made this fact public.

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

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

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

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

So we come to the third question about Katyn.

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

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

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

Private and sergeant personnel were kept in 5 camps. The Stalinist regime actively collected information among the Poles and, accordingly, knew for sure that they were filled with the spirit of struggle for their state, and, of course, were waiting for the moment of their liberation in order to resume the fight for the independence of the state. In order to deprive Poland of the color of the nation, it was decided to destroy them. Since the spring of 1940, no more letters have been received from the officers of the Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky camps to relatives and friends.

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

According to the data indicated in the note by KGB Chairman Shelepin, a total of 21,857 people were shot. However, this figure is not precise and only provides a rough estimate of the crime. And who took into account those who died in the camps and at work from disease? Those who fled and disappeared without a trace. And those who were relatives of those executed and were evicted deep into the USSR or lived near the border (from 270 thousand!) and never made it or died of starvation upon arrival?

For Kiev residents, the consul often hears the question about Bykovna. In short, we must answer that a burial place from the “Katyn list” of executed Polish officers was discovered there, as well as a place where people repressed by the NKVD were executed.

Just in case, I will also inform you that at the same time (November 1939 - June 1940) the fascists carried out the AB action (Extraordinary pacification action. Außerordentliche Befriedungsaktion), as a result of which 2000 Polish citizens were killed who belonged to the intelligentsia (scientists, teachers).

P.S. It may seem to you that a lot has been written here, but I assure you that it is the most necessary. If you visit Russian websites regarding the Katyn tragedy, you will be completely confused. I will only say one thing, no matter what “researchers” of this issue were - who would shift the blame onto, you cannot return the murdered Poles... If there had not been a war of 1939, they would not have been captured, but would still be alive. If anyone reads materials about Katyn, form your own judgment - the facts cited by different sides contradict one another.

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

Slobodkin Yuri Maksimovich was born on November 7, 1939. In 1965 he graduated from the Sverdlovsk Law Institute. Since 1976 - Chairman of the Solnechnogorsk City People's Court. In December 1989, he was elected chairman of the Qualification Board of Judges of the Moscow Region. In November 1991 he joined the Russian Communist Workers' Party (RCWP). He was repeatedly elected as a member of the Central Committee of the RCRP. In 1990-93 - People's Deputy of the Russian Federation. Author of the Draft Constitution of the Russian Federation, an alternative to “Yeltsin’s”. Slobodki project on Yu.M. was submitted to the Constitutional Commission of the Russian Federation, but, naturally, was rejected by the “Yeltsinists”.
Slobodkin Yu.M. a talented publicist, regularly published in the newspaper Trudovaya Rossiya.

On the eve of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, a grandiose provocation is being prepared against the victors. She will ruin and dump Victory Day and the victors and our entire difficult heroic past in Goebbels shit. This provocation began with the falsification of the so-called “Katyn case” by the Germans and the “London Poles” in 1943. The “Katyn Card” of the Nazis, with the active complicity of the Polish émigré government in London, headed by General Sikorski, contributed to delaying the opening of a second front and the final defeat of European fascism. In the 70-80s of the last century, the propaganda campaign of Hitler and Goebbels was revived by certain Polish forces and the Germans through their “agents of influence” in the USSR.

Proof that vile brown vomit will be spewed out by the current Russian government and its Polish accomplices on the eve of Victory Day in order to humiliate and “smear” the victorious people and whitewash the defeated fascists is the publication in “ Komsomolskaya Pravda” for September 29, 2004, under the more than symptomatic headline “Russia will reveal the secret of the Katyn forest” (Russians usually write “Katyn”, that is, without a soft sign and without a Polish accent). The subtitle of the mentioned publication is even more significant - “Presidents Putin and Kwasniewski agreed on this yesterday in the Kremlin.” The paragraph leaves no doubt about the essence of the presidents’ agreements: “And one more remarkable result of the meeting. After its completion, the President of Poland told journalists sensational news: “We received information that on September 21 the investigation into the Katyn massacre was completed. After the secrecy is lifted, the documents can be transferred to the Institute of National Remembrance... We have received such a promise.” Kwasniewski’s behavior and words confirm what conclusions the “Russian-Polish-German” side made based on the results of its investigation: Stalin, Beria and the “NKVD troops” are guilty of the execution of Polish officers near Katyn, and Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and their henchmen are slandered by the “Stalin regime” "and are subject to rehabilitation.

IN general outline the provocative version of Goebbels and those who support it today is presented as such. The German authorities learned about the execution of Poles near Smolensk on August 2, 1941 from the testimony of a certain Merkulov, who was in German captivity, but they did not check this testimony. Then, according to this version, the graves of Polish officers were discovered and excavated in February-March 1942 by Polish soldiers from a construction battalion stationed in the Katyn area. Again the Germans were informed about this, and again their burials were “not interested.” They became “interested” only after the crushing defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad and a radical turning point in the war. Then, according to the lawyers of Hitler and Goebbels, the Germans energetically began to “investigate” and on February 18, 1943, carried out partial excavations, “discovering” several common graves of Polish officers. They then "found" witnesses from local residents, which, of course, “confirmed” that the Poles were shot in the spring of 1940, when the Nazis were just finishing developing a plan for an attack on the USSR. The fascist leadership put its professor Gerhard Butch at the head of the “international commission” for the exhumation of corpses and began a noisy anti-Soviet campaign Already on March 16 In 1943, the Polish émigré government joined them. At the same time, the Poles did not even bother to ask their ally the USSR for any clarification, but immediately joined Goebbels’ propaganda campaign, justifying their vile behavior with the impression of “abundant and detailed German information regarding the discovery of the bodies of many thousands of Polish officers near Smolensk and the categorical statement that they were killed by the Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940." This is not the cretinism of the “London Poles”, but their conscious and pre-agreed complicity.

To give their slanderous fabrications greater impact, high-ranking figures of Nazi Germany even discussed the issue of the arrival of the head of the Polish emigrant government, General Sikorsky, from Katyn: judging by indirect data, he was their long-time and reliable agent. This is convincingly demonstrated by the exchange of opinions between Himmler and Ribbentrop on this issue. In particular, Ribbentrop informs Himmler that this idea seems tempting from a propaganda point of view, but “there is a basic attitude regarding the interpretation of the Polish problem, which makes it impossible for us to have any contact with the head of the Polish emigrant government.” In the correspondence of two Hitler bosses, one is amazed by their complete confidence that General Sikorsky would not dare to disobey if he was invited to fly to Katyn. And the “basic guideline regarding the interpretation of the Polish problem” was formulated by Adolf Hitler in 1939: “The Poles should have only one master - the German. Two masters cannot and should not exist side by side, therefore all representatives of the Polish intelligentsia must be destroyed. It sounds cruel, but this is the law of life.” According to the foreign author D. Toland, by mid-autumn 1939, three and a half thousand representatives of the Polish intelligentsia, whom Hitler considered “peddlers of Polish nationalism,” were liquidated. “Only in this way,” he argued, “can we get the territory we need.” The terror was accompanied by the ruthless removal of more than a million ordinary Poles from their lands and the placement there of Germans from other parts of Poland and the Baltic states. This happened in winter, and during the resettlement more Poles died from the cold than as a result of executions. The cretinism of the majority of representatives of the Polish gentry was that they, without doubting victory Hitler's Germany, counted on the Nazis to preserve their noble privileges. They either did not know, or did not want to know, about the “main intention” of the Germans to solve the “Polish problem”.

By the way, the Nazis also had “personal” claims against the Poles. When Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, the political and military leadership of the latter consoled themselves with the thought that they were dealing only with a demonstration of provocative force by the Germans. In response to the “provocation,” the Poles in the cities of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) and Schulitz, located near the Polish-German border, slaughtered the entire German population, including women and children. The Nuremberg Tribunal as examples of war crimes against civilians called the destruction of Belarusian Khatyn, Czech Lidice, and French Oradour by the fascists, but if we follow the historical truth, the palm must be given to the Poles: in the Second World War they committed the first grave crime against the civilian population. During the Soviet period it was not customary to talk about this; we considered them our friends in the socialist camp and allies in arms. But now, when the rulers of bourgeois Poland have betrayed us, joined the aggressive NATO bloc and, together with the Russian “fifth column,” are hitting us hard and slandering us, we, in the words of Chernyshevsky, must respond blow to blow. By and large, our previous position was flawed. Because of her, over decades of friendship, we have never demanded an account from the Poles of what they did to the 120 thousand Red Army soldiers who were captured by them in 1920 due to the complete mediocrity and politicking of the “commander” Tukhachevsky. Even now they are not telling us anything intelligible about this and are not going to say anything, and the Russian bourgeois government is scattering pearls in front of them and placing the blame on the Soviet people for the crime committed by the Nazis.

And also about real, not imaginary, crimes associated with lordly Poland. Stanislav Kunyaev, author famous book“Poetry, Destiny, Russia” tells about the events in Jedwabno, our border town before the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR. “...For almost two years Jedwabno was our border outpost. But on June 23, 1941, German troops reoccupied Jedwabno. And then Jewish pogroms broke out in the nearby towns of Radzivilov, Voneosha, and Vizne. Local Poles exterminate several hundred Jews; the survivors flee to Jedwabno. But on July 10, a total pogrom of the local Jewish community along with refugees occurs in Jedwabno. At least two thousand Jews were killed...” Polish historian of Jewish origin Tomasz Gross, who wrote the book “Neighbors”, adds: “The basic facts seem indisputable. In July 1941, a large group of Poles living in Jedwabno took part in the brutal extermination of almost all the Jews there, who, by the way, made up the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the town. At first they were killed one by one - with sticks, stones, tortured, heads cut off, corpses desecrated. Then, on July 10, about one and a half thousand survivors were driven into a barn and burned alive.” (Didn’t the Nazis borrow this medieval method of execution from the Poles, when they burned Soviet people alive in barns, barns and houses in the occupied territory?) After the publication of T. Gross’s book, the nationalist gentry were backed to the wall And on September 21, 2001, President Kwasniewski in the absence of local residents, in the absence of right-wing politicians and even the local priest, locked in his home, he repented in Jedwabno before world Jewry on behalf of Poland.

Now the Poles are hungry for compensation: moral, psychological, political and material. And Russian Katyn should be such compensation for them.

The traitors and their Polish-German customers were let down by their haste and irrepressible desire to have the CPSU declared an “anti-constitutional” organization, to bury the “communist hydra” much deeper than the fascists buried Polish officers near Smolensk. At a meeting of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on October 16, 1992, representatives of the Yeltsin side, S. Shakhrai and A. Makarov, filed a petition to include in the case materials the top-secret documents on the Katyn tragedy that had just been “discovered” in the archives, indicating that the Polish officers were shot by decision governing bodies of the CPSU(b). According to S. Shakhrai, these documents were kept in a sealed envelope - package No. 1 and were passed from hand to hand by the first secretaries and general secretaries of the Central Committee. The entire press, which called itself democratic, wrote chokingly, and television broadcast about sensational finds and that the personal representative of the president, represented by archivist R. Pihoya, handed these documents to L. Walesa on October 14, 1992. The Poles thanked the messenger B. Yeltsin, looked and turned over the documents and demanded that the Russian authorities provide the originals. Until now, the Russian side “provides” them.

In the fall of 1992, the Russian media launched a brown wave against the Communist Party and Communists with the same frenzy as the Nazi propaganda in 1943, which Goebbels taught: “The center of gravity of our propaganda in the coming days and beyond will be concentrated on two topics: the Atlantic Wall and the Bolshevik heinous murder. The world needs to be shown these Soviet atrocities by continuously presenting more and more new facts. In particular, in the comments it is necessary to show: these are the same Bolsheviks about whom the British and Americans claim that they have allegedly changed and changed their political beliefs. These are the same Bolsheviks for whom they pray in the so-called democracies and who are blessed in solemn ceremony by the English bishops. These are the same Bolsheviks who have already received from the British absolute powers for domination and Bolshevik penetration of Europe. In general, we need to talk more often about 17-18-year-old warrant officers who, before being executed, also asked for permission to send home a letter, etc., since this has a particularly amazing effect.” From Goebbels’ instructions it is clear that the fascists created slander against the Soviet Union to achieve two goals. The first of them was to quarrel the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, and the second was to intimidate the population of countries that were vassals of Germany, and to involve them more broadly in the war against the USSR on the side of the Nazis. We admit that the Nazis did not try in vain. In the short term, they managed to delay the opening of the second front for more than a year, and in the long term, they realized all the goals of Nazi Germany, because in 1946, W. Churchill, speaking in a small US university town called Fulton, marked the beginning of the Cold War between the former allies.

It is obvious that the Yeltsinites, having thrown in their “original documents” during the trial in the Constitutional Court, which lasted (with interruptions) from May 26 to November 30, 1992, regretted it more than once or twice. The author of these lines and Professor F.M. Rudinsky was instructed to give a general legal assessment of the Katyn “documents” on behalf of the communist side. We expressed doubt about the authenticity of three main documents - a note by L. Beria dated March 5, 1940, an extract from the minutes of a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated March 5, 1940, and a note by A. Shelepin dated March 3, 1959 addressed to Khrushchev, stating: that they should be subjected to handwriting examination. One of the signs indicating the falsification of Beria’s note and the extract from the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was the complete coincidence of the dates of sending the note (March 5, 1940) and the Politburo meeting (also March 5, 1940). This has never happened in the practice of the Politburo. The time gap between the date of sending a document with a proposal to consider an issue at a Politburo meeting and the meeting itself was at least 5-6 days.

For representatives of the presidential side, the accusation of falsifying documents was a real blow. They tried not to show confusion and even promised to present “authentic archival documents“, but, of course, no originals were ever presented to anyone. And the Constitutional Court, in its ruling of November 30, 1992, did not say a word about the Katyn tragedy and essentially rehabilitated the top Soviet party and state leadership. He indirectly acknowledged the validity of the conclusions of the commission of Academician N.N. Burdenko that among the more than 135 thousand people killed by the German fascists in the temporarily occupied territory of the Smolensk region, there were also Polish officers who were in three forced labor camps near Katyn and were used during the treacherous attack of Germany on the Soviet Union for road work.

But our domestic Goebbels falsifiers, urged on by the Polish-German side, could not come up with anything better than to continue moving in the same direction. They “corrected” the original fake. This was expressed in the fact that from Beria’s “note to Comrade Stalin” the indication of the number was erased and the number “5” fell through to God knows where: it was “March 5, 1940”, but 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 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.” I don’t know who exactly in the Constitutional Court became the president’s accomplice in the repeated falsification, but it is obvious that the Yeltsinites had such capabilities that they could, without any difficulty, after exposure, replace the false photocopy with another of the same dignity and value. Only manipulations with the notorious “Beria note” are enough to conclude that all accusations against Soviet leaders in the execution of Polish officers are a global lie.

“Working on the mistakes” of the slanderers of the workers’ state took a lot of time and was accompanied by the rejection of many statements that they had previously circulated. They felt especially bad after the publication in 1995 of Yu. Mukhin’s book “The Katyn Detective” (M., 1995), small in volume but full of facts that were damning to them. Among the many indirect evidence indicating that the murder of Polish officers was committed in the fall of 1941, Yu. Mukhin names three direct evidence: 1) Conclusions of forensic experts, including a number of those who were part of the commission of the German professor G. Butz in 1943, that , that, based on the degree of decomposition of the corpses, the state of their clothing and other signs, by the time they were exhumed by the Nazis, those killed had lain in the ground for no more than a year, at most one and a half, that is, the time of their murder dates back to the autumn of 1941. 2) The bullets and spent cartridges found in the graves of those buried have a caliber of 7.65 mm and 6.35 mm and are marked by the German cartridge factory "Genshowik", abbreviated as "Geko", that is, made in Germany. 3) About 20% of the corpses had their hands tied with paper twine, which was not produced at all in the USSR before the war, but was produced in Germany.

Of significant interest is how the Nazis prepared the Katyn provocation in the winter of 1943. This was done with German pedantry and thoroughness. The “necessary” writers, journalists, and specialists in the field of forensic medicine were selected. The territory of the Goat Mountains, which before the arrival of the invaders was a favorite place for celebrations for the residents of Smolensk, was made by the Nazis a restricted area. By the beginning of the propaganda campaign, they had strengthened security; In addition to the Poles who served in the Wehrmacht, the SS began to carry it out. A German propaganda company was stationed in Katyn. Goebbels admonished his subordinates: “The German officers who will take over leadership must be exceptionally politically trained and experienced people, capable of acting deftly and confidently. Some of our people should be there earlier so that when the Red Cross arrives everything will be prepared and so that during the excavations they will not come across things that do not correspond to our line. It would be advisable to elect one person from us and one from the UWC who would now prepare a minute-by-minute program in Katyn.” Thus, Goebbels did not hide from his subordinates that the Katyn affair was a fake and therefore demanded that they act “sensibly.”

The International Red Cross did not take part in Goebbels’s provocation, despite the blackmail and threats of the Nazis. But the “London Poles”, having entered into a shameful conspiracy with the Germans, sent the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross, hereinafter referred to as the PC, to Katyn. - Yu.S.). She stayed there from April 17 to June 9, 1943. It was headed by the Pole K. Skarzynski, and at the final stage - by his compatriot M. Wodzinski. They compiled reports on the work of the commission, which are kept in London. In their research, modern Goebbelsians prefer to give fragments only from Skarzynski’s report, since in Wodzinski they do not like the latter’s excessive meticulousness, indicating, for example, that “all bullet wounds were made from a pistol using Geco 7.65 D factory brand ammunition.” But they are also afraid to reproduce Skarzynski’s report in full. The report contains details and details that indicate that the Germans assigned the Poles the pitiful and humiliating role of extras, called upon by their presence to give the propaganda performance the appearance of an “investigation.” The following excerpts from the report are typical: “The corpses carried out on stretchers from the ditches were laid out in a row and the search for documents began in such a way that each corpse was searched separately by two workers in the presence of one member of the PKK commission... Members of the commission involved in the search for documents did not have the right viewing and sorting them. They were only required to pack the following items: a) wallets with all their contents; b) all kinds of papers found in bulk; c) awards and memorabilia; d) medallions, crosses, etc.; e) shoulder straps; f) wallets; g) all kinds of valuable items. Thus, the scanned, sorted and numbered envelopes were placed in numerical order into boxes. They remained at the exclusive disposal of the German authorities. The lists, typed by the Germans in German, could not be checked by the commission with the draft, since it no longer had access to them. During the work of the PKK technical commission in the Katyn Forest from April 15 to June 7, 1943, a total of 4,243 corpses were exhumed, of which 4,233 were taken from seven graves located at a short distance from one another and excavated in March 1943 by the German military authorities. The very careful sounding carried out by the Germans throughout the entire territory in order to ensure that the figure of 12 thousand corpses announced by propaganda did not diverge too much from reality, allows us to assume that there will be no more graves. This probing of the area revealed a number of mass graves of Russians in varying degrees of decomposition, down to skeletons.” Skarzynski's report is notable not only for the fact that the Germans did not show the Poles from the Technical Commission a single document, that is, they treated them like cattle. In it, the Poles also casually mentioned that in the territory probed by the Germans, where the graves of Polish officers were located, there were also graves with “mass graves of Russians.”

A kind of hint that the Poles were shot by the one who shot the Russians.

And the commission of forensic experts, headed by G. Butz, stayed in Katyn for only two days and, having opened nine corpses prepared in advance by the Nazis, flew to Berlin on May 1, 1943. But instead of Berlin, the plane landed at a remote, secluded airfield. Subsequently, the Bulgarian doctor Markov recalled: “The airfield was clearly military. We had lunch there, and immediately after lunch we were asked to sign copies of the protocol. We were offered to sign them right here, at this isolated airfield!” In addition to the general protocol, each member of the commission wrote his own conclusion. Bulgarian Markov, in his conclusion, despite pressure from the Germans, avoided the conclusion that Polish officers were killed in 1940. In turn, the Czechoslovakian professor F. Hajek, also a member of the Butz commission, published the brochure “Katyn Evidence” in Prague in 1945, where he presented impartial and scientifically impeccable arguments to confirm that the Polish officers could not have been shot earlier autumn 1941. As for G. Butz himself, his fate turned out to be sad. Our Goebbelsites try not to remember him, because they really don’t want to say that in 1944 the Germans themselves killed Butz, suspecting that he would reveal their scam with the Katyn burials.

And what happened to the “material evidence” in the form of documents and various objects that the Germans, with the help of the Poles from the Technical Commission, packed into boxes in April-June 1943? After all, the entire “investigation” of the Germans, in addition to delusional medical conclusions, was based on collecting documents from the corpses and asserting that among them there were no papers with dates later than May 1940. These papers, either in 9 or 14 boxes, numbering 3184 units, were transported on two trucks further and further into the territory of the “Reich”, further and further from the Soviet offensive. When it became clear that Germany’s defeat was inevitable, “the head of the railway station as Soviet troops approached burned the documents, in accordance with the order,” as the famous modern Goebbels scholar C. Madajczyk writes. A team of slanderers is trying to pretend that there is nothing special if the defendant destroyed the documents exculpating him. And I maintain that the Germans burned these documents precisely because they contained evidence of their guilt.

In 1990-1991, “historians” N. Lebedeva and Y. Zorya, who were part of the academic part of the supporters of the Goebbels version of the fate of Polish officers, stated in their writings that “... in April-May 1940, more than 15 thousand Polish prisoners of war - officers and police officers were taken from the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps and transferred to the NKVD of the Smolensk and Kalinin regions. This was their last route, the end points of which were Katyn, Mednoe and the 6th quarter of the forest park area of ​​Kharkov.” Bringing tears out of the gullible reader with passages “about the last route,” they expressed the idea that it was permissible “... to draw a conclusion about the possibility of a death sentence being passed on prisoners of war by a Special Meeting under the NKVD.” Following the “scientific experts”, the idea of ​​executing the Poles by decision of the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR was picked up by narrow-minded investigators from the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office of the USSR. In Medny, Tver Region, in the summer of 1991, “exhumators” from the investigative team of the Main Military Prosecutor General of the USSR with the participation of the Poles dug up the entire cemetery. In fact, no executed Poles were found in Medny and could not be found, since no one shot them there, but they did not fail to erect a monument in the cemetery with the inscription that 6,000 Poles “shot by the Russians” were buried here. Polish priest Peshkovsky, together with other Poles and investigators from the USSR Main Prosecutor's Office, were engaged in the exhumation of corpses near Kharkov from July 25 to August 7, 1991. They found 169 skulls and found traces of bullet wounds on 62 of them; in the place where grave diggers worked, criminals and members of the Soviet “fifth column” were buried. But based on “data” known only to them, these search engines determined that 4,000 Polish prisoners of war from the Starobelsky camp near Kharkov were buried in the cemetery.

According to the film that recorded the progress of the exhumation, it is clear that the investigative team did not find anything that could indicate that the corpses belonged to the Poles. However, four years later it suddenly turns out that numerous “material evidence” was found, which was told to the whole world by Father Peshkovsky, who managed to publish two books. The simple-minded and at the same time crafty priest in his writings reported an interesting detail related to the excavations in Medny and near Kharkov. According to him, the bulk of the items called material evidence were found not in graves, but in some separate holes and pits. It turns out that before the execution, snuff boxes, newspapers, notes, rings were taken from the Poles and, having buried the executed, they then dug special pits and pits, where they buried the items taken from the doomed. Poor priest! In his presentation, the assurance sounds very touching that the wooden snuff box, the newspaper, and the note, having lain in the blue-black slurry for 51 years, did not decay, but were preserved in such a way that they could be read “with the balcony door open.”

It is striking that the handwriting, methods and techniques used by the Poles and their co-investigators in 1991 directly echo the handwriting, methods and techniques of the Germans in 1943 at Katyn. The only difference is that the Germans concealed and then destroyed material evidence of their guilt, while the Poles, with the assistance of our collaborators, fabricate evidence of someone else’s guilt. But this is a difference that gives the actions of the Polish-Russian side an even more vile character. The Poles really want their prisoners of war to be declared victims of the Russians, not the Germans. You can demand compensation from Russians in Eurocurrency, but you cannot demand compensation from Germans.

As we have already mentioned, in the writings of Russian-Polish Goebbelsites one can often find references, coupled with fear and trembling, to the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, which is credited with the decision to shoot Polish officers. Our democrats of all colors and shades were so intimidated by themselves and others by the “extrajudicial repressive bodies of the totalitarian regime” that, putting forward delusional fabrications about the ominous role of the Special Conference in the fate of the Poles, they did not even bother to look at the Regulations on this body. And the Regulations say:

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

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

3. To implement what is specified in paragraphs 1 and 2, a Special Meeting operates under the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs under his chairmanship...

Thus, the Special Meeting did not have the right to sentence anyone to death, and therefore the horror stories invented by our Goebbelsites burst like a soap bubble and the Russian-Polish slanderers once again incriminated themselves. It should be added that there have never been any traces of any “Special Meetings” at the level of republics, territories, regions; it operated only under the NKVD of the USSR. And one more characteristic feature of the Special Meeting: it was always controlled by the Prosecutor of the USSR, who had the right, if he disagreed with his decision, to bring a protest to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, which suspended the execution of the decision of the Special Meeting. The meanness of the domestic Goebbelsites lies in the fact that they constantly resort to substitution of concepts, to identifying the Special Conference under the NKVD of the USSR with the “troikas” that sunk into oblivion back in 1938.

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 one government agency 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, due to various kinds of slips and slips, the Russian-Polish Goebbelsites tell us, the total number of people sentenced to death was 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 execution of Polish officers by the “Stalinist regime.”

The second category - persons from among the Polish officers, who for the world community were supposed to designate Polish prisoners of war - about 400 people in total. They were sent to the Gryazovets prison camp in 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, numbering several divisions, through Turkmenistan and Iran to the Anglo-Americans in 1942. By the way, the British, who had Anders’ units at their disposal, did not stand on ceremony with the arrogant Poles and in the spring of 1944 threw them under German machine guns into the mountainous neck of the Italian town of Montecasino, where they died in large numbers.

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

A painful and painful solution to the fate of the third, main part of the Polish prisoners of war was found in the fact that they were recognized as socially dangerous by a special meeting under the NKVD of the USSR, convicted and imprisoned in forced labor camps. 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, and there were three of them. The Poles held in these camps were used in the construction and repair of highways until the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The beginning of the war was extremely unfavorable for the Soviet Union. Already 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 got their hands on the entire file on the Poles, which they kept in the forced labor camps. This allowed them to announce in 1943 that the number of those executed was about 12 thousand. Using the file data, they published the “Official Materials...” of their investigation, where they included various “documents” to support their slanderous version of the execution of Polish officers by the Soviets. But, despite the German pedantry, among the documents cited there were those that showed that their owners were alive as of October 1941. This is what, for example, V.N. wrote about the “Official Materials...” of the Germans. Pribytkov, who worked as director of the Central Special Archives of the USSR before it came under the control of the Yeltsinists: “... The decisive document cited 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 the 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 conviction 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 it did not bring this information to the Soviet leadership, but mockingly continued to “find out” where their compatriot officers had gone. Why? The first reason is that the Poles in 1941-1942 and even in 1943 were confident that Hitler would defeat the Soviet Union. The second reason, stemming from the first, is the desire to blackmail the Soviet leadership for subsequent refusal to participate in military operations against the Germans on the Soviet-German front.

Goebbels'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 embers of the Cold War were already smoldering! 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 profitable for the US government to chew this case in the press, but it could not allow it to be tried in court. The American government was smart enough not to drag fakes to the UN. But our stupid provincials, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, rushed to Warsaw with any fake to the Polish presidents. 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.

In these notes one cannot help but touch upon the role of the Germans in the so-called “investigation” of the Katyn events. This role is almost invisible, but clearly present. After the Poles, or rather, together with them, the Germans are the most interested party in ensuring that responsibility for the execution of Polish officers is assigned to the Soviet Union. With bated breath and quiet triumph, they accepted Kwasniewski’s statement, bursting with contentment, after a meeting with Putin, about the end of the “investigation” and that the “documents” would soon be transferred to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. The Germans do not forgive anyone for anything and know how to wait in the wings. They did not forgive the Serbs for their active resistance to Hitler’s invasion of Yugoslavia and in 1989, together with the Americans and the British, they frantically and furiously bombed Yugoslav cities and villages. They have not and will not forgive us for the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, and in the subconscious of many of them there lives a withering hatred towards I. Stalin and towards us - the Soviet people who broke the back of the Wehrmacht. They try to pour out this hatred towards us through their agents of influence. One of their most hidden and most valuable agents of influence in the Soviet Union for many years was Valentin Falin. For us, this personality is interesting because it was he who became the person in the CPSU Central Committee who launched Goebbels’ version of the Katyn tragedy. Falin belonged to the generation of Soviet people who were fortunately born - at the very end of the twenties, early thirties. They were young to be at the front, and became old enough to post-war years With virtually no competition, it is easy to enter and graduate from prestigious universities and quickly move up the career ladder. In 1971-1978 Falin was the USSR Ambassador to Germany, which, taking into account his previous experience of communicating with West Germans, predetermined his exceptionally hostile attitude towards the Soviet period of our country’s history. At the end of the ambassador’s mission to Germany, Falin was appointed deputy head of the International Information Department of the CPSU Central Committee and began to energetically “promote” the “Katyn case” in the interests of the Germans, but was prevented by Yu. Andropov, who removed him from the Central Committee. For some time he had to be content with the position of political observer for the Izvestia newspaper. His " finest hour" broke through in the Gorbachev era: from 1988 to August 1991, he was the head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, and then the Secretary of the Central Committee. Since the end of 1991, Falin found himself in Germany: the Germans made sure that he lived comfortably on German soil. Let me clarify right away that I did not and do not consider Falin to be some kind of ordinary spy: the Germans did not need him in that capacity. The main thing they strived for was to ensure that he looked at the pre-war, war and post-war history of Europe and the world and the role of the Soviet Union through their eyes. There is no doubt that their great success was that, as a result of numerous private conversations with Falin, including during his seven-year stay as ambassador to Germany, they were able to convince him that Goebbels’ version of the execution of Polish officers in Katyn was correct. And this was an unmistakable step by the Germans, for Falin believed that he had become the owner of “ secret knowledge" As we have already mentioned, his first attempt to launch a slander campaign on Katyn in the interests of Germany from the CPSU Central Committee failed. But upon returning to the Central Committee in 1988, Falin, with the support of M. Gorbachev, who began to dismantle the socialist camp and destroy socialism under the banner of building a “pan-European home,” was again at the center of the “investigation” of the Katyn case.

Falin’s book “Without Discount on Circumstances” is very indicative of understanding how our Goebbelsites fabricated lies about Katyn. Firstly, Falin, who had long ago learned the “truth” from the West Germans, concluded that the execution of Polish officers was a crime of Beria and his henchmen, since they were transported by escort troops from Kozelsk to Katyn (indeed, they were transported, but not to be shot, but to forced labor camps). Secondly, Falin admits that, based on “indirect” evidence alone, he and A.N. Yakovlev, so that Gorbachev would bring an official apology to the President of Poland W. Jaruzelski, and the General, not without hesitation, agreed to “apologize” for the alleged execution of officers, after which followed short message April 28, 1990 TASS on this matter. Thirdly, there was no trace of the notorious “package No. 1” with documents on Katyn, which was allegedly transferred from one General to another. Fourthly, neither Gorbachev, nor Yakovlev and Falin, when deciding to apologize to Jaruzelski, even saw what kind of documents were in the Katyn file stored in the KGB archives and what their content was. The homely truth from what Falin reported is this: when the head of the KGB A. Kryuchkov and his employees finally got around to looking into the Katyn case, they discovered documents indicating that Polish officers had been sentenced to imprisonment. Kryuchkov then grabbed his head and was forced to report the “mistake” to Gorbachev, who had already “crowed” to the whole world about the guilt of the Soviet Union. Admitting that he had collapsed under the pressure of his comrades, Falin and Yakovlev, was like death for Gorbachev. And the Poles and Germans constantly demand visible documentary evidence of what does not exist, and Gorbachev, in order to somehow get out of the situation, instructs the USSR Prosecutor General’s Office to begin an “investigation” in the direction of confirming his apology to the Poles.

But after shoveling through mountains of mandrels, the GVP investigative team could only state: “The collected materials allow us to draw a preliminary conclusion that Polish prisoners of war could have been shot on the basis of the decision of the Special Meeting of the NKVD...” No documents on the Katyn case confirming Goebbels’ version, except Numerous notes from Falin and those whom he involved in his provocative fuss could not be found. This explains Gorbachev’s real nonsense in his letter written in October 1992 to the new President of Poland L. Walesa, where he states that he opened an envelope with the inscription “do not open” at the very end of his presidential reign in December 1991, in the presence of Yeltsin, and invited him to dispose of these documents himself.

Yeltsin’s awareness of the Katyn tragedy was zero, but, seeing that with the help of such “documents” it was possible to get even with the “damned Soviet past,” he gave instructions to voice them. “Package No. 1” on the Katyn case was invented by a greedy and unprincipled pack of archivists and lawyers from Yeltsin’s team, falsifying documents. Later, having become convinced that the original documents completely refuted Goebbels’ version, the Yeltsinists began to forge them. Willingly or unwittingly, the Soviet leadership itself created favorable conditions for falsifying the case about the fate of Polish officers. 8 post-war Soviet historiography, information on this subject was extremely sparse. The political elite of the USSR did not want to make public information that on the eve of the war, Polish officers were not in prisoner of war camps, but in forced labor camps. In addition, the Poles and Germans were our allies under the Warsaw Pact and fraternal peoples in the socialist camp. Reminding about Katyn meant reminding that the Poles were shot by the Germans. We didn’t even remind you, and now the blame for the destruction of Polish officers is being put on us through malicious falsification.

In Poland, the so-called union of “Katyn families” has been created and operates, which has its own administration, banners, and banners. This “union” numbers more than 800 thousand people and is a breeding ground for anti-Russian sentiments. It not only cultivates hatred of Russia, but also aims to obtain huge compensation from us, similar to what the Jews receive from Germany for the “Holocaust.” And he can achieve his goal. Back in January 2002, during a visit to Poland, V. Putin said that he “does not exclude the possibility of extending the Russian law on victims of political repression to Poles.” That is, V. Putin has long completed the “investigation” of the case of Polish officers and is only talking about what legal norms to adapt for compensation payments. But no matter what schemes they build, it’s all one endless lie to attribute the crimes of Hitler, Goebbels, and Nazi Germany to us, the victors of European fascism.

The remaking of history and a global revision of the results of the Second World War are underway in full swing. In 20-25 years, the Americans will classify all information related to their atomic bombings of Japanese cities, and the entire fooled world, like today's Japanese youth, will point to the not yet extinct Russians as a fiend of the human race who wanted to destroy the whole world with using nuclear weapons. Fortunately, the nice American guys from the Marine Corps stopped the evil Russians. Real Russophobia and real Nazism dominate in the USA, other NATO countries, and the Baltic countries. And Putin keeps talking about manifestations of Russian nationalism. He pursues a policy in which we, who bore the brunt of Victory in the Second World War, constantly find ourselves owing something to someone and being guilty before someone. Most recently, during a visit to the PRC, he took and presented the Chinese with primordially Russian lands with an area of ​​340 square kilometers. Now he has swung wider: together with Foreign Minister Lavrov, he is going to give the Japanese two islands of the Kuril chain. Despite Putin’s “generosity,” the Japanese are swaggering and declaring that they will conclude a peace treaty (we need it as a fifth wheel) only after all the islands are transferred to them. Next up is the Kaliningrad region, or East Prussia in German. This is obvious to everyone! It is also obvious that the president spits on the Constitution of the Russian Federation, article four of which proclaims that Russian Federation“...ensures the integrity and inviolability of its territory.”

The vile falsification of the “Katyn case” carried out by the current regime of the Russian Federation indicates the greatest danger looming over our country and our people. Such “stones” are thrown into the past of the USSR-Russia with far-reaching goals. Unfortunately, many of us are not sufficiently aware of this danger and continue to believe in the rulers who betrayed us long ago.

Notes

The question of who is responsible for the death of Polish military------captives in Katyn (more precisely, in the Kozyi Gory tract) has been discussed for more than 70 years. “LG” has addressed this topic more than once. There are also official estimates from the authorities. But many dark places remain. Professor of the Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU), Doctor historical sciences Alexey PLOTNIKOV.

- Alexey Yuryevich, what was the total number of 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. Data cited by a number of experts - primarily Polish - about the internment of 180 or even 220-250 thousand Poles are 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 on December 18, 1939 Soviet Union war (the so-called Angers Declaration) due to the transfer of Vilna and the Vilna region to Lithuania, 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. In the Kozelsky camp (in 1940 - Western, now Kaluga region) there were 4,500 Polish prisoners of war, 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 in the spring of 1940, but they were “found” by the Germans in large quantities at burial sites. 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.

It won't 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, in the Kozyi Gory tract there was no technical possibility of quietly shooting 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. Were here pioneer camps, 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 the local community started talking about this loudly. 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. Let me remind you that there were no more than 400 officers out of a total of 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 (ECtHR) 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 three and a half thousand Polish officers allegedly shot there (please note: again, it was 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 personally had a 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 August 1945 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 site 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 the 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.

So who shot the Poles in Katyn? Our NKVD soldiers in the spring of 1940 - as the current Russian leadership believes, or the Germans in the fall of 1941 - as they found out at the turn of 1943-1944. a special commission headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko, the results of the examination of which were included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal?

In the book “Katyn,” published in 2011. A lie that became history,” its authors, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin, tried to impartially, on the basis of documents, understand one of the most complex and confusing stories of the last century. And they came to a disappointing conclusion for those who are ready to force Russia to repent for this “crime”.

« If the reader remembers the first part (of the book) - the authors write, in particular - then the Germans easily determined the ranks of those executed. How? And by the insignia! Both Dr. Butz's report and some of the witness statements mention stars on the shoulder straps of those killed. But, according to the Soviet regulations on prisoners of war of 1931, they were prohibited from wearing insignia. So shoulder straps with stars could not have ended up on the uniforms of prisoners shot by the NKVD in 1940. Wearing insignia in captivity was allowed only by the new Regulations adopted on July 1, 1941. It was also permitted by the Geneva Convention».

It turns out that our NKVD officers could not shoot in 1940 captured Poles, crowned with military insignia, which were found along with the remains of the dead. This could not have happened simply because these same insignia were torn off from all prisoners of war. Our prisoner of war camps did not contain captured generals, captured officers or captured privates: according to their status, they were all simply prisoners, without insignia.

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

The well-known publicist Anatoly Wasserman cites in his blog a remarkable document from Daniil Ivanov’s article “Did the USSR’s failure to sign the Geneva Convention affect the fate of Soviet prisoners of war?”:

“CONCLUSION OF CONSULTANT MALITSKY ON THE DRAFT DECISION OF THE CEC AND SNK OF THE USSR “REGULATIONS ON PRISONERS OF WAR”
Moscow, March 27, 1931

On July 27, 1929, the Geneva Conference developed a convention on the maintenance of prisoners of war. The government of the USSR took no part either in the drafting of this convention or in its ratification. To replace this convention, the present Regulations were developed, the draft of which was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on March 19 this year. G.

The draft of this provision is based on three thoughts:
1) create a regime for prisoners of war that would not be worse than the regime of the Geneva Convention;
2) issue, if possible, a short law that does not reproduce the details of all the guarantees provided by the Geneva Convention, so that these details form the subject of implementing instructions to the law;
3) give the issue of prisoners of war a formulation that corresponds to Soviet principles of law (inadmissibility of benefits for officers, optional involvement of prisoners of war in work, etc.).

Thus, this Regulation is based in general on the same principles as the Geneva Convention, such as: prohibition of ill-treatment of prisoners of war, insults and threats, prohibition of using coercive measures to obtain from them information of a military nature, granting them civil legal capacity and dissemination they are subject to the general laws of the country, prohibiting their use in a war zone, etc.

However, in order to harmonize this Regulation with general principles Soviet law in the Regulations introduced the following differences from the Geneva Convention:
a) there are no benefits for officers, indicating the possibility of keeping them separately from other prisoners of war (Article 3);
b) the extension of civilian rather than military regime to prisoners of war (Articles 8 and 9);
c) granting political rights to prisoners of war who belong to the working class or the peasantry who do not exploit the labor of others, on a common basis with other foreigners located on the territory of the USSR (Article 10);
d) providing [the opportunity] for prisoners of war of the same nationality to be placed together if they wish;
e) the so-called camp committees receive broader camp competence, having the right to freely communicate with all bodies to represent all general interests of prisoners of war, and not just limited to the receipt and distribution of parcels, the functions of the mutual aid fund (Article 14);
f) prohibition to wear insignia and failure to indicate the rules for saluting (Article 18);
g) prohibition of charlatanism (Article 34);
h) the appointment of salaries not only for officers, but for all prisoners of war (Article 32);
i) attracting prisoners of war to work only with their consent (Article 34) and with the application to them of general legislation on labor protection and conditions (Article 36), as well as extending to them wages in an amount not lower than that existing in the locality for the corresponding category of workers, etc.

Whereas this bill establishes a regime for the detention of prisoners of war no worse than the Geneva Convention, that therefore the principle of reciprocity can be extended without prejudice to both the USSR and individual prisoners of war, that the number of articles of the provision is reduced to 45 instead of 97 in the Geneva Convention “that the principles of Soviet law are carried out in the Regulations, there are no objections to the adoption of this bill.”

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

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

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

And this version of the Katyn execution was official in the USSR until 1990, when Gorbachev accepted and admitted the responsibility of the NKVD for what he had done. And this version of the Katyn events has since become modern Russia official. An investigation conducted in 2004 into the Katyn case by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation confirmed the imposition of death sentences by the NKVD troika on 14,542 Polish prisoners of war and reliably established the death of 1,803 people and the identity of 22 of them. Russia continues to repent for Katyn and transfers more and more declassified documents on these events to Poland.

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

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

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

From the experts’ conclusions it followed that in the production of documents on the “Katyn case” various stamps, cliches, etc. were used. However, according to Ilyukhin, not all stamps and seals were fake; there were also genuine ones, which “got, as they say, inherited when in August 1991 they stormed and entered the Central Committee building, and found a lot there. There were both cliches and cliches; I must say that they found a lot of documents. Documents that were not filed, but were in folders; all this was scattered in a disorderly state. Our source said that then all this was brought into compliance so that later, along with genuine documents, false documents could also be included in the case.”

This, in a nutshell, is the current state of the “Katyn case.” The Poles are demanding more and more “documentary” evidence of the guilt of the then Soviet leadership in the Katyn “crime.” Well, the Russian leadership is meeting these wishes halfway, declassifying more and more archival documents. Which, as it turns out, are fakes.

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

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