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The Swede said that in the course of an independent investigation of the Katyn crime, carried out within the framework of the international project "The Truth about Katyn", information was received that in 1939-1040 in the USSR, the NKVD bodies shot about 3,200 citizens of former Poland: generals, officers, policemen, officials, etc., whose guilt in committing military and criminal offenses has been proven. Some of the Polish officers in the fall of 1941 in the Katyn forest were shot by the Nazis, the other part died for various reasons in the NKVD camps during the war, some of the Polish prisoners survived, but in Poland they prefer to talk about them as the Katyn victims.
On Friday, April 23, the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Constitutional Construction Viktor Ilyukhin sent an official letter to President Dmitry Medvedev with a request to resume the investigation of the criminal case on the execution of Polish officers, as well as to give a judicial and legal assessment of the evidence in it. In addition, the letter contains a request not to allow in the future to hold official Polish events at the memorial complex in Katyn, if they are clearly anti-Russian. The text of the letter is quoted by the site "Truth about Katyn".
Ilyukhin notes the contradiction in the historical facts of the version about the execution of Polish officers of the NKVD of the USSR. In particular, it was established that the Poles were shot from German weapons. It is also not disputed that many of the victims' hands are tied with paper twine, the production of which at the time of the execution was not known in the USSR. In addition, they found passports and other identity documents of those killed, which, according to Ilyukhin, "is absolutely impossible in this situation."
Archival documents will become another argument in defense of the USSR NKVD. In the 3rd issue of the magazine "Our Contemporary" for 2010 (pp. 286-288) there was published an open letter from the acting state adviser V. Shved to the director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation S. V. Mironenko. In the letter, the author reveals information that confirms the non-involvement of the NKVD troops in the execution of Polish officers in Katyn.
The Swede recalls that several documents were found in "closed package No. 1" that allegedly confirm the sole guilt of the pre-war Soviet leadership for the shooting of Polish prisoners of war and citizens. Among the documents are Beria's note to Stalin No. 794 / B dated "_" March 1940 about Polish prisoners of war and arrested citizens, an extract with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks No. P13 / 144 dated March 5, 1940 on the "Question of the NKVD of the USSR" (two copies), sheets No. 9, 10 from the minutes of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) for March 1940 with decisions and Shelepin's handwritten note to Khrushchev No. 632-sh dated March 3, 1959 with a draft resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the destruction of the registration files of the executed Polish prisoners of war.
The key document in the package is a note by the USSR People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrenty Beria to Stalin No. 794 / B dated March 1940, which proposed to shoot 25,700 prisoners and arrested Polish citizens as "sworn enemies of Soviet power."
However, according to Shved, Beria's note contains a lot of absurdities and mistakes. So, in the operative part of the note, it is proposed to shoot 36 Polish prisoners of war less and 315 more arrested Poles than indicated in the explanatory part. Knowing the scrupulous attitude of Stalin and his assistant Poskrebyshev to the accuracy of quantitative data, it is impossible to imagine that Beria would risk sending a document with such errors to the Kremlin. It was also established that individual pages of a small note were reprinted, and on different typewriters. This is unacceptable for documents of this level, both then and now.
The key mistake of the note is the absence of a specific date on it. This in itself is not exceptional. Known notes of the NKVD, in which the date is affixed by the hand of Beria. However, according to official registration with the secretariat of the NKVD of the USSR, a note No. 794 / B dated February 29, 1940 was sent to Stalin. In fact, he allegedly "received" note No. 794 / B, dated and mailed in March 1940, without specifying a specific date.
Not a single notary, not a single court will recognize Beria's note, registered in February, but dated March, authentic and will consider it forged on formal grounds. In the Stalinist period, this was regarded as sabotage.
In addition, Shved notes, two copies of the extract with the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940 were issued with serious violations. The extract intended for Beria's direction lacks the seal of the Central Committee and the imprint of Stalin's facsimile. In fact, this is not a document, but a simple informational copy. Sending an uncertified extract to the executor (Beria) contradicted the elementary rules of the party apparatus.
Questions also remain after reading the extract from the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated March 5, 1940, sent in February 1959 to the Chairman of the KGB, Alexander Shelepin. This copy was also printed in March 1940, but in 1959 the date "March 5, 1940" was removed from it. and the surname of the old addressee, after which the new date of February 27, 1959 and the surname of Shelepin were imprinted.
According to Shved, an extract from the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) of February 27, 1959 cannot be considered a document, since in February 1959, instead of the CPSU (b), there was the CPSU, and the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee was the supreme party body. In addition, according to the rules of party office work, the date and surname of the addressee were indicated only in the accompanying letter to the archival document, but in no case on the document itself.
However, in both extracts from the Politburo decision of March 5, 1940, the name "Kobulov", which Stalin allegedly personally entered in Beria's note, was mistakenly printed with "a" - "Kabulov". It is doubtful that a typist would dare to "correct" the leader?
The Swede also questions the objectivity of the information in the note, which is considered the most important confirmation of the fact that 21,857 Polish citizens were shot by the NKVD in 1940. This is a note from the Chairman of the KGB Alexander Shelepin to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev No. 632-sh dated March 3, 1959. Its authenticity is beyond doubt. However, it is unlikely that the author of the note (Shelepin was not the author, he only signed it) had objective and reliable information regarding the real circumstances of the execution of Polish prisoners of war and citizens. This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that the document contains numerous inaccuracies and obvious errors about the places of execution of the Poles, the composition of those executed, the international recognition of the conclusions of the Burdenko commission, etc. people) decisions of the Politburo.
The Swede also draws attention to the fact that the acts on the examination of Katyn documents are still classified. He assumes that the acts simply lack an analysis and explanation of all the above errors and absurdities, since the examination itself was reduced to a visual examination of documents.
The Swede also recalls the statement made by the co-chairman of the Group on Difficult Issues of Russian-Polish Relations, MGIMO Rector, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Anatoly Torkunov that materials were sent to him from the military archive that “do not deny that Polish officers became victims of Stalin’s repressions, but they say that that it is possible that some of the officers were destroyed by the Germans."
At the end of November 2009, the Katyn case came under international jurisdiction. The European Court accepted for consideration the claims of the families of Polish prisoners of war officers who were shot in Katyn.
The European Court has addressed a number of questions to Russia. In particular, on the concealment of the order to terminate the investigation of the Katyn crime, on the effectiveness, or rather, on the fair and proper trial of the case, on whether the relatives were allowed to familiarize themselves with the available materials, etc. Given the incredible haste with which The European Court began to consider the claims of the Poles, it is very likely that the announcement of the verdict on these claims will be timed to coincide with the 65th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War.
In conclusion, the Swede expresses the opinion that it is blasphemous to assert that historians and researchers who do not agree with the official version of the Katyn crime and defend the good name of Russia are trying to whitewash the Stalinist repressions.
