On April 16, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights will issue a final verdict in the so-called Katyn case. One of the Polish radio stations, referring to the plaintiffs' lawyer, Mr. Kaminsky, reports that the session of the ECHR will be held in an open manner, and therefore the whole world will finally learn about the true truth about Katyn. In principle, one can especially not even guess about what the court's verdict will be. One can only guess what kind of mine he will put under the further development of the Russian Federation and the attitude of the international community towards it. Russia, by the way, recognizes at the state level that the execution of Polish officers was the work of the NKVD servicemen, who acted on the orders of Stalin and Beria, as even President Medvedev said at the time.
The crux of the matter is to accuse the Soviet authorities of the 1940s of the fact that, according to their orders, about 4,500 Polish soldiers were shot on the territory of the Smolensk region alone, and under another - 20,000 Polish servicemen. Moreover, if such a verdict is adopted (which can no longer be doubted), then, as often happens, the guilt will automatically migrate to modern Russia.
Recall that the first conversations about the tragedy in the Katyn forest were started in 1943 by the Nazi occupation forces. Then the German servicemen discovered (this word could, in principle, be written in quotation marks) near Smolensk, in the Katyn region and the Gnezdovo station, a mass grave of Polish (specifically Polish) officers. This news was immediately presented as a fact of the mass extermination of Polish prisoners by representatives of the NKVD. At the same time, the Germans stated that they had conducted a thorough investigation and established that the execution took place in the spring of 1940, which once again proves the "Stalinist trace" in this case. The NKVD allegedly specially used Walther and Browning pistols with German-made Gecko bullets for the production of mass executions in order to cast a shadow on the "most humane" German fascist army in the world. The Soviet Union, for obvious reasons, subjected all the conclusions of the German commission to complete obstruction.
However, in 1944, when Soviet troops drove out the Nazis from the territory of the Smolensk region, Moscow was already conducting an investigation into this fact. According to the conclusions of the Moscow commission, which included public figures, military experts, doctors of medical sciences and even representatives of the clergy, it turned out that, together with the Poles, the bodies of several hundred Soviet soldiers and officers rest in the huge graves of the Katyn Forest. The Soviet commission pointed out that the murders of thousands of prisoners of war were committed by the Nazis in the fall of 1941. Of course, the conclusions of the Soviet commission of 1944 cannot be taken unambiguously either, but our task is to approach the consideration of the so-called Katyn issue from an objective point of view, based on facts, and not unfounded accusations. This story has too many pitfalls, but trying not to pay attention to them means trying to dissociate itself from Russian history.
The point of view of the 1944 commission on the Katyn tragedy in the Soviet Union persisted for several decades, until in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev handed over the so-called "new materials" on the Katyn case into the hands of Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski, after which the whole world started talking about the crimes of Stalinism in relation to Polish officers. What were these "new materials"? They were based on secret documents, which were allegedly signed by J. V. Stalin, L. P. Beria and other high-ranking statesmen of the Soviet state. Even during the transfer of these documents into the hands of M. S. Gorbachev himself, experts said that he should not rush to draw conclusions from these materials, because these documents do not provide direct evidence of the execution of Poles by the NKVD units and need to be verified for authenticity. However, Mr. Gorbachev did not wait for the end of the examination of the documents and further conclusions of the commission on this difficult case, and decided to divulge a "terrible secret" about the atrocities of the Soviet regime.
In this regard, the first discrepancy arises, indicating that it is too early to put an end to the Katyn issue. Why did these secret documents surface in February 1990? But before that, at least twice, they could have been made public.
The first publicity of the execution of Polish officers precisely by the hands of Soviet Chekists could have appeared even during the famous XX Congress of the Central Committee of the CPSU, when the cult of personality of J. V. Stalin was debunked by N. S. Khrushchev. In principle, in 1956, Khrushchev could not only condemn Stalin's crimes on the territory of the USSR, but also receive enormous foreign policy dividends on the "disclosure of the Katyn secret", because not long before that, the American Congress commission was also engaged in the Katyn affair. But Khrushchev did not take advantage of this opportunity. And could I use it? Were these "documents" available at the time? And to say that he knew nothing about the real situation in the early 40s with Polish prisoners of war is naive …
The publicity could have taken place in the initial period of Gorbachev's tenure in power, but, for some reason, it did not take place. Why did it take place in February 1990? Perhaps the secret lies in the fact that all these "new materials", about which strangely nothing was known until 1990, were simply fabricated, and such a systematic falsification was carried out precisely in the late 80s, when the Soviet Union has already headed for rapprochement with the West. Real "historical bombs" were needed.
By the way, this point of view can be questioned as much as you like, but there are results of a documentary examination of the very “new materials” of the Katyn case. It turned out that the documents with the signatures of Stalin and other persons demanding to consider the cases of Polish prisoners of war in a special order were printed on one typewriter, and the sheets with the final signature of Beria were printed on another. In addition, on one of the extracts of the final decision adopted at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March 1940, in a strange way, there was a seal with the attributes and name of the CPSU. It's strange, because the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself appeared only in 1952. Such inconsistencies were also announced during the so-called Round Table on the Katyn issue, organized in the State Duma in 2010.
But the inconsistencies in the Katyn tragedy, in which they have recently seen only the evidence of the guilt of the NKVD officers, do not end there either. In the materials of the cases, which have already been transferred to the Polish side, and these are more than fifty volumes, there are several documents that cast doubt on the date of the mass execution near Katyn - April-May 1940. These documents are letters from Polish servicemen, which were dated in the summer and autumn of 1941 - the time when Nazi troops were already in control of the Smolensk land.
If you believe that the NKVD decided to specifically shoot the Poles from German weapons and German bullets, then why did this even have to be done? After all, in Moscow at that time they still could not know that in a little over a year Nazi Germany would attack the Soviet Union …
A German commission working at the scene of the tragedy found that the hands of the executed were tied with special German-made cotton laces. All this again suggests that the shrewd NKVD-Schnicks already knew that Germany would attack the USSR and, apparently, ordered in Berlin not only "Browning", but also these twines to cast a shadow on Germany.
The same commission found a large amount of foliage in mass (spontaneous) graves near Katyn, which obviously could not fall from the trees in April, but this indirectly confirms that the massacres of Polish and Soviet prisoners of war could have been committed in the autumn of 1941.
It turns out that there are a large number of questions in the Katyn case that still do not find unambiguous answers, if we are firmly convinced that the execution was the work of the NKVD. In fact, the entire evidence base declaring the Soviet Union guilty is based on the very documents, the authenticity of which is clearly in doubt. The appearance of these documents in 1990 only indicates that the Katyn case was actually being prepared as another blow to the integrity of the USSR, which at that time was already experiencing colossal difficulties.
Now it is worth turning to the so-called eyewitness accounts. In the late 30s - early 40s, on the territory located 400-500 meters from the place where the mass executions were subsequently carried out, the so-called government dacha was located. According to the testimony of the employees of this dacha, such famous people as Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Shvernik liked to come here on vacation. The documents, which were “declassified” in the 90s, directly state that these visits took place when mass executions of Polish officers took place in the forest near Kozy Gory (the former name of Katyn). It turns out that high-ranking officials were on their way to rest on the site of a giant cemetery … They might simply not know about its existence - an argument that is difficult to take seriously. If the executions took place precisely in April-May 1940 in the immediate vicinity of the same government dacha, it turns out that the NKVD decided to violate the unshakable instructions on the order of executions. This instruction clearly states that mass executions must be carried out in places located no closer than 10 km from cities - at night. And here it is 400 meters away and not even from the city, but from the place where the political elite came to fish and breathe fresh air. It is difficult to imagine how Klim Voroshilov was fishing when bulldozers were working a few hundred meters away, burying thousands of corpses in the ground. At the same time, they were buried slightly. It was established that the bodies of some of the executed were barely covered with sand, and therefore the hellish smell of numerous corpses should have spread through the forest. This is the government dacha … All this looks somehow not intelligible, taking into account the thoroughness of the NKVD's approach to such matters.
In 1991, the former head of the NKVD department P. Soprunenko stated that in March 1940 he held in his hands a paper with a Politburo resolution signed by Joseph Stalin on the execution of Polish officers. This is another reason to doubt the materials of the case, since it is known for certain that Comrade Soprunenko could in no way hold such a document in his hands, since his powers did not extend so far. It is difficult to assume that this document "gave him to hold" L. Beria himself in March 1940, because just a month before that, Nikolai Yezhov, arrested by ex-People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, had been shot on charges of attempting a coup d'etat. Did Beria really feel so free that he could walk around the offices with secret decisions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and let them "hold in their hands" to everyone who wishes … Naive thoughts …
As Vyacheslav Shved says in the comments to his book "The Secret of Katyn", falsification of historical materials took place at different times and in different countries. One of the clearest examples of fraud in the United States is the accusation of Oswald that he single-handedly decided to assassinate President Kennedy. Only more than 40 years later it turned out that a multi-stage conspiracy with a large number of actors was planned against John F. Kennedy.
It is quite possible that they are trying to present the Katyn tragedy in a way that is beneficial to certain political circles. Instead of carrying out a truly objective investigation and complete declassification of documentary data, the information war continues around the massacre of Polish and Soviet servicemen, which deals another blow to Russia's credibility.
In this regard, it is interesting to draw attention to the recent decision of the Tver court on the suit of E. Ya. Dzhugashvili, defending the honor and dignity of his grandfather I. V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin), accused of shooting Polish prisoners of war. Stalin's grandson demands that the State Duma remove the phrase from the parliamentary statement that the Katyn execution took place on the direct orders of J. V. Stalin. Note that this is the second such claim against the State Duma by Stalin's grandson (the first was dismissed by the court).
Despite the fact that the Tverskoy court also dismissed the second claim, its decision cannot be called unambiguous. In her final ruling, Judge Fedosova stated that "Stalin was one of the leaders of the USSR during the Katyn tragedy." With these words alone, the Tverskoy court, clearly not wanting to, managed to emphasize that all the documents in the case of the executed Polish officers are possibly a gross falsification, which has yet to be seriously studied, and then to draw real independent conclusions on its basis. This once again suggests that whatever decision the ECHR makes, it will clearly not rely on all the historical facts of the tragedy, which still evokes conflicting feelings.
Of course, the shooting of thousands of Polish officers is a huge national tragedy for Poland, and this tragedy in Russia is understood and shared by most people in Polish grief. And at the same time, we must not forget that in addition to Polish officers, tens of millions of other people perished in that great war, whose descendants also dream of a dignified attitude towards the memory of their dead ancestors by the state and the public. You can exaggerate the Katyn tragedy as much as you like, but you should not deliberately keep silent about the thousands and thousands of other victims of the Second World War, about how today nationalist movements are actively raising their heads in the Baltic countries, to which Poland for some reason has a very warm attitude. History, as you know, does not know the subjunctive mood, so history must be treated objectively. At every historical stage in the development of any state, there is a very controversial period, and if all these historical disputes are used in order to escalate new conflicts, it will lead to a grand catastrophe that will simply crush civilization.
