On March 5, 1940, the USSR authorities decided to apply to Polish prisoners of war higher form punishment - shooting. It marked the beginning of the Katyn tragedy, one of the main stumbling blocks in Russian-Polish relations.

Missing Officers

On August 8, 1941, against the backdrop of the outbreak of war with Germany, Stalin concludes diplomatic relations with a newfound ally, the Polish government-in-exile. Within the framework of the new treaty, all Polish prisoners of war, especially the prisoners of 1939 on the territory of the Soviet Union, were granted amnesty and the right to free movement throughout the territory of the Union. The formation of Anders' army began. Nevertheless, the Polish government did not count about 15,000 officers, who, according to the documents, were supposed to be in the Kozelsk, Starobilsk and Yukhnovsky camps. To all the accusations of the Polish General Sikorsky and General Anders of violating the amnesty agreement, Stalin replied that all the prisoners were released, but they could have escaped to Manchuria.

Subsequently, one of Anders’s subordinates described his anxiety: “Despite the ‘amnesty’, the firm promise of Stalin himself to return the prisoners of war to us, despite his assurances that the prisoners from Starobelsk, Kozelsk and Ostashkov were found and released, we did not receive a single call for help from prisoners of war from the aforementioned camps. Questioning thousands of colleagues returning from camps and prisons, we have never heard any reliable confirmation of the whereabouts of the prisoners taken out of those three camps. He also owned the words uttered a few years later: “It was only in the spring of 1943 that a terrible secret was revealed to the world, the world heard a word from which horror still breathes: Katyn.”

dramatization

As you know, the Katyn burial was discovered by the Germans in 1943, when these areas were under occupation. It was the Nazis who contributed to the "promotion" of the Katyn case. Many specialists were involved, the exhumation was carefully carried out, they even led excursions there for local residents. An unexpected discovery in the occupied territory gave rise to a version of a deliberate staging, which was supposed to play the role of propaganda against the USSR during World War II. This became an important argument in accusing the German side. Moreover, there were many Jews on the list of those identified.

Attracted attention and details. V.V. Kolturovich from Daugavpils described his conversation with a woman who, together with her fellow villagers, went to look at the opened graves: “I asked her: “Vera, what did people say to each other, examining the graves?” The answer was: "Our negligent slobs can't do that - it's too neat a job." Indeed, the ditches were perfectly dug under the cord, the corpses were stacked in perfect piles. The argument, of course, is ambiguous, but do not forget that according to the documents, the execution of such huge amount people was produced to the maximum short time. The performers should have simply not had enough time for this.

double charge

At the famous Nuremberg Trials on July 1-3, 1946, the Katyn massacre was blamed on Germany and appeared in the indictment. International Tribunal(MWT) in Nuremberg, section III "War crimes", about abuse with prisoners of war and military personnel of other countries. Friedrich Ahlens, commander of the 537th regiment, was declared the main organizer of the execution. He also acted as a witness in the retaliatory accusation against the USSR. The Tribunal did not uphold the Soviet accusation, and the Katyn episode is missing from the Tribunal's verdict. All over the world, this was perceived as a "tacit admission" of the USSR of its guilt.

The preparation and course of the Nuremberg trials were accompanied by at least two events that compromised the USSR. On March 30, 1946, the Polish prosecutor Roman Martin died, who allegedly had documents proving the guilt of the NKVD. The Soviet prosecutor Nikolai Zorya also fell victim, who suddenly died right in Nuremberg in his hotel room. The day before, he told his immediate superior, Prosecutor General Gorshenin, that he had discovered inaccuracies in the Katyn documents, and that he could not speak with them. The next morning he "shot himself." There were rumors among the Soviet delegation that Stalin ordered "to bury him like a dog!".

After Gorbachev admitted the guilt of the USSR, Vladimir Abarinov, a researcher on the Katyn issue, in his work cites the following monologue by the daughter of an NKVD officer: “I'll tell you this. The order about the Polish officers came directly from Stalin. My father told me that he saw a genuine document with a Stalinist signature, what was he to do? Bring yourself under arrest? Or shoot yourself? Father was made a scapegoat for decisions made by others."

Party of Lavrenty Beria

Katyn massacre it is impossible to blame only one person. Nevertheless, the greatest role in this, according to archival documents, was played by Lavrenty Beria, “ right hand Stalin." Another daughter of the leader, Svetlana Alliluyeva, noted the extraordinary influence that this "scoundrel" had on her father. In her memoirs, she said that one word from Beria and a couple of forged documents was enough to determine the fate of future victims. The Katyn massacre was no exception. March, 3rd People's Commissar Internal Affairs Beria invited Stalin to consider the cases of Polish officers "in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." Reason: They are all sworn enemies Soviet power, full of hatred for the Soviet system. Two days later, the Politburo issued a resolution on the transfer of prisoners of war and the preparation of execution.

There is a theory about the forgery of Beria's Notes. Linguistic analyzes give different results, the official version does not deny the involvement of Beria. However, statements about the forgery of the “note” are still being announced.

Deceived hopes

At the beginning of 1940 in Soviet camps the most optimistic moods hovered among the Polish prisoners of war. Kozelsky, Yukhnovsky camps were no exception. The convoy treated foreign prisoners of war somewhat softer than its own fellow citizens. It was announced that the prisoners would be handed over neutral countries. AT worst case, the Poles believed, they would be given to the Germans. Meanwhile, NKVD officers arrived from Moscow and set to work.

Before being sent to prisoners who sincerely believe that they are being sent to safe place, were vaccinated against typhoid and cholera, presumably to calm them down. Everyone received a dry ration. But in Smolensk, everyone was ordered to prepare for the exit: “From 12 o’clock we have been standing in Smolensk on a siding. April 9 getting up in prison cars and getting ready to leave. We are transported somewhere in cars, what's next? Transportation in the boxes "crow" (scary). We were brought somewhere in the forest, it seems like summer cottage…", - This last record in the diary of Major Solsky, who is resting today in the Katyn forest. The diary was found during the exhumation.

The reverse side of recognition

On February 22, 1990, the head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, V. Falin, informed Gorbachev about new archival documents found that confirm the guilt of the NKVD in the Katyn massacre. Falin suggested urgently forming a new position of the Soviet leadership in relation to this matter and informing the President of the Polish Republic Vladimir Jaruzelsky about new discoveries in the terrible tragedy.

On April 13, 1990, TASS published an official statement admitting the guilt of the Soviet Union in the Katyn tragedy. Jaruzelsky received from Mikhail Gorbachev lists of prisoners to be transported from three camps: Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk. The main military prosecutor's office opened a case on the fact of the Katyn tragedy. The question arose of what to do with the surviving participants in the Katyn tragedy.

Here is what Valentin Alekseevich Aleksandrov, a senior official of the Central Committee of the CPSU, said to Nicholas Bethell: “We do not rule out the possibility of a judicial investigation or even a trial. But you must understand that the Soviet public opinion does not fully support Gorbachev's policy towards Katyn. We in the Central Committee have received many letters from organizations of veterans in which we are asked why we defame the names of those who only did their duty towards the enemies of socialism. As a result, the investigation against those found guilty was terminated due to their death or lack of evidence.

unresolved issue

The Katyn issue became the main stumbling block between Poland and Russia. When a new investigation into the Katyn tragedy began under Gorbachev, the Polish authorities hoped for an admission of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, total number which amounted to about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the question of the role of genocide in the Katyn tragedy. Nevertheless, following the results of the case in 2004, it was announced that the death of 1803 officers had been established, of which 22 were identified.

The genocide against the Poles was completely denied by the Soviet leadership. Prosecutor General Savenkov commented on this as follows: “during the preliminary investigation, on the initiative of the Polish side, the version of genocide was checked, and my firm statement is that there are no grounds to talk about this legal phenomenon.” The Polish government was dissatisfied with the results of the investigation. In March 2005, in response to a statement by the RF GVP, the Polish Sejm demanded that the Katyn events be recognized as an act of genocide. Deputies of the Polish parliament sent a resolution to the Russian authorities, in which they demanded that Russia "recognize the killing of Polish prisoners of war as genocide" based on Stalin's personal dislike for the Poles because of the defeat in the 1920 war. In 2006, the relatives of the deceased Polish officers filed a lawsuit with the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, in order to achieve recognition of Russia in the genocide. An end to this sore point for Russian-Polish relations has not yet been made.

What happened in Katyn
In the spring of 1940, in the forest near the village of Katyn, 18 km west of Smolensk, as well as in a number of prisons and camps throughout the country, they were shot for several weeks Soviet NKVD thousands of captured Polish citizens, mostly officers. The executions, the decision on which was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in March 1940, took place not only near Katyn, but the term "Katyn execution" is applied to them in general, since the executions in the Smolensk region became known first of all.

In total, according to data declassified in the 1990s, NKVD officers shot 21,857 Polish prisoners in April-May 1940. According to the Russian Main military prosecutor's office, published in 2004 in connection with the closure of the official investigation, the NKVD opened cases against 14,542 Poles, while the death of 1,803 people was documented.

The Poles executed in the spring of 1940 were captured or arrested a year earlier in the number (according to various sources) from 125 to 250 thousand Polish soldiers and civilians, which Soviet authorities after the occupation of the eastern territories of Poland in the fall of 1939, they were considered "unreliable" and moved to 8 specially created camps on the territory of the USSR. Most of them were soon either released to their homes, or sent to the Gulag or to a settlement in Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, or (in the case of residents western regions Poland) was transferred to Germany.

However, thousands 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 exposed counter-revolutionary insurgent organizations, defectors, etc.", the head of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, proposed to consider them "hardened, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power" and apply to them capital punishment - execution.

Polish prisoners were executed in many prisons throughout the USSR. According to the KGB of the USSR, 4,421 people were shot in the Katyn forest, 3,820 in the Starobelsky camp near Kharkov, 6,311 people in the Ostashkov camp (Kalinin, now Tver region), and 7 in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus 305 people.

Investigations
The name of the village near Smolensk became a symbol of the crimes of the Stalinist regime against the Poles also because it was from Katyn that the investigation of the executions began. The fact that the first evidence of the guilt of the NKVD was presented by the German field police in 1943 predetermined the attitude towards this investigation in the USSR. Moscow decided that it would be most plausible to lay the blame for the execution on the Nazis themselves, especially since the NKVD officers used Walthers and other weapons that fired German-made cartridges during the execution.

After the liberation of the Smolensk region by the Soviet troops, a special commission conducted an investigation, which established that the captured Poles were shot by the Germans in 1941. This version became official in the USSR and countries Warsaw Pact up until 1990. Accusations on Katyn Soviet side presented at the end of the war as part of the Nuremberg Trials, however hard evidence It was not possible to present the guilt of the Germans; as a result, this episode did not appear in the indictment.

Confessions and apologies
In April 1990, he came to Moscow on an official visit Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski. In connection with the discovery of new archival documents indirectly proving the guilt of the NKVD, the Soviet leadership decided to change its position and admit that the Poles were shot by officers of the Soviet state security. On April 13, 1990, TASS published a statement that, in part, read: "Identified archival materials Taken together, they allow us to conclude that Beria and Merkulov were directly responsible for the atrocities in the Katyn forest ( Vsevolod Merkulov, who in 1940 headed the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD) and their henchmen. The Soviet side, expressing deep regret in connection with the Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism.

Mikhail Gorbachev handed over to Jaruzelsky the lists of officers sent along the stage - in fact, to the place of execution, from the camps in Kozelsk. Ostashkov and Starobelsk, and the Soviet Prosecutor General's Office soon began an official investigation. In the early 1990s, during a visit to Warsaw, Russian President Boris Yeltsin apologized to the Poles. Representatives of the Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that they share the grief of the Polish people for those killed in Katyn.

In 2000, a memorial to the victims of repressions was opened in Katyn, a common one - not only for Poles, but also for Soviet citizens, whom the NKVD shot in the same Katyn forest.

At the end of 2004, the investigation opened in 1990 was terminated by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation on the basis of paragraph 4 of part 1 of Art. 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation - in connection with the death of suspects or accused. Moreover, out of 183 volumes of the case, 67 were handed over to the Polish side, since the remaining 116, according to the military prosecutor, contain state secret. Supreme Court RF in 2009.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in an article published in the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza on the eve of his working visit in August 2009: to rid Russian-Polish relations of the burden of distrust and prejudice that we inherited, to turn the page and start writing a new one."

According to Putin, "the people of Russia, whose fate was distorted by the totalitarian regime, are well aware of the heightened feelings of the Poles associated with Katyn, where thousands of Polish soldiers are buried." "We are obliged together to preserve the memory of the victims of this crime," the Russian prime minister urged. Chapter Russian government I am sure that the "Katyn" and "Mednoye" memorials, as well as tragic fate Russian soldiers taken into Polish captivity during the war of 1920 should become symbols of common sorrow and mutual forgiveness."

In February 2010, Vladimir Putin, his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk, will visit Katyn on April 7, where memorial events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre will be held. Tusk accepted the invitation, Lech Walesa, the first prime minister of post-communist Poland, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as well as family members of the victims of the NKVD executions, will come to Russia with him.

It is noteworthy that on the eve of the meeting of the prime ministers of Russia and Poland in Katyn channel "Russia Culture" showed a film that and .

Rehabilitation Requirements
Poland demands that the Poles executed in 1940 be recognized in Russia as victims of political repression. In addition, many there would like to hear from Russian officials an apology and recognition of the Katyn massacre as an act of genocide, and not a reference to the fact that current authorities are not responsible for the crimes of the Stalinist regime. The termination of the case, and especially the fact that the decision to terminate it, along with other documents, was classified as secret and was not made public, only added fuel to the fire.

After the decision of the GVP, Poland launched its own prosecutorial investigation " mass murder Polish citizens committed in the Soviet Union in March 1940. "The investigation is headed by Professor Leon Keres, head of the Institute of National Remembrance. The Poles still want to find out who ordered the execution, the names of the executioners, and also give a legal assessment of the acts of the Stalinist regime.

Relatives of some of the officers who died in the Katyn forest in 2008 appealed to the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation with a demand to consider the possibility of rehabilitating the executed. The GVP refused, and later the Khamovnichesky Court dismissed the complaint against her actions. Now the demands of the Poles are considering European Court on human rights.

Until now, there are many unclear and contradictory moments in the Katyn events, many inconsistencies that give rise to well-founded questions. But there are no clear and unambiguous answers to these questions.

However, so far the Katyn disputes have not led to anything. Opponents do not hear each other. Therefore, new versions are born. And there are new questions.

This article is about different versions Katyn tragedy, as well as questions that have no answer.

deep roots

The Katyn tragedy has a rich background. The roots of those events lie in the collapse Russian Empire in 1917 and in the subsequent division of her former territories.

Poland, which gained independence, wanted more - the restoration of the state within the historical borders of the Commonwealth of 1772 and the establishment of control over Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. But she wanted to control these territories and Soviet Russia.

Because of these contradictions, in 1919 the Soviet-Polish war, which ended in 1921 with the defeat of the Republic of Soviets. Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers ended up in Polish captivity, where many of them died in concentration camps. In March 1921, a peace treaty was signed in Riga, according to which Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.

The USSR was able to win back the situation with the borders in 18 years. In August 1939, Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Previously, similar documents were concluded between Nazi Germany and Poland, Great Britain, France, Romania and Japan. The Soviet Union was the last state in Europe to conclude such an agreement.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had an additional secret protocol, which dealt with the new possible borders of the USSR and Poland in the "case of territorial and political reorganization."

On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland from the west and north. the Soviet Union began fighting against Poland only on 17 September. By that time, the Polish army had been practically annihilated by the Germans. A few pockets of Polish resistance were also liquidated. Under the agreement, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were again returned to the Soviet Union. And on September 22, Germany and the USSR held a joint military parade in Brest-Litovsk.

AT Soviet captivity Thousands of Poles were caught, whom it was decided to send to several concentration camps for filtering and determining their future fate. So Polish prisoners of war ended up in the USSR. What happened to them next is still debated.

Two truths about Katyn

Historically, there are two main mutually exclusive versions in the case of the execution of Polish officers of war in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. Each of them has its own system of evidence, which opponents cannot ignore and cannot refute. Historians and ordinary citizens divided into two irreconcilable camps that have been arguing with each other to the point of hoarseness for more than 70 years. Each of the parties accuses opponents of juggling the facts and lying.

Katyn, Rosja, 04.1943

The first version was presented by the Nazi occupation authorities in April 1943. An international commission, consisting of 12 forensic doctors, mainly from countries occupied or allied with Germany, came to the conclusion that the Poles were shot even before the war (in March-April 1940) by the Soviet NKVD. This version was voiced personally by the Nazi Minister of Education and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

The second version was presented by the Soviet side after an investigation by a special commission in 1944, headed by surgeon Nikolai Burdenko. The commission came to the conclusion that the Soviet authorities in 1941 did not have time to evacuate the captured Polish officers due to the rapid advance of the Germans, so the Poles were captured by the Nazis, who shot them. The Soviet side presented this version in February 1946 at the Nuremberg Tribunal. This is the official version Soviet point vision for many years.

But everything changed in the spring of 1990, when Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the Katyn tragedy was "one of the grave crimes of Stalinism." Then it was stated that the death of Polish officers in Katyn was the work of the NKVD. Then, in 1992, this was confirmed by the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin.

So the version that the Polish prisoners of war were shot by the NKVD became the second official Russian state point of view on the Katyn tragedy. However, after that, the disputes around the Katyn tragedy did not subside, as there were obvious contradictions and inconsistencies, and there were no answers to many questions.

Third version

However, it is quite possible that the Poles were shot by the Soviet and German sides. Moreover, the executions of the Poles by the USSR and Germany could be carried out separately in different time, or together. And this, quite possibly, explains the existence of two mutually exclusive systems of evidence. Simply, each side was looking for evidence of their innocence. This is the so-called third version, which is followed in recent times some researchers.

There is nothing fantastic in this version. Historians have long known about the secret economic and military-technical cooperation between the USSR and Germany, which developed in the 20-30s and was approved by Lenin.

In August 1922, a cooperation pact was concluded between the Red Army and the German Reichswehr. The German side could create military bases on the territory of the Soviet Republic for testing newest species weapons and equipment prohibited Treaty of Versailles, as well as for the education and training of military specialists. Soviet Russia not only received monetary compensation for the use of these bases by Germany, but also received access to all new German military technologies and testing of weapons and equipment.

Thus, joint Soviet-German aviation and tank factories, joint schools for command personnel, joint ventures for the production of chemical weapons. There are constant trips of delegations for the exchange of experience, studies are organized at the academies of German and Soviet officers, undergo joint field exercises and maneuvers, conduct various chemical experiments and much more.

Germanic military leadership passed an academic internship in Moscow even after Hitler came to power in 1933. Soviet command staff He also studied at German military academies and schools.

AT Western historiography there is an opinion that in August 1939, in addition to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, an agreement was also signed between the NKVD and the Gestapo. In our country, this document is considered a fake. But foreign researchers are sure that such an agreement between the Soviet and German special services actually existed, and that this document was signed by Lavrenty Beria and Heinrich Muller. And it was within the framework of this cooperation that the NKVD handed over to the Gestapo the German communists who were in Soviet prisons and camps. In addition, it is known that the NKVD and the Gestapo held several conferences together in Krakow and Zakopane in 1939-1940.

So the Soviet and German secret services could well carry out joint secret actions. It is also known about the punitive "action AB", which was carried out by the Nazis against the Polish intelligentsia at the same time. Perhaps similar joint Soviet-German actions took place in Katyn? There is no answer to this question.

Another oddity: German side for some reason, he does not participate in the disputes about Katyn at all. The Germans keep silent, although it is they who could have stopped all the Polish-Russian Katyn disputes long ago. But they don't. Why? There is no answer to this question either...

"Special Folder"

As already mentioned, in the spring of 1990, the first and only president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, admitted that the Katyn tragedy was “one of the grave crimes of Stalinism,” and that the death of Polish officers in Katyn was the work of the NKVD. Then, in 1992, this was confirmed by the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. Both presidents made such serious conclusions based on the so-called "Package No. 1", which was kept in the archives of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU and contained at that time only three (!) indirect documents about the Katyn massacre. Until now, there are many questions about the contents of this “Special Folder”.

One of the documents in the folder is a handwritten memorandum to N. S. Khrushchev, which was written in 1959 by the chairman of the KGB of the USSR A. N. Shelepin. He offered to destroy the personal files of Polish officers and other documents. The note stated: “The entire operation to eliminate these persons was carried out on the basis of the Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU of March 5, 1940. All of them were sentenced to capital punishment in accounting cases ... All these cases are of neither operational interest nor historical value.”

The researchers have several questions to Shelepin's note.

Why was it handwritten? Didn't the KGB chairman have a typewriter? Why did she write in cursive? To hide the real handwriting of the writer, because Shelepin's usual handwriting is known? Why does Shelepin write about the Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU of March 5, 1940? Didn't the chairman of the KGB know that in 1940 there was no CPSU yet? All these unanswered questions...

In 2009, at the initiative of independent researcher Sergei Strygin, the leading expert of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Eduard Molokov, examined the typeface used in Beria's note to Stalin from the Special Folder. This note is still the main evidence in the case of the execution of Polish officers.

The examination revealed that three pages of Beria's note were printed on one typewriter, and the last page to another. Moreover, "the font of the first three pages is not found in any of the authentic letters of the NKVD of that period identified so far." A suspicion arose: is Beria's note genuine? There is no answer to this question.

Doubted the authenticity of the documents from the "Special folder" and State Duma deputy Viktor Ilyukhin. Previously, he was an investigator and criminologist, senior assistant Attorney General THE USSR.

In 2010, Ilyukhin made a sensational statement that the documents from the Special Folder were a well-made fake. One of the manufacturers of these forgeries personally told Ilyukhin about his participation in the 1990s in a group of specialists in forging documents from the party archives.

“In the early 90s of the last century, a group of high-ranking specialists was created to forge archival documents relating to important events of the Soviet period. This group worked in the structure of the security service Russian President B. Yeltsin,” Ilyukhin argued based on the story former employee KGB.

For obvious reasons, an unnamed witness showed Ilyukhin blank forms VKP (b), NKVD of the USSR and People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR, others party and Soviet organizations Stalin period, a lot of forged seals, stamps and facsimiles, as well as some archival files marked "Top Secret". With the help of these materials it was possible to concoct any documents with the "signatures" of Stalin and Beria.

The witness also presented Ilyukhin with several fakes of the main document of the “Special Folder” - a note by L.P. Beria to the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated March 5, 1940, in which it was proposed to shoot more than 20 thousand Polish prisoners of war.

Naturally, Ilyukhin wrote several letters and inquiries about these facts, where he asked many questions. Known for his letters Prosecutor General's Office Russian Federation, then President of the Russian Federation D. A. Medvedev, then Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation B. V. Gryzlov. But, alas, there was no response to all his appeals.

After Ilyukhin's death in 2011, documents about the falsification of the Katyn case disappeared from his safe. Therefore, all his questions remained unanswered ...

Professor Gaek's evidence

Valuable evidence about the Katyn case is also contained in some pamphlets and books published immediately after the war.

F. Gaek

For example, the report of the Czechoslovak professor of forensic medicine Frantisek Gaek, who, as part of an international commission created by the Nazis, personally participated in the examination of corpses in the Katyn forest in the spring of 1943, is known. His professional analysis of the German exhumations was called The Katyn Evidence and was published in Prague in 1945.

Here is what the Czech professor Gaek wrote in this report: “All the corpses we examined had gunshot wounds in the back of the head, only one had a gunshot wound in the forehead. The shots were fired from a short distance with a short-barreled firearms caliber 7.65. The hands of a significant number of corpses were tied behind their backs with twine (which was not produced in the USSR at that time - D.T.) ... It is very important and interesting that Polish officers were executed with German-made cartridges ...

Among the 4,143 corpses of executed officers, there were also 221 corpses of executed civilians. The official German report is silent about these corpses and does not even decide whether they were Russians or Poles.

The condition of the corpses indicates that they were there (in the ground - D.T.) for several months, or, taking into account the lower oxygen content from the air and the sluggish oxidation process, that they lay there for at most 1.5 years. An analysis of clothing, its metal parts and cigarettes also speaks against the fact that corpses could lie in the ground for 3 years ...

No insects or their transitional forms, such as testicles, larvae, pupae, or even any of their remains, were found either in corpses, or in clothes or in graves. The lack of transitional forms of insects occurs when the corpse is buried during the absence of insects, i.e. from late autumn to early spring, and when relatively little time passed from burial to exhumation. This circumstance also suggests that the corpses were buried around the fall of 1941.

And again questions arise. Is this a genuine report by Professor Hajek or is it a fake? If the report is real, then why are its conclusions ignored? There are no answers to these questions...

Dead but alive

Interesting information about Katyn is given in the book "Strong in Spirit", which was written in 1952 by the commander of the partisan detachment, Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitry Medvedev. In the book, he talks about a Polish lancer who came to join their partisan detachment. For some reason, the Pole introduced himself to the partisans as Anton Gorbovsky. But his real name was Gorby. At the same time, Gorbik-Gorbovsky claimed that the Germans brought all his comrades to Katyn and shot him there.

It is established that Anton Yanovich Gorbik was born in 1913. Lived and worked in the city of Bialystok. In 1939, Gorbik-Gorbovsky ended up in the Kozelsky camp for Polish prisoners, and met the war in a camp near Smolensk, where the Germans captured the Poles. The Nazis offered the captured Poles to take an oath to Hitler and fight on the side of Germany. Most of the Poles refused to do so, and then the Germans decided to shoot them.

They were taken out for execution at night, and Gorbik, taking advantage of the fact that the headlights of the car were directed to the ditch where the corpses fell, climbed a tree and thereby escaped death. Then he moved to the Soviet partisans.

Later it turned out that Anton Yanovich Gorbik in 1942-1944 commanded the national Polish partisan detachment, stationed in the Rivne region and part of the partisan association under the command of the Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitry Medvedev. After the liberation of the Rivne region by parts of the Red Army, Anton Gorbik was interned by the Soviet authorities, and in 1944-1945 he was tested in the Ostashkovsky NKVD USSR NKVD Check-Filtration Camp No. 41. In 1945, Gorbik was repatriated and returned to Poland.

Meanwhile, a memorial tablet in Katyn memorial complex claims that the Polish lieutenant Anton Gorbik was shot in Katyn in 1940.

By the way, in post-war Poland there were more than a dozen people like Gorbik, who were allegedly “shot in Katyn”. But, for obvious reasons, no one remembers them. Similar stories there is also in Medny near Tver. That is, there are errors in the Katyn execution lists? How many more such "living corpses" are buried in Katyn? There are no answers to these questions...

Testimony of a former cadet

The rapid offensive of the German troops in the summer of 1941 gave rise to panic not only among our troops, but also among the party and Soviet bureaucracy, which, having abandoned all their papers, was in a hurry to evacuate. Then in Smolensk, library and archival funds, museum relics and even the regional party archive were simply forgotten. There is also evidence that the captured Poles were also forgotten. The Red Army quickly retreated, and there was no time for Polish prisoners of war.

From a letter to the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, retired colonel Ilya Ivanovich Krivoi, October 26, 2004:

"In 1939 I was recalled from the Kyiv industrial institute district military registration and enlistment office and sent to study in Smolensk at the Smolensk rifle and machine gun school being formed there. This school was formed on the basis of tank brigade, which has gone to western border THE USSR. The military camp of the tank brigade was located on western outskirts the city of Smolensk near Shklyana Gora on Moprovskaya street.

The first time I saw Polish prisoners of war at the beginning of the summer of 1940, then in 1941 I personally saw Polish prisoners several times at the earthworks to repair the Vitebsk highway. Last time I saw them literally on the eve of the Great Patriotic War on June 15-16, 1941, during the transportation of Polish prisoners of war by car along the Vitebsk highway from Smolensk in the direction of Gnezdovo.

The evacuation of the school began on July 4-5, 1941. Before loading onto the train, the commander of our training company, Captain Safonov, went to the office of the military commandant of the Smolensk station. Arriving from there already in the dark, Captain Safonov told the cadets of our company (including me) that in the office of the military commandant of the station, he (Safonov) personally saw a man in the form of a lieutenant of state security who asked the commandant for an echelon to evacuate captured Poles from the camp, but the commandant did not give him the wagons.

Safonov told us about the refusal of the commandant to provide wagons for the evacuation of the Poles, apparently in order to once again emphasize the critical situation in the city. In addition to me, this story was also attended by the platoon commander Chibisov, the platoon commander Katerinich, the commander of my squad Dementyev, the commander of the neighboring squad Fedorovich Vasily Stakhovich (a former teacher from the village of Studen), cadet Vlasenko, cadet Dyadyun Ivan, and three or four more cadets.

Later, in conversations among themselves, the cadets said that in the place of the commandant they would have done exactly the same, and would also have evacuated their compatriots first of all, and not Polish prisoners.

Therefore, I assert that the Polish prisoners of war officers were still alive on June 22, 1941, contrary to the assertion of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation that they were all allegedly shot in the Katyn forest by the NKVD of the USSR in April-May 1940.

Why is this testimony of a former military man not taken into account? There is no answer to this question.

Poles, Jews and Hitler's Bunker

There is another interesting piece of evidence related to the executed Poles, Jews and Hitler's bunker, which was built by the Nazis near Katyn and Kozy Gory.

Smolensk local historian and researcher Iosif Tsynman wrote the following in his book “In Memory of the Victims of the Katyn Forest”:

“During the war in Smolensk, more than 2 thousand Jews, prisoners Warsaw ghetto, and about 200 Jews from the Smolensk ghetto built concrete overground and underground bunkers. Poles of Jewish origin and Jewish prisoners lived in Gnezdovo and in Krasny Bor, where the Headquarters of the commanders-in-chief of the Soviet, and then the German troops, were located.

All prisoners wore Polish military uniforms. Since the nationality was not written on the faces of the prisoners, the Smolensk people at that time believed that they were Polish officers who, under the leadership of the Germans, were building a Nazi bunker and other military installations in Krasny Bor, Gnezdovo and other places. The construction sites were secret. After the construction was completed, all the prisoners, together with the Ukrainian, Polish and Czech guards, were shot by the Germans in Kozy Gory.

It turns out that the Germans shot Jews dressed in Polish uniforms? But then whose corpses were exhumed in the spring of 1943 by the Nazis? Polish or Jewish? There are no answers to these questions.

However, other researchers put forward the version that after the construction of Hitler's bunker, Polish officers were still shot.

In the fall of 1941, the construction of a huge secret underground complex began in Krasny Bor, to which the Germans gave the name "Berenhale" - "Bear's Lair". Its dimensions and even its location are still unknown. Hitler's bunker near Smolensk is one of mysterious riddles World War II, which for some reason is not in a hurry to unravel.

According to scattered reports, the bunker was built by Soviet and Polish prisoners of war from concentration camps located on the outskirts of Smolensk. They were later shot in Kozy Gory, another version claims.

Why is this version not being researched? Why is Hitler's Smolensk bunker not being explored? Is there a connection between the construction of the bunker and the execution of the Poles in Katyn? There are no answers to these questions...

GRAVE #9

On March 31, 2000, in Kozy Gory, near the Katyn Memorial, workers were digging a trench for a cable to the building of a transformer substation with an excavator and accidentally hooked on the edge of a burial site that was not previously known. On the edge of the grave, the remains of nine people in Polish military uniforms were found and removed.

How many corpses were there in total is unknown, but, apparently, the burial is large. The workers claimed that spent cartridge cases from Belgian-made pistol cartridges were found in the grave, as well as the Pravda newspaper for 1939. This burial was called "Grave No. 9".

After that they were invited law enforcement. A pre-investigation check by the prosecutor's office began, as a mass grave of people with signs of violent death was discovered. Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, a criminal case was not initiated. Then "grave No. 9" was covered with a large layer of sand, asphalted and fenced with barbed wire. Although earlier the wife of the then President of Poland, Jolanta Kwasniewska, laid flowers at her.

Some researchers believe that "grave No. 9" is the key to unraveling the Katyn tragedy. Why has this burial not been explored for 15 years? Why was “grave No. 9” filled in and paved with asphalt? There is no answer to these questions.

Instead of an epilogue

Unfortunately, the attitude towards the Katyn massacre is still determined not by facts, but by political predilections. Until now, there has not been a single truly independent examination. All studies were conducted by interested parties.

For some reason, decisions on this crime are made by politicians and authorities state power, and not investigators, not criminologists, not historians and not scientific experts. Therefore, it seems that the truth will be established only by the next generations of Russian and Polish researchers, who will be free from modern political bias. Katyn is waiting for objectivity.

So far, one thing is clear - it is still too early to put an end to the Katyn case ...

The place was not chosen by chance, there is fertile sandy soil, which means that it will not be so difficult for soldiers to bury corpses in the ground. However, the graves were not always dug by soldiers, sometimes they were dug by the condemned themselves, realizing the doom of their situation. Now there is a forest here, but earlier there were almost no trees during the executions, pines were planted only later, so that they would tear and destroy the remains of the bodies with their roots in the ground.

The burial itself is divided into 2 parts: Polish and Russian. The Polish memorial was made by designers on a special project. At the entrance he meets a small wagon, it was in such short railway wagons that people went to exile. 30 or even 50 people were placed in this car for shipment.

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At both ends of the car there were three tiers of bunks, and in the middle there was a stove for heating. In summer, instead of a toilet for prisoners, there was just a hole in the floor, and in winter, an ordinary bucket, which was poured either at the stations, or directly “overboard”, having previously broken the boards in the back of the car.

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The prisoners were fed mainly with herring, because it was very salty and did not rot. In fact, this was one salt, from which one really wanted to drink, and water was practically not given to the repressed.

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In a confined space, people got sick, fought each other for the best places, and even killed each other. The corpses were filmed only at stops, and often people traveled for several hours in the car next to the corpses. This is despite the fact that the windows were not in every such car. This car is now a gift to the Katyn memorial from the Moscow Railway.
After entering the territory of the complex, the road "forks" to the right - the Polish military cemetery, and to the left - the Soviet one.

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Memorial stone at the entrance.

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A little history of the execution of the Poles in Katyn. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany entered the territory of Poland; on September 17, 1939, the Red Army also entered Polish lands "in order to protect the rights of the Ukrainian and Belarusian population." Germany was then at war with Poland, and the USSR did not officially declare war on the Poles. According to the secret "non-aggression pact", the USSR was to keep the Polish army on its territory until the war between Germany and Poland ended.
However, in the USSR, internment performed its function poorly and released most of the ordinary soldiers after disarmament, but mostly Polish officers remained in captivity.
It should also be noted that in November 1939 the Polish government in exile officially declared war on the USSR. The reason for this was the transfer of the city of Vilnius to Lithuania. In this regard, the status of Polish officers who were on the territory of the USSR was changed: they turned from internees into prisoners of war. However, letters from them to relatives continued to arrive regularly until the spring of 1940. Of certain importance is the fact that, according to the Geneva Convention, it was forbidden to force prisoners of war to work. And this condition was met.
On March 31, 1940, Polish prisoners of war began to be taken out of the camps in batches of 200-300 people. But where were they taken? Opinions on this issue differ.

Plan of the Polish cemetery.

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As in any mystery, there are several versions of what happened next. According to the German version, on March 5, 1940, Lavrenty Beria wrote a letter to Stalin, in which he proposed "to consider the cases of former Polish officers arrested in the amount of 11,000 in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." On the same day, the note was signed by I. V. Stalin, comrades Kalinin, Kaganovich, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, and approved by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the VKB (b).

The prisoners were taken to the city of Kalinin, to Kharkov, to the Katyn forest. In Kalinin, they were shot in the buildings of the NKVD and buried in a cemetery near the village of Mednoe. In Kharkov, executions were also carried out in the basements of the regional department of the NKVD.

At the entrance to the Polish part there are copies of the Polish border pillars of 1939 and an inscription in Polish Polish military cemetery Katyn.

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So, according to the German version, the prisoners were put into prison cars and taken to the Gnezdovo station, located west of Smolensk. In the cellars of this station, immediately after the arrival of the train, they shot Polish generals.
The rest of the prisoners at the station were transferred to buses with closed windows and taken to the rest house of the NKVD in the forest. The time was calculated in such a way that they would arrive there in the evening.

At the dacha they were searched, confiscated piercing and cutting objects, watches and locked in the cells located in the building. Then, one by one, they were taken to a room where an NKVD officer sat and checked the full name and year of birth of the convict. After that, the officer was led to a basement with walls lined with soundproofing material. The executioner took a German pistol "Walter" and fired a shot in the back of the head. The corpse was taken out into the street and thrown into the back of a truck. The executions lasted all night, during which time 200-300 corpses were recruited in the back. In the morning they were taken to the Katyn forest, dumped into the already dug graves.

Most honorary order the Poles have Militari Virtuti or the Order of Military Valor.

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Often the NKVD officers changed tactics and, having completed the search of prisoners of war at the NKVD dacha, took them to the previously excavated graves. They were taken out of the bus one by one, their hands were tied with German paper twine, and they were led to the moat. The executioner fired a shot in the back of the head again from the same "Walter". Sometimes prisoners, those who panicked, pulled up their uniforms and covered their faces with them, tightened a noose around their neck, tying their hands with the other end of the twine. In some cases, the space between the face and clothes was filled with sawdust in order to deliver the greatest torment to the doomed. Actively resisting prisoners were stabbed with a bayonet. Leading to the moat, they shot in the back of the head in the same way.

This cross shows the dates symbolic for Poland in 1939. On September 1, Nazi troops entered its territory, and on September 17, the Red Army.

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The fact that the prisoners were shot from German weapons, is considered one of the evidence of the guilt of the Germans in the tragedy. But supporters of the German version answer them that Walther pistols were imported from Germany by the Soviet Union before the war, and until 1933 German 7.65 caliber bullets were also imported. However, the fact of the discovery in the graves of German paper twine, which was not imported and was not produced on the territory of the USSR, has not yet found an explanation within the framework of German theory. In addition, photographs of 7.65 caliber bullet casings taken by the Germans show rust. According to A. Wasserman, this indicates that they are made of steel. The brass bullets imported before 1933 could not rust. But steel bullets of this caliber in Germany began to be produced only at the beginning of 1941!

On the territory of the Polish cemetery there are 8 execution pits, these are the places where the bodies of the executed Poles were massively buried. The largest pit was the first, about 2000 bodies were buried in it. They buried them like this: bodies, a layer of lime, again bodies, again a layer of lime, and so on until the hole is completely filled. Lime was needed for the speedy decomposition of corpses. Now all the bodies of those killed from the execution pits have been exhumed, and the contours of the pits are now lined with cast-iron slabs.

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During April-May 1940, all the prisoners were destroyed in this way. This crime remained unknown until April 13, 1943, when the Germans announced that they had discovered Katyn graves in the occupied Soviet territory, in which Polish officers who were shot by the NKVD of the USSR in the spring of 1940 were buried.
To study the circumstances of the tragedy, the Germans formed an "international" commission of representatives of the allied countries of Germany and the states occupied by it.

On April 28, 1943, she began work, and completed it on April 30. The final document states that, based on the documents found in the graves, it can be concluded that executions were carried out in the spring of 1940. We are talking about all kinds of notes, newspapers, diaries, among which the German commission did not find those dated later than the spring of 1940.

The main color of the Polish memorial is rust, which, according to the designers, is the color of gore. Below the bell - if you shake it, the ringing comes as if "from under the ground."

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Starting from May 1943, the excavations were stopped. By this time, 4143 bodies from 7 graves had been exhumed, while 4 more remained unopened, more than half of the corpses were identified from the documents found. In September 1943, the Red Army liberated Smolensk. Retreating, the Germans destroyed or took material evidence with them. In January 1944, a commission began to work under the leadership of the doctor Burdenko, which, according to supporters of the German version, was instructed to prove at all costs the guilt of the Germans in the execution of the Poles in Katyn.

Separate graves of Polish generals Smoravinsky and Bogatyrevich. The granddaughter of General Smoravinsky in 2010 was on the ill-fated plane that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

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The Commission of the Soviets unearthed the remaining 4 graves, removed 925 bodies from the ground. Documents dated later than the spring of 1940, including those dated 1941, were found in the clothes of the dead. Supporters of the German version believe that all these papers are falsified. In addition, in the final report of the commission, errors were found in the spelling of the names and initials of the German soldiers and witnesses accused of the execution, incorrect indication military ranks suspects. All this, according to supporters of the German version, only indicates that the Burdenko commission was fulfilling a political order. Soviet leadership and did not conduct non-biased studies.

One way or another, the conclusion of the commission became official version The USSR on the issue of Katyn and remained so until perestroika. He remained until M. Gorbachev questioned him, stating in 1990 that “documents were found that indirectly but convincingly indicate that thousands of Polish citizens who died in the Smolensk forests exactly half a century ago became victims of Beria and his henchmen.

Now Polish officers are buried in such mass grave only a hundred meters from the execution sites. All the graves are fraternal and Russia now does not allow the transportation of bodies to the territory of Poland. An exception was made only for the only woman shot in Katyn - the pilot Antonina Levandovskaya.

Speaking about the motives for committing a crime, opponents of the Soviet version do not come to a common opinion. Some believe that the execution of the Poles is a continuation of the Stalinist policy of repression, therefore it is impossible to give an unambiguous answer to this question, because the murders of "millions of innocent citizens" are also inexplicable. That is, repression for the sake of repression. Other adherents believe that the execution was carried out out of revenge for the murder of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers who were captured by the Poles in 1920.

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Thus, from the point of view of the supporters of the German version, the point in the Katyn case has been put, the guilt of the NKVD of the USSR has been unambiguously proven.

The Poles listed all those killed by name. Everyone has their own memorial plaque, where relatives come and honor the memory, put flags, stick photos.

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Pilot Antonina Lewandowska is already buried in Warsaw, but nevertheless, a memorial plaque about her remains.

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Commemorative plaques were made at the level of graves, i.e. visitors walk from below, and from above, as it were, a decorative layer of soil.

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This story also has a Soviet version. What is true has not yet been fully clarified. As a rule, most people visiting the memorial hear 2 versions from the guides, and they accept one or the other, depending, for example, on their personal attitude to the Stalin regime. But it is better to build your own opinion, without personal emotions, because. the Soviet version also has a sufficient number of facts.

According to it, in late February or early March, the leadership of the USSR decided to send the cases of Polish officers prisoners of war for consideration to the Special Conference of the NKVD, which sentenced the prisoners to imprisonment for terms of 3 to 8 years in labor camps for special purposes. It should be noted that forcing prisoners of war officers to work is a violation of the Geneva Convention, so all this took place in secrecy. Captured Poles were taken to camps near Smolensk for the construction of roads between Smolensk and Minsk.

The Poles who were shot in Katyn were delivered to the Gnezdovo station by rail, where they were loaded into covered buses and taken to the NKVD dacha.

There is also a "valley of death" in the Katyn memorial. This is a cemetery of Soviet people - “enemies of the people” and other “counter-revolutionary scum” (Previously, this word could often be found in quite official documents, because the level of education among “ people's commissars"left much to be desired) the innocent murdered by the "communists". A cemetery without graves, just land on which excavations were not carried out, and the corpses were not exhumed. It is located behind such a small gate.

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Here, people simply put crosses anywhere, knowing that their relative was shot here, but no one knows exactly where the body is in the ground.

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But back to Soviet version shooting of the Poles. In special purpose camps, more than strict regime, in particular, prohibiting correspondence with relatives. This, according to supporters of the Soviet version, can explain why letters from Polish officers stopped reaching Poland. In August 1941 Smolensk was surrendered fascist invaders, the Poles did not want to retreat with the Red Army, but hoped to return to their homeland with the arrival of the Germans, and thus the Poles fell into the hands of the Nazis. First, the Poles worked for the Germans, and then they shot them.

Execution technology - tying hands with German twine (this recognized fact, but the question is why the NKVD needed to use exactly the German twine, instead of the Russian rope. The German version explains this by “compromising” the Germans, but in 1940 Germany had not yet violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and had not declared war on Russia. Then the NKVD had to predict a future war with Germany, the capture of Smolensk by the Germans and their discovery of the Katyn burials ... ..), a shot in the back of the head directly at the dug ditch, sometimes with the uniform pulled up, throwing a noose around the neck, using sawdust, inflicting wounds with a bayonet. Neither before nor after the assassination were Polish officers searched.

The Russian cemetery in Katyn is less equipped than the Polish one, and the memorial here is still only in the project. Here, only bulk wooden floorings have been made - paths along which visitors walk, and under them there may still be unexhumed burials.

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Memorial at the Russian cemetery - the fence was made according to the designers' idea in such a way that its borders could be expanded. It seems to symbolize the infinity of these crimes.

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Orthodox cross at the Russian cemetery.

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After the Red Army liberated Smolensk, a commission led by physician Nikolai Burdenko began to investigate the Katyn murders. According to the Soviet version, graves untouched by the Nazis were excavated in Katyn, where documents dated later than the spring of 1940 were found.

The result of the work of the Burdenko commission was a document that blames the German occupiers for the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. The Germans, in 1943, attracted an entire international commission for the exhumation of bodies, one of the participants of which, the Czech Frantchisek Gaek, later wrote a whole article “Katyn Evidence”, where he refers to the fact that the state of the corpses, things of the dead speaks of more late period execution, i.e. not about the spring of 1940, but about the fall of 1941 or even later.

Now the main document for the recognition of the German version of the tragedy is Beria's note to Stalin.

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There, too, the Soviet version cites many inaccuracies, for example, the phrase "the NKVD of the USSR considers it necessary to propose the NKVD of the USSR", the absence of Kalinin and Kaganovich's signatures, and a host of other inconsistencies.

Speaking about the motives for the crime, supporters of the Soviet version believe that the Germans shot Polish officers due to the fact that peace was concluded between the USSR and the Polish government in exile in August 1941, and the Polish army of General Anders began to be formed in concert from among the amnestied Polish prisoners of war (amnestied all Polish citizens who were on the territory of the USSR).

Accordingly, Polish prisoners of war who fell into the hands of the Nazis could escape and take part in the war against Nazi Germany.

At the exit from the memorial there are 2 small expositions. The first of them is a museum of the political history of Russia. It is small, but some of the exhibits are quite interesting.

These are real drawings of Soviet children who, instead of the sun, the sea or the apple tree, painted portraits of tyrants, God save all subsequent generations of children from this.

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An excerpt from the Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper, you read and see how much "propaganda garbage" you pushed Soviet propaganda into the heads of teenagers using the press.

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The words "scoundrel" and "scum" were quite often used in the official Soviet press, because it was necessary to clearly form an opinion among the masses - white or black and without any shades of gray. A to negative characters propaganda also shaped hatred, in the next clipping of the entire paragraph of the text and for “counter-revolutionary agitation” - the meaning of the phrase is difficult to understand, the workers are already demanding to SHOT PEOPLE.

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The only thing left for the wives was to write letters to Comrade Stalin, which hardly any of the top leadership read at all.

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And here, in general, everything is simple and clear without further ado - after all, "brevity is the sister of talent."

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And this is the Seliger forum of that time.

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The second museum is also small, it presents some things of the Poles that were not taken to Warsaw to the Katyn Museum. Personal belongings - on the right are tongs, with which the captives pulled out their teeth.

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Military uniform of Polish officers of that time.

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Now, next to the memorial, a chapel has been built in memory of the people who found their death here.

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You can argue for a long time and give a bunch of facts about who is to blame for this tragedy. The only thing that is certain is that both Stalin and Hitler could have done it. The latter was ruthless and guilty of a heap of deaths of innocent civilian Jews, Russians, Poles and others, while the former even destroyed his own people in exiles and camps. Pro German version Polish director Andrzej Wajda shot the film "Katyn" in 2007, it is generally not bad, although it smacks of propaganda, and of course not such an obvious propaganda din as the Russian "August 8" about the events in Georgia in 2008.

The following facts seem very strange to me personally: 1). The murder of Poles with German weapons (why would the NKVDists not use regular Nagans, and in general it is unlikely that the NKVD officers were armed with German "Walters"). 2). Why use a German tourniquet for the same reason. 3). If the Russians wanted to hide the truth like that, then why shoot officers in clothes, it would be more logical to do it in underwear and without documents, then it would be much easier to hide it.

Well, it's unlikely that anyone will ever know the truth. After all, this is the difference between “real truth” and “political” truth. "Political truth" is always written to please the interests of the current government. Well, everyone draws conclusions for himself.

No trial or investigation

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

On March 3, 1940, in a note to Stalin, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria wrote that the camps on Polish territory contained 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 open 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 the Soviet government” and suggested: “The cases of prisoners of war in the camps - 14,700 people of former Polish officers, officials, landowners, policemen, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siegemen and jailers, as well as cases of those arrested and in prison western regions of Ukraine and Belarus in the amount of 11,000 members of various spyware and sabotage organizations, former landowners, manufacturers, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special order, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution. Already on March 5, the Politburo made a corresponding decision.

Execution

By the beginning of April, everything was ready for the extermination of prisoners of war: prisons were liberated, graves were dug. The condemned were taken out for execution by 300-400 people. In Kalinin and Kharkov, prisoners were shot in prisons. In Katyn, especially dangerous people were tied up, they threw a greatcoat over their heads, led them to the moat and shot them in the back of the head.

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

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

German investigation

The events of 1940 have been investigated several times. The first to investigate were German troops 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 dead had fragments of newspapers dated April-May 1940 in their pockets. It was not difficult to identify many of the executed prisoners: some of them had 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 by German bullets, but they were supplied in large quantities to the Baltic states and the Soviet Union. Local residents also confirmed that trainloads of captured Polish officers were unloaded at a nearby station and never seen again. One of the members of the Polish commission in Katyn, Józef Matskevich, described in several books how it was no secret to any of the locals that the Bolsheviks shot Poles here.

Soviet investigation

In the autumn of 1943, another commission operated in the Smolensk region, this time a Soviet one. Her report states that there were in fact three prisoner-of-war camps in Poland. The Polish population was employed in the construction of roads. In 1941, the prisoners did not have time to evacuate, and the camps passed under German leadership which authorized the executions. According to the members of the Soviet commission, in 1943 the Germans dug up the graves, confiscated all newspapers and documents pointing to more late dates than the spring of 1940, and the locals were forced to testify. The famous “Burdenko Commission” was largely based on the data of this report.

The crime of the Stalinist regime

In 1990, the USSR officially admitted its guilt for the Katyn massacre.

In April 1990, the USSR pleaded guilty to the Katyn massacre. One of the main arguments was the discovery of documents that indicated that the Polish prisoners were transferred by order of the NKVD and were no longer listed in the 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 Kozelsk camp. It is interesting that the order of the lists for stages coincided with the order of those lying in the graves, according to 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 consider the results of the German investigation as an attempt to distort the role of Stalin in world history.