Issues of cultural studies and history

THE ALLEGED MYSTERY OF THE REASONS FOR THE EXECUTION OF POLISH OFFICERS IN KATYN IN MARCH 19401

I. I. Kaliganov

I was prompted to take up this topic by a TV show about the Katyn tragedy with the participation of such famous personalities, like academician A. O. Chubaryan, film director N. S. Mikhalkov, political scientist V. M. Tretyakov and others. During the conversation between them, N. S. Mikhalkov’s question was asked about the motives for the execution of Polish officers - a question that remained unanswered. Indeed, why was it necessary to destroy the Polish command staff just on the eve of the war with the Germans? Does this look reasonable if just a little more than a year after the Katyn tragedy in the USSR, entire divisions began to be created from Polish prisoners of war to fight the Nazi invaders? Why was it necessary to commit such an atrocity in the complete absence of visible reasonable reasons? According to the interlocutors of the program, there is a certain mystery in this... But, in our opinion, there was nothing mysterious here. Everything becomes immediately clear if you briefly immerse yourself in the events of those years and the political atmosphere of that time, if you analyze the ideology of the totalitarian Bolshevik state of the 20s - mid-50s of the XX century.

The topic of Katyn is not new to me: in what I read to students of the State Academy Slavic culture(GASK) course of lectures “Introduction to Slavic Studies” includes a section “Painful points of relations between the Slavs”, in which the Katyn execution of Polish officers is given a mandatory place. And our students themselves, who have visited Poland, as a rule, ask about Katyn, wanting to find out additional details. But most Russians know almost nothing about the Katyn tragedy. Therefore, here we should first of all give a brief historical information about how Polish officers ended up in Katyn, how many of them were shot there and when the said outrageous crime was committed. Unfortunately, our newspapers, magazines and television often report superficial, very contradictory information, and people often have the misconception that captured Polish officers were imprisoned in the Katyn camp and were executed due to the approach of German troops, and total number executed Polish officers amounted to 10 or even 20 thousand people. There are still some voices that the perpetrators of the death of the Polish military personnel have not been definitively established and that they could have been the Nazis, who then tried to blame the USSR for their own atrocity. That is why we will try here to present the materials sequentially, without disturbing the order of events and using, if possible, accurate facts and figures, delving not only into the essence of them themselves, but also into the emotional, state and universal meaning that they carry.

After the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak of World War II, unleashed on September 1, 1939 by Germany’s attack on Poland, German troops, having broken the heroic resistance of the enemy in two weeks (more precisely, in 17 days), occupied most of the ancestral Polish lands, then forcing Poles to surrender. The USSR did not come to the aid of Poland: its proposal to the Polish side to conclude a cooperation agreement on the eve of World War II was rejected. Poland participated in negotiations with Hitler to conclude a treaty directed against the USSR; earlier it stated that it would not allow the transit of Soviet troops through its territory to provide possible assistance to potential Soviet allies in Europe. This contributed in part to the Munich Agreement of 1938, the subsequent dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the absorption of Czech lands by Germany, and the territorial gains of Poland itself. Events of this kind clearly did not contribute to good neighborly relations between Poland and the USSR, and formed among the Russians a feeling of hostility or even hostility towards the Poles. This feeling was also fueled by memories that had not yet been erased from the memory of the recent Soviet-Polish war of 1918-1921, the encirclement of the Red Army near Warsaw, the captivity of 130 thousand Red Army soldiers, who were then placed in the terrible camps of Pulawy, Dombio, Shchelkovo and Tucholi, from which home Only a little more than half of the prisoners returned2.

In Soviet propaganda, Poland appeared with stable epithets “bourgeois” or “gentleman”. The last word was heard by almost every Russian: everyone knew and sang a patriotic song with the lines “The chieftain dogs remember, the Polish gentlemen remember our cavalry blades.” In the song, “lords” were placed on a par with the chieftain dogs, and the word “dogs” in Russia firmly stuck to the German knights of the Teutonic Order, who stubbornly strived in the 13th - early 15th centuries. to the Slavic east (the stable expression “knight dogs”). In the same way, the word “pan” in Russian does not, like the Poles, have the harmless respectful-neutral meaning “master.” It has acquired additional, mainly negative connotations, which are attributed to those who are not actually called that, but are called names. “Pan” is a person of a specific type, possessing a whole set of negative qualities: arrogant, wayward, arrogant, spoiled, pampered, etc. And, of course, this person is not at all poor (it’s hard to imagine a gentleman in holey trousers), that is, she is a rich, bourgeois person, far from the “thin, hunchbacked” working class - a collective image from the poetry of V. Mayakovsky. Thus, in the consciousness of Soviet people of the 20s - 40s of the XX century. an unflattering evaluative cliché was built up for the Poles: Poland is lordly, bourgeois, hostile and aggressive, like chieftain dogs and German knight dogs.

No one doubted Poland’s aggressiveness in the then USSR. After all, just about twenty years ago, taking advantage of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the turmoil that set in Russia after the Bolshevik coup of 1917, the Poles not only revived their statehood - they then rushed east to Ukraine and Belarus, trying to restore the unjust borders of the Polish state 1772 d. This caused, as is known, the Soviet-Polish war

1918-1921, during which the Poles captured a significant part of Belarus and right-bank Ukraine, along with Kiev, but were then driven back by the Red Army, which drove the interventionists all the way to Warsaw. However, according to the Treaty of Riga of 1921, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus remained with Poland, which was perceived by Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians themselves living in the USSR as a historical injustice. The division of peoples by artificial political boundaries is always perceived as unjust and illogical, as a kind of historical absurdity that must be eliminated at the first opportunity. This is what the Ukrainians and Belarusians thought, and so did the Russian people, who felt a sense of class solidarity and were absolutely confident that the Polish bourgeois “lords” were oppressing the unfortunate Ukrainian and Belarusian poor. Therefore, at 3 a.m. from September 16 to 17, 1939, after the Germans had almost completely completed their task in Poland, the USSR made its move, beginning to send its troops into the territory of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and entering Polish soil itself. On the Soviet side, a total of 600 thousand people, about 4 thousand tanks, 2 thousand aircraft and 5,500 guns were involved.

The Polish army offered armed resistance to the Red Army: battles took place in Grodno, near Lvov, Lublin, Vilno, Sarny and other settlements3. Moreover, captured Polish officers were shot. This happened in Augustovets, Boyars, Maly and Bolshie Brzostovitsy, Khorodov, Dobrovitsy, Gayi, Grabov, Komarov, Lvov, Molodechno, Svisloch, Zlochov and other areas. 13 hours after the start of the process of introducing Soviet troops (i.e. at 16:00 hours on September 17), the commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces, Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly issued a general directive calling not to resist the advancing units of the Red Army4. Some Polish units, however, did not obey the directive and continued to fight until October 1 inclusive. In total, according to the speech of V. M. Molotov on October 31, 1939, 3.5 thousand military personnel were killed on the Polish side, about 20 thousand people were wounded or went missing. Soviet losses amounted to 737 killed and 1,862 wounded5. In some places, Ukrainians and Belarusians greeted the Red Army soldiers with flowers: some of the people, intoxicated by Soviet propaganda, hoped for a new, better life.

In Western Ukraine and Western Belarus by September 21 Soviet army captured about 120 thousand soldiers and officers of the Polish Army. About 18 thousand people made their way to Lithuania, over 70 thousand to Romania and Hungary. Some of the prisoners consisted of Polish military personnel who retreated from Poland under the rapid onslaught of the Germans here, to the eastern lands of their then state. According to Polish sources, 240-250 thousand soldiers and officers of the Polish Army were captured by the Russians6. Some discrepancies in estimating the number of Polish prisoners of war arise as a result of the use of different counting methods and the fact that later, even before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Germany and the USSR exchanged part of the Polish military and civilians who, as a result of hostilities, found themselves far from their place of origin. permanent

accommodation. The Soviet side managed to transfer about 42.5 thousand Poles to Germany, and Germany in response was three times less: about 14 thousand people.

Naturally, leaving an impressive number of foreign prisoners of war in its border zone, which actually turned out to be Western Ukraine and Western Belarus for the USSR, would be reckless from the point of view of national security. Therefore, the Soviet authorities undertook what any state would have done in such a situation: dispersing the mass of prisoners of war through their internment in various parts of the country. At the same time, some of the captured Poles were released after interrogation by NKVD officers to their homeland, and representatives of the top, middle and lower command staff of the Polish Army were sent to various prisoner of war camps. The same thing happened to officers, chiefs and employees of the Polish police, intelligence officers, commanders and guards of prisons and some other officials.

The transfer of Polish senior, senior and junior officers from the border regions to other regions of the USSR was carried out from October 3, 1939 to January 1940.7 The most elite was the prisoner of war camp in Kozelsk, located 250 km southeast of Smolensk and belonging to the department of Smolensk regional NKVD. About 4.7 thousand Poles were stationed here, among whom there were many high-ranking officers and mobilized reserve officers, who in civilian life had purely humanitarian professions of doctors, teachers, engineers, and writers. The attitude towards prisoners of war in this camp was quite tolerable: generals and colonels (4 generals, 1 admiral and 24-26 colonels)8 were housed several people in rooms separate from the bulk of the camp prisoners, they were allowed to have orderlies. The diet was quite satisfactory, as was the medical care. Prisoners could send letters to their homeland, and the cessation of their correspondence with relatives and loved ones in Poland made it possible to date the Katyn tragedy to approximately the end of April 1940.9 The second camp for Polish senior and junior officers was located in the Starobelsk region in a former convent and was subordinate to the NKVD of the then Voroshilovgrad ( Lugansk, now Kharkov) region. 3.9 thousand Polish prisoners of war were stationed here (including 8 generals, 57 colonels, 130 lieutenant colonels and other lower rank officials1"). Conditions in this camp were somewhat worse compared to the camp in Kozelsk, but also quite tolerable No one mocked the prisoners, no one beat them regularly, no one forced them to fall face down in the dirt countless times during “walks” and then deprive them of a bath for a whole month, no one deprived them of medical care, as was the case with the Red Army soldiers in Polish camps in the 20s of the XX century.

Even in the Ostashkov camp, located on the territory of the former monastery of Nilova Pustyn (Stolbny Island on Lake Seliger), where about 6 thousand Polish junior officers of the army, police and gendarmerie were stationed, as well as prison guards and privates11 and the living conditions were the worst, everything was not the same that's too bad. Judging by the Poles' own testimony,

“The administrative staff, especially doctors and nurses, treated the prisoners humanely”12.

Further, we will not delve into the details of how difficult it was to find the truth about the terrible Katyn tragedy, about the endless denials of the Soviet side, which continued to blame the Germans for everything for almost half a century. The motives for these denials are numerous and varied enough to cover them here. Let us only note that the main ones were, at first, the reluctance to darken relations with the allies during the Second World War, then to undermine “fraternal ties with friendly Poland, which has moved along the path of building socialism,” and subsequently, attempts to rehabilitate the name of Stalin, which, unfortunately, are gradually being undertaken , and to this day. In our case, more important is the fact that Russia officially recognized the guilt of the USSR in the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. Deny the fact of the Katyn execution after April 13, 1990, when USSR President M. S. Gorbachev handed over to the then President of the Republic of Poland W. Jaruzelski full list the names of the Poles taken from Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk to the place of execution are simply meaningless13. A year and a half later, on October 14, 1992, the Russian side handed over to Poland a new package of documents and a “special folder” that had been stored in the archives of the CPSU Central Committee for many decades. It contained information of particular importance classified as “Top Secret”: an extract from Protocol No. 13 of March 5, 1940, drawn up at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, with the strokes of I. V. Stalin,

V. M. Molotov and K. E. Voroshilov. With these flourishes, the leaders of the USSR approved the “examination in a special order” of cases of 14,700 former officers Polish army and other military personnel, i.e. they were sentenced to “execution” at the suggestion of the NKVD. Recently, the Russian government handed over to Poland a new multi-volume package of documents related to the death of the Poles in the USSR, which certainly contain a lot of new declassified data that can shed additional light on the topic we are considering.

But the essence is no longer in doubt: the Polish officers were shot not by the Nazis, but by the executioners of the Stalin-Beria NKVD. It remains to answer the question of what made Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov give such a monstrous order. There are several versions here.

The first version, supported by Polish radicals and Russophobes: Stalin's genocide of the Polish people. Particular attention is paid to the fact that among the executed prisoners of the three camps there were more than 400 doctors, several hundred engineers, more than 20 university professors and many teachers. In addition, 11 generals and 1 admiral, 77 colonels and 197 lieutenant colonels, 541 majors, 1,441 captains, 6,061 other junior officers and sub-officers, as well as 18 chaplains were shot. Thus, supporters of this version conclude, the Russians destroyed the Polish military and civilian elite.

However, this point of view is untenable, since genocide usually applies to the entire people, and not just to some part of its social elite. In August 1941, Polish pilots and sailors were transported to England.

At the end of October 1941, a Polish contingent began to form on the territory of the USSR, numbering 41.5 thousand people and increasing by March 1942 to almost 74 thousand people. The Polish emigration government in London proposed increasing the strength of the Polish corps to 96 thousand people15. At the head of this, in fact, army was a Pole, General Vladislav Anders - a graduate of the St. Petersburg Page Corps, who served in the Russian tsarist army in the First world war. However, the Soviet command was in no hurry to give the Poles weapons. Vladislav Anders was captured by the Red Army near Novo-Grudok, where he offered fierce resistance to the Germans and Russians. Long time he was in an NKVD prison and how he could behave in the future, having received command of an almost hundred thousand Polish army on the territory of the USSR, was not entirely clear. Therefore, by September 1, 1942, the army of General Anders was evacuated to Iran, from where it was transported to Africa to fight the British against the Germans.

Version two: the execution of Polish officers is Russian revenge for the defeat near Warsaw and the inhumane treatment of captured Red Army soldiers in Polish camps. It seems that this is exactly the version outlined by Polish Colonel Sigmund Berling, who refused to go with Anders to Iran and led the Polish soldiers and officers who remained in the USSR. Later, he wrote the following in his diary: “...hopeless, stupid resistance and an irreconcilably hostile attitude towards the USSR, which has its origins in the past... will in the future become the direct causes of the decision of the Soviet authorities, which led to the terrible (Katyn) tragedy”16. The following fact would seem to speak about the Russians’ irritation and sense of vindictiveness towards the Poles. In September 1939, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.P. Potemkin handed over to the Polish Ambassador in Moscow

formation of the Polish state as such17. The embitterment of Stalin and his entourage was probably caused by Soviet intelligence data about the formation by the Germans in occupied Poland of a separate brigade of the Podhale Riflemen to send them to Finland and participate in the war against the Red Army. The order to form a Polish brigade appeared on February 9, 1940, and only the truce concluded between the USSR and Finland on March 13 of the same year thwarted these plans18. Let us recall that the order of the Big Three to shoot Polish officers dates back to March 5, 1940. It is unlikely that this close chronological sequence of the events we mentioned was of a random nature.

The third version we would like to propose: totalitarian class “sanitation”. The execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, in the internal prison of the Kharkov NKVD and other places was an elementary “purge” characteristic of totalitarian states of that time. Despite the fact that the previous version seems very plausible and emotions when the “Big Red Three” signed execution orders for the Poles could have played some role, they were by no means the main reason for it. The postulate “the idea is everything, and man is nothing” was proclaimed as the main credo of Bolshevik totalitarianism.

According to him, the multimillion-dollar human mass is just building material, a significant part of which must inevitably go to waste. After the October Revolution of 1917, during the Civil War in Russia, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, with incredible cruelty exterminated 100 thousand Orthodox priests, shot 54 thousand officers, 6 thousand teachers, almost 9 thousand doctors, about 200 thousand. workers and over 815 thousand peasants19. In the 30s of the XX century. under Stalin, the terrible “Red Wheel” of terror rolled across Soviet cities and villages, smearing millions of people like unnecessary insects hindering the movement forward. The edge of this terrible “Red Wheel” passed in 1940 among the Poles who fell within its reach.

The execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest cannot be regarded as petty revenge for the Red Army soldiers who died in Polish captivity. The Bolsheviks treated them as waste material needed for the construction of the world dictatorship of the proletariat. This execution was obviously of a class nature and represented a preventive class “sanitation” for the future unhindered construction of socialism in People’s Poland. Stalin and his entourage had no doubt that the Red Army would win a quick victory over Nazi Germany. The USSR surpassed Germany in the number of weapons and human resources. The provision that the Red Army would fight with small forces and defeat the enemy on foreign territory appeared in its military regulations. And Poland, of course, after the victory of the USSR should have been one of the first to join the future World Communist Community. The reality of World War II overturned Stalin's sweet dreams. Victory over fascism was won, but at the cost of a sea of ​​blood and the lives of tens of millions of Soviet people.

Returning to the moral lessons of Katyn, first of all it is necessary to pay tribute to the memory of all the Poles who were innocently killed there and in other places. This fact is one of the most tragic in the history of Russian-Polish relations. But are they “Russians”? Unfortunately, many, following the Polish Russophobes, begin to repeat the artificial oppositions they use: “Poland and Russia”, “Polish-Russian war of 1918-1921”, “Poles and Russians”. In these oppositions, the national moment has no right to exist: not “Poland and Russia”, but “Poland and Soviet Russia”, not “Polish-Russian war”, but “Polish-Soviet war”. The same applies to the execution in Katyn, where the opposition “Poles-Russians” should not take place (it arises in the minds of the Poles and involuntarily, since the Polish word “gs^ashp” (Russian) coincides with the meaning of our word “Russian”) , Bolshevik totalitarianism, unlike German fascism, did not have national character. The construction of the giant punitive “Red Wheel” was international. It was attended by the founder of “red terrorism”, it is unclear who Lenin’s nationality was, a kind of Swedish-Jewish-Kalmyk-Russian individual (see the publication about the national roots of Lenin in “Ogonyok” from the time of V. Korotich). In any case, he did not feel like a Russian, because it is impossible to imagine that atheists, a Jew, a Tatar or a Bashkir, would be capable of giving a secret order to exterminate 100 thousand people.

rabbis or muezzins, of course, if he is not crazy or a pathological murderer-maniac. Lenin's work was continued and multiplied by the Georgians Stalin and Beria, under whom the number of those killed and tortured went into the millions. The head of the Cheka and the deputy also performed excellently in this field. Chairman of the Cheka, the Poles F.E. Dzerzhinsky and I.S. Unshlikht2", the Jews L. Trotsky and J. Sverdlov, the Latvians M.I. Latsis and P.Ya. Peters did not lag behind them. The famous troika of Russian executioners N.I. Yezhov,

V.S. Abakumov and V.N. Merkulov, in comparison with the previous defendants, are only their pathetic followers. We should not forget the fact that it was the Russians who suffered the most numerous losses from the “Red Wheel”. Next to the eight Katyn ditches, where the remains of 4,200 Polish officers rest, there are mass graves of Russians, Ukrainians and Jews executed by Beria’s executioners. Therefore Polish Russophobes there are no real arguments to accuse the Russians of the genocide of the Poles or polonophobia. It would be better for Poles and Russians to fight for the construction of a magnificent memorial complex in Moscow, dedicated to the millions of people and entire nations who suffered from Bolshevik totalitarianism.

2 Kaliganov II. II. Russia and the Slavs today and tomorrow (Polish and Czech perspectives) // Slavic world in the third millennium. Slavic identity - new factors of solidarity. M., 2008. pp. 75-76.

4 Katyn. Prisoners undeclared war. Documents and materials. M., 1997. P. 65.

5 On the foreign policy of the Soviet Union // Bolshevik. 1939. No. 20. P. 5.

6 Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 15.

7 Katyn drama: Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. The fate of interned Polish soldiers / comp. and general ed. O. V. Yasnova. M., 1991. S. 21-22.

8 Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 435; Ezhevsky L. Katyn, 1940. Riga, 1990.

9 Ezhevsky L. Katyn, 1940. P. 18.

10 Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 437.

11 Ibid. P. 436.

12 2bgos1sha Kaig^ka \y otstye s1okitep1b\y. L., 1962. 8. 15-16; Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 521.

13 Katyn drama: Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. P. 16. The burial places of all executed Polish officers have not yet been established. As for Katyn, the tragedy occurred near Smolensk in the Kozye Gory (according to another vowel “Kosogory”, see: Ezhevsky L. Op. op. p. 16) in the Katyn forest, which once belonged to Polish landowners, and then came under the jurisdiction of the NKVD , after which it was surrounded by barbed wire and made inaccessible to unauthorized persons. In addition to the three camps mentioned, Polish prisoners of war were kept in Putivlsky, Kozelytsansky (in the Poltava region), Yuzhsky, Yukhnovsky, Vologda (Zaonikeevsky), Gryazovetsky and Oransky

camps. In addition, over 76 thousand refugees and defectors from Poland were accommodated in the Krasnoyarsk and Altai territories. Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Gorky, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Chelyabinsk and Yakutsk regions, as well as in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The vast majority of them remained alive and returned home at the end of the war (see: Katyn. March 1940 - September 2000. Execution. Fates of the living. Echo of Katyn. Documents. M., 2001. P. 41).

14 Ibid. P. 25; Katyn. Prisoners of an undeclared war. P. 521.

15 Parsadanova V.S. On the history of soldiers and officers of the Polish Army interned in the USSR // Soviet Slavonic Studies. M., 1990. No. 5. P. 25.

16 Berling Z. Wspomnienia. Warszawa, 1990. T. 1. Z largow do Andersa. S. 32.

18 Katyn drama: Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. P. 31.

19 Kaliganov II. II. Bolshevik Russia in Bulgarian marginal literature of the 20-40s of the XX century. // Bulgaria and Russia (XVIII-XX centuries). Mutual knowledge. M., 2010. P. 107.

20 The international character of the command staff of the NKVD workers is clearly visible in the history of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, built by the hands of prisoners. See: White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin: History of construction, 1931-1934. / ed. M. Gorky, JI. Averbakh, S. Firina. M., 1998. (Reprint of the 1934 edition). S. 72, 157, 175, 184, 325, 340, 358, 373, etc.

Archives reveal the secret: why exactly 22,000 Polish officers were shot in Katyn

The Polish-Soviet War began on April 25, 1920 with an attack by Polish troops. On May 6, Kiev was captured. In the occupied regions, the Poles organized reprisals against those who, according to their information, were Red Army soldiers and especially communists. At the same time, Jews were equated with communists. “In the Komarovskaya volost alone, the entire Jewish population, including infants, was slaughtered.”

In response to the atrocities committed, desperate resistance arose, and on May 26 the Red Army launched a counteroffensive. On June 12, it liberated the capital of Ukraine, and in mid-August it reached Warsaw and Lvov.

However, as a result of a carefully prepared counterattack by the White Poles and uncoordinated actions Soviet military leaders, The Red Army was forced to retreat with significant human, territorial and material losses.

Unable to continue the war, both sides agreed to a truce on October 12, 1920, and on March 18, 1921, they concluded the Riga Peace Treaty, which consolidated all the losses suffered by Soviet Russia. The Polish invaders, led by Marshal Pilsudski, managed to annex to their lands large strategic spaces of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which belonged to Russia until October 1917.

Such an unfair outcome of the war became the cause of tense Soviet-Polish relations for many years, which should have led, at the first opportunity, to the restoration of what had been lost and the punishment of the brutal invaders. This is what happened in 1939-1940.

The truce of October 12, 1920 was very unfavorable for the then Russia... and especially for Stalin, who perceived this defeat as his own.

Strictly speaking, this battle was lost by the future Marshal Tukhachevsky under the military leadership of Trotsky, but in politically Lenin (as the head of the Soviet government) pinned his hopes for victory in this war primarily on Stalin. Not only did the Poles then significantly cut back Russian territories in your favor. Even more tragic was the fact that, having captured tens of thousands of the “red guardsmen” most loyal to Stalin (including from Budyonny’s 1st Cavalry Army), the White Poles doomed them to martyrdom in concentration camps.

Death - from torture, disease, hunger and even thirst...

There were also civilians among the prisoners, and among them there were many Jews, whom the White Poles considered the main spreaders of the Bolshevik infection.

Silenced to this day, Polish and Russian archives contain many ominous confirmations of this Greater Poland conceit. For example, in the lists of prisoners taken to Poznan from Ukraine among the Soviet employees there is a boy: “Shekhtman Matel, a Jew, a minor, caught red-handed while posting Bolshevik proclamations in Kiev”... About others sent to Polish concentration camps, it is said: “There is no proof of the guilt of these people . But it is undesirable to leave them free in Poland.” All these are civilians, arrested and taken to prisons and camps in Poland for political reasons. One of them, 15-year-old Bogin, wrote on May 30, 1921: “Suspecting me of belonging to an underground organization, but having no evidence, the Polish authorities interned me. I have been in a military prison for ten months now, the regime of which is oppressive.”

Modern high-ranking Polish leaders do not talk about such violations of human rights and, perhaps, do not know.

But they cannot forget about the “red revenge” in Katyn!

How many were there?

On June 22, 1920, Pilsudski’s personal secretary K. Switalski wrote: “The obstacle to the demoralization of the Bolshevik army through desertion to our side is the difficult situation resulting from the brutal and merciless destruction of prisoners by our soldiers...”

About how many Soviet prisoners were shot and tortured by the Poles? we're talking about? Without entering into a discussion of whose figures (Polish or Russian) are more accurate, we will simply present their extreme values ​​indicated by both sides. Russian historians, citing archival sources, insist on a minimum of 60 thousand people. According to current data in Poland, this is a maximum of 16-18 thousand. But let there be even fewer Russian victims than the smallest official Polish confessions! And in this case, 8 thousand (according to other sources 22 thousand) Polish officers shot by the NKVD and buried in Katyn fully explain what happened - like Stalin’s Katyn retribution! Let me emphasize: explaining does not mean that they are justifying!

First of all, officers and gendarmes who showed sadism against Soviet citizens in 1919-22 were shot in Katyn. The rank and file of the Polish common people (and there were a majority of them - according to various sources, from 100 to 250 thousand), misled by their lords, mostly escaped execution.

Stalin would not have been Stalin if he had forgotten the Polish officers their brutal abuse of him, Stalin, “brothers in arms”!

Of course, it would be more correct for those fascist Polish officers to be judged by the Polish people themselves, and not by the NKVD... (However, the Polish people even today have every right to do this! Moreover, Russia, setting an example, has already repented for what it did with the fundamental memorial complex in Katyn and... continues to repent! The turn, as they say, is for Poland...)

The archives have spoken

For a long time I did not dare to defile the hearing and sight of the Russian and Polish elite with what the gentlemen Polish officers did with Russian prisoners. But since my general words about human rights violations aroused obvious distrust and even suspicion of slander against the “innocent Polish gendarmes,” I am forced to cite (for starters!) at least such an “ordinary” specific example from a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Habicht (a Pole who has not lost his conscience) to the head of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland, General Gordynski:

"Mr. General!

I visited the prisoner camp in Bialystok and now, under the first impression, I dared to turn to Mr. General, as the chief doctor of the Polish troops, with a description of the terrible picture that appears before everyone arriving at the camp...

In the camp at every step there is dirt, untidiness that cannot be described, neglect and human need that cry out to heaven for retribution. In front of the barracks doors are piles of human excrement, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The patients are so weakened that they cannot reach the latrines; on the other hand, the toilets are in such a state that it is impossible to approach the seats, because the floor is covered in several layers of human feces.

The barracks themselves are overcrowded, and among the “healthy” there are a lot of sick people. In my opinion, among those 1,400 prisoners there are simply no healthy ones. Covered with rags, they huddle together, warming each other. The stench from dysentery patients and gangrene-stricken feet swollen from hunger. In the barracks that were just about to be vacated, two especially seriously ill patients lay among other patients in their own feces, oozing through their shabby trousers; they no longer had the strength to get up to lie down on a dry place on the bunks. What a terrible picture of grief and despair this is... Moans are coming from all sides.”

Note from General Gordynsky:

“The reader of this report inevitably comes to mind the words of our immortal prophet Adam (Mickiewicz):

“If only a bitter tear had not flowed from the stone, prince!”

Is there any regulation on this and what kind? Or we must, realizing our helplessness, fold our hands and, following Tolstoy’s commandment of “non-resistance to evil,” be mute witnesses to the sad harvest of death and the devastation that it produces, putting an end to human suffering, for so long until the last prisoner and the last guard soldier fall asleep in a cemetery grave?

If this were to happen, then it would be better not to take prisoners than to allow them to die in thousands from hunger and infection.”

And after this they ask Stalin: how did he dare to organize the Katyn massacre for the Polish officers who organized THIS?

However, it would be more accurate to say: Katyn retribution...

Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the future Red Marshal, whose troops were defeated by the Poles on the Vistula. Photo from 1921.
Photo: RIA Novosti

WHAT DID THE USSR GOVERNMENT GUIDE BEFORE MAKING THE DECISION TO SHOOT POLISH OFFICERS IN KATYN IN 1940

Data from closed official Polish and Soviet sources (given in abbreviated form)

First - documentary information:

On October 8, 1939, the People's Commissar of the NKVD Beria gave instructions: under no circumstances should the captured Polish generals, officers and all persons in the police and gendarmerie service be released until the investigation establishes whether they were involved in the bullying and extermination (in 1919-1922) prisoners of war of the Red Army and Soviet citizens of Jewish origin (including Ukraine and Belarus)!

On February 22, 1940, a special Merkulov Directive 641/b regarding captured Poles appeared. It said: “By order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Comrade. To Beria, I offer all former jailers, intelligence officers, provocateurs, court officials, landowners, etc., who were held in the Starobelsky, Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky NKVD camps. transfer to the investigative units of the NKVD for investigation.”

Addresses and codes for storing materials from Polish archives are given in Latin, from Soviet ones - in Russian.

Ministry of Military Affairs Sanitary Department No. 1215 T.

To the Ministry of Military Affairs, Warsaw

In connection with the increasingly serious and justified accusations and complaints repeated from all over the country about the situation in the prisoner camps, in connection with the voices foreign press, keenly interested in this question...

All the reports of the inspection authorities correctly describe in horror-filled words the fate and life of the prisoners, forced to spend long days of deprivation and physical and mental torture in the camps, which in many reports of the delegates of the Sanitary Department are called “cemeteries of half-dead and half-naked skeletons,” “a hotbed of pestilence and the murder of people by starvation.” and need,” which they condemn as “an indelible stain on the honor of the Polish people and army.”

Ragged, covered with torn remnants of clothing, dirty, lice-infested, emaciated and emaciated, the prisoners present a picture of extreme misery and despair. Many are without shoes or underwear...

The thinness of many prisoners eloquently indicates that hunger is their constant companion, a terrible hunger that forces them to feed on any greenery, grass, young leaves, etc. Cases of starvation are not something extraordinary, and for other reasons death gathers its victims in the camp. In the Bug-Schuppe, 15 prisoners died over the past 2 weeks, and one of them died in front of the commission, and the remains of undigested grass were visible in the feces given after death.

This sad image of human misfortune...

Due to the lack of ceilings, two huge barracks, capable of accommodating about 1,700 people, stand empty, while the prisoners are choked like sardines in a barrel in smaller barracks, some also without frames and without stoves or only with small indoor stoves, warming themselves with their own heat.

The prisoner camp in Pikulitsa became a breeding ground for infection, even worse, a cemetery for prisoners

Bolshevik prisoners, dressed in rags, without underwear, without shoes, emaciated like skeletons, they wander like human shadows.

Their daily ration that day consisted of a small amount of clean, unseasoned broth and a small piece of meat. This would be enough, perhaps, for a five-year-old child, and not for an adult. The prisoners receive this lunch after they have been fasting all day.

In rain, snow, frost and ice, about 200 ragged unfortunates are sent into the forest every day without making the necessary supplies in a timely manner, a significant part of whom lie on their deathbeds the next day.

Systematic killing of people!

In overcrowded wards, patients lie on the floor on shavings. In a ward with 56 patients with dysentery, there is one room closet with one bedpan, and since the prisoners do not have the strength to get to the closet, they walk under themselves in shavings... The air in such a room is terrible, finishing off the prisoners. Therefore, every day, on average, 20 or more of them die in this hospital and in the barracks.

The prison camp does not want to deal with the burial of corpses, often sending them to the district hospital in Przemysl, even without coffins, on open carts, like cattle...

CAW. Cabinet Minister. I.300.1.402.

5 December1919 G.

Command of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front, head of sanitation No. 5974/IV/ San.

Main commissariat in Warsaw

In the camp Vilna there is often not even water due to a faulty pump within the camp.

CAW. NDWP. Szefostwo Sanitarne. I 301.17.53.

MinistrymilitaryaffairsPoland SupremecommandTroopsPolishOarticle (“Is it true?”)Vnewspaper"Couriernew"about abusedesertersfromRedArmy.

Ministry of Military Affairs Presidial Bureau No. 6278/20S. P. II. Pras.

High CommandBP

All this was nothing compared to the systematic torture of Latvians. It began with the appointment of 50 blows with a barbed wire rod. Moreover, they were told that the Latvians, as “Jewish hirelings,” would not leave the camp alive. More than ten prisoners died due to blood poisoning. Then, for three days, the prisoners were left without food and forbidden, under threat of death, to go out for water... Many died due to disease, cold and hunger.

CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. 1.301. 10.339.

INNKIDRSFSRabout bullyingPolishtroops over prisonersRed Army soldiersAndpartisans

To the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs

In transmitting this note about the atrocities of the Polish White Guards, I inform you that I received this information from the most reliable source.

It seems to me that it is impossible to leave this without protest.

G.L.Shkilov

7/ II1920.

Atrocities of the Polish White Guards

Among the victims was the assistant chief of the detachment, comrade, who was wounded in battle. Us, whom the bandits overtook, first gouged out his eyes and killed him. The wounded secretary of the Rudobel executive committee, Comrade Gashinsky, and clerk Olkhimovich were taken away by the Poles, and the latter was brutally tortured, and then tied to a cart and forced to bark like a dog. ...After this, reprisals began against the families of partisans, Soviet workers and peasants in general. First of all, they burned the house of Comrade Levkov’s father in the village of Karpilovka, and then they set fire to the village... The same fate befell the villages of Kovali and Dubrova, which were completely burned down. The families of the partisans were almost completely slaughtered. Up to a hundred people were thrown into the fire during the fire. Women, ranging from minors, were raped (one four-year-old girl was named among them). Victims of violence were bayoneted. The dead were not allowed to be buried. On January 19, on Epiphany, during a service in the surviving church in the village of Karpilovka, the Poles threw 2 bombs there, and when the peasants began to run away in panic, they opened fire on them. The priest was also hit: his property was plundered, and he himself was thoroughly beaten, saying: “You are a Soviet priest.”

WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 122. Op. 3. P. 5. D. 19. L. 8-9, 9v.

FrommemorandummilitaryAndcivilianprisonersVPolish prisons

Comrade David Tsamtsiev reports on the massacre in the village of Grichine, Samokhvalovichi volost, Minsk district, of captured Red Army soldiers. The regiment commander ordered to gather all the village residents. When they gathered, they brought out the prisoners with their hands tied back and ordered the residents to spit and beat them. The beating by those gathered lasted about 30 minutes. Then, after finding out their identity (it turned out that there were Red Army soldiers of the 4th Warsaw Hussar Regiment), the unfortunate people were completely naked and proceeded to mock them. Whips and ramrods were used. After pouring water over them three times, when the arrested were already dying, they were placed in a ditch and shot, also inhumanely, so that even some parts of the body were completely torn off.

Comrade Tsamtsiev was arrested along with a friend near the Mikhanovichi station and sent to headquarters. “There, in the presence of officers, they beat him anywhere and with anything, doused him cold water and sprinkled with sand. This abuse continued for about an hour. Finally, the chief inquisitor appeared, the brother of the regiment commander, headquarters captain Dombrovsky, who, like an enraged beast, rushed and began to hit him in the face with an iron rod. Having stripped us naked and searched us, he ordered the soldiers to spread us out, pulling us by the arms and legs, and give us 50 lashes. I don’t know if we wouldn’t be lying in the ground now if it weren’t for the cry “commissar, commissar” distracting their attention. They brought in a well-dressed Jew named Khurgin, originally from the town of Samokhvalovichi, and although the unfortunate man insisted that he was not a commissar and that he had never served anywhere, all his assurances and pleas led to nothing: he was stripped naked and immediately shot and abandoned, saying that a Jew is not worthy of burial on Polish soil...

T. Kuleshinsky-Kowalsky was brought to the hospital, having already lost his human appearance. The arms and legs were swollen... It was impossible to make out any parts of the face. There were wires in the nostrils, as well as in the tips of the ears. It was with great difficulty that he pronounced his last name. Nothing more could be achieved from him. As soon as they put him in bed, he lay there like a nightstand until he died. A few days later, a rumor spread that a commission was coming from Warsaw to inspect the prison, and that same night counterintelligence agents appeared and, after many tortures, strangled him.

This was one of our best comrades left for underground work in Minsk.”

Comrade Vera Vasilyeva writes about the torture of a young witch (witch doctor), Comrade Zuymach: “Comrade. Zuymach was taken from prison at night, as if to be shot, brought to the gendarmerie, beaten, put against the wall and pointed at the barrel of a revolver, shouting: “Admit it, then we’ll spare you, otherwise you only have a few minutes left to live.” They forced me to write dying farewell letters to my relatives. They ordered her to put her head on the table and passed a cold blade across her neck, saying that her head would fly off if she didn’t confess. When she was returned to prison, she shook all night, as if in a fever... She, one might say, is still a child, and her head is already covered with gray hair. Finally, naked and barefoot, she was sent to the camp."

Comrade Epstein writes: “Drunken detectives enter the cell and beat anyone. Women are beaten, just like men. They beat fiercely, mercilessly. For example, Goldin was beaten on the head and sides with a log. They use revolvers, whips, iron springs and various other instruments of torture...”

In Bobruisk prison the same thing was done as in Minsk.

ComradeX. Khaimovich reports: “The Bobruisk gendarmerie, having arrested me, interrogated me twice a day, and each time they beat me mercilessly with rifle butts and whips. Investigator Eismont carried out the beatings and called the gendarmes for help. Similar tortures continued for 14 days.

When I fainted, they doused me with cold water and continued beating me until the torturers got tired. Once, in the gendarmerie premises, my hands were tied and hung from the ceiling. Then they beat us with anything. They took me out of town to be shot, but for some reason they didn’t shoot me.”

Comrade Giler Wolfson reports that after his arrest in Glusk on September 6, in prison he was stripped naked and beaten on his naked body with whips.

Comrade Georgy Knysh reports: “They brought me to the gendarmerie, they abused me, beat me with 40 whips, I don’t remember how many butts, and 6 ramrods on my heels; they tried to prick their nails, but then they left..."

From the hostages' statement.

From the prison we were escorted under heavy escort, and if any of those leaving were approached by relatives or friends with any conversation, the gendarmes uttered the most selective curses, threatened with weapons and even beat some, as, for example, Joseph Shakhnovich was hit by a gendarme for he walked sloppily, according to the gendarme.

The treatment on the road by the gendarmes was terrible, they didn’t let anyone out of the carriage for two days, they forced them to clean the dirty carriages with hats, towels or anything else; if the arrested refused, they forced them by force, as, for example, Libkovich Peysakh was hit in the face by a gendarme because he refused to clean up the dirt in the restroom with his hands...

RGASPI.F.63. Op.1 D.198. L.27-29.

Command of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front

№3473/ San.

Major medical services dr Bronislaw Hackbeil

Deputy Head of Sanitation

Report

Prisoner camp at the collection station for prisoners - this is a real dungeon. No one cared about these unfortunate people, so it is not surprising that a person unwashed, unclothed, poorly fed and placed in inappropriate conditions as a result of infection was doomed only to death.

The current commandant of the prisoner camp resolutely refuses to feed them. Next to them, in the vacant barracks, there are entire families of refugees... Women suffering from venereal diseases infect both military and civilians...

CAW. Oddzial IV NDWP. I.301.10.343.

StatementsreturnedfromcaptivityA. P. Matskevich, M.FridkinaAndPetrova

Andrey Prokhorovich Matskevich

The first duty was a general search... I, for example, received only two slaps in the face, and other comrades, such as Bashinkevich and Mishutovich, were beaten not only in the carriage, but even on the field, when they escorted us from Bialystok to the camps... Everyone When we were taken out of the city to Bialystok, they stopped us on the field only to beat Bashinkevich and Mishutovich a second time.

1920: Poles lead captured Red Army soldiers.

After some time, the Jewish community sent us a hot lunch from Bialystok, but our guards did not allow us to eat lunch and beat those who brought it with rifle butts.

The food in the camps is such that not even the healthiest person will be able to survive for more or less long time. It consists of a small portion of black bread, weighing about 1/2 pound, one shard a day of soup, which looks more like slop than soup, and boiling water.

This slop, called soup, was served unsalted. Due to hunger and cold, diseases reached incredible proportions. There is no medical assistance, and the hospital exists only on paper. Dozens of people die every day. In addition to starvation, many die from beatings from barbarian gendarmes. One Red Army soldier (I don’t remember his last name) was beaten so severely by a barracks corporal with a stick that he was unable to get up and stand on his feet. The second, a certain Comrade Zhilintsky, received 120 rods and was placed in a prison cell. T. Lifshits (former chairman of the trade union of arts workers in Minsk) completely died after various tortures. Fain, a very old man, a native and resident of the Pleshchenichsky volost of the Borisov district, was subjected to daily torture in the form of cutting off his beard with a cleaver, striking his naked body with a bayonet, marching at night in his underwear in the frost between barracks, etc.

M. Fridkina

We were taken to the Brest-Litovsk camp. The commandant addressed us with the following speech: “You Bolsheviks wanted to take our lands away from us, okay, I’ll give you the land. I have no right to kill you, but I will feed you so much that you yourself will die! And indeed, despite the fact that we had not received bread for two days before, we did not receive anything like that that day either, we ate only potato peels, sold our last shirts for a piece of bread, the legionnaires persecuted us for this and, seeing how they were collecting or they boiled this husk, dispersed it with whips, and those who, due to weakness, did not run away in time, were beaten half to death.

We did not receive bread for 13 days; on the 14th day, it was at the end of August, we received about 4 pounds of bread, but it was very rotten and moldy; everyone, of course, greedily attacked him, and the diseases that had existed before that time intensified: the sick were not treated, and they died in dozens. In September 1919, up to 180 people died. in a day…

Petrova

In Bobruisk there were up to 1,600 captured Red Army soldiers, most of whom were completely naked...

Chairman Budkevich

RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 198. L. 38-39.

Reportabout inspectioncampsStrzałkowo

19/ IX-20 g.

They are buried in a cemetery not far from the camp, naked and without coffins.

RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.8-10.

Main triage room for the sick and wounded of the Polish Army

Report

To the hygiene section of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs

According to the chief, the prisoners give the impression of being very exhausted and hungry, as they break out of the cars, look for scraps of food in the garbage and greedily eat potato peelings that they find on the tracks.

S.Gilevich, major of medical service

Head of the main sorting of the sick and wounded of the Polish Army

CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. 1.301.10.354.

Bacteriological Department of the Military Sanitary Council

№ 405/20

To the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of War,IVsection, Warsaw

All the prisoners give the impression of being extremely hungry, since they rake raw potatoes straight out of the ground and eat them, collect in the trash heaps and eat all kinds of waste, such as bones, cabbage leaves, etc.

Dr. Szymanowski, Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Service,

Head of Bacteriological Department

Military Sanitary Council

CAW. MSWojsk. Dep.Zdrowia.I.300.62.31.

The result of an inspection of our prisoner of war camps in Poland.

90% are completely without clothes, naked, and are covered only with rags and paper mattresses. They sit hunched over on the bare boards of the bunks. They complain of insufficient and bad food and poor treatment.

RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.20-26.

High Command.

Section of prisoners. Warsaw.

To the command of the Warsaw General District - a copy.

The main causes of the disease are prisoners eating various raw peelings and complete absence shoes and clothes.

Malevich. Modlin Fortified Area Command

CAW. OddzialIVNDWP. I.301.10.354.

DelegatecommunicationsRVSWesternfrontRedArmy under18- thdivisionsTroopsPolish Comrade PostnekOvisiting prisoners of warRed Army soldiers.

Report

The patients, completely naked and barefoot, are so exhausted that they can barely stand on their feet and are shaking all over. Many, when they saw me, cried like children. Each room accommodates 40-50 people, lying on top of each other.

4-5 people die every day. All without exception from exhaustion.

GARF.F.R-3333.Op.2.D.186.L.33

ProtocolinterrogationValuevaIN. IN. – a Red Army soldier who escaped from Polish captivity

From our composition they chose communists, command staff of commissars and Jews, and right there, in front of all the Red Army soldiers, one Jewish commissar (I don’t know his last name and unit) was beaten and then immediately shot. They took away our uniforms; whoever did not immediately follow the orders of the legionnaires was beaten to death, and when he fell unconscious, then the legionnaires forcibly dragged the boots and uniforms from the beaten Red Army soldiers. Afterwards we were sent to the Tuchol camp. The wounded lay there, unbandaged for weeks, and their wounds were full of worms. Many of the wounded died, 30-35 people were buried every day.

RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 198. L. 40-41.

RepresentativeRussiansocietyRedCross StefaniaSempolovskayaPolishsocietyRedCross about bullyingprisonerscommunistsAndJews inPolishcampsStrzałkowo, TukholiAndDombe

Exceptional laws against Jews and "communists" in prison camps

In the camps in Strzałkowo, Tuchola, Dąba, Jews and “communists” are kept separately and are deprived of a number of rights enjoyed by other categories of prisoners. They are kept in the worst quarters, always in “dugouts”, completely devoid of straw bedding, worst dressed, almost without shoes (in Tukholi, almost all Jews were barefoot on 16/XI, while in other barracks the majority were shoed).

These two groups have the worst moral attitude - the most complaints about beatings and ill-treatment.

In Strzałkowo the authorities simply stated that it would be best to shoot these groups.

When the lights were installed in the camp, the barracks of Jews and communists were left without lighting.

Even in Tukholi, where the treatment of prisoners is generally better, Jews and communists complained of beatings.

I also receive complaints from Dombe about the harassment of Jews - the beating of Jewish men and Jewish women and the violation of decency by soldiers when bathing Jewish women.

The communists also complained that during a short walk, officers ordered them to lie down and stand up 50 times.

In addition, I have received complaints that when Jewish communities send donations for Jews to Strzałkowo, they are not always distributed to the Jews.

CAW. 1772/89/1789 pt.l

Telegram from A.A. Ioffe to Comrade Chicherin, Polburo, Tsentroevak.

The situation of prisoners in the Strzhalkovo camp is especially difficult.

The mortality rate among prisoners of war is so high that if it does not decrease, they will all die out within six months.

All captured Red Army Jews are kept in the same regime as communists, keeping them in separate barracks. Their regime is deteriorating due to the anti-Semitism cultivated in Poland. Ioffe

RGASPI. F. 63. Op. 1. D. 199. L. 31-32.

From a telegramG. IN. ChicherinaA. A. IoffeOsituation of the Red Army soldiersVPolishcaptivity.

Ioffe, Riga

In the Komarovskaya volost alone, the entire Jewish population was slaughtered, including infants.

Chicherin

RGASPI. F. 5. Op. 1. D. 2000. L. 35.

Chairman of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation A. Ioffe

To the Chairman of the Polish delegation J. Dąbski

All Jewish Red Army prisoners are kept in the same conditions as communists.

In Domb there were cases of prisoners of war being beaten by officers of the Polish army; in Zlochev, prisoners were beaten with iron wire whips from electrical wires.

In the Bobruisk prison, one prisoner of war was forced to clean the latrine with his hands; when he took a shovel, because he did not understand the order given in Polish, the legionnaire hit him on the arm with the butt, which is why he could not raise his arms for 3 weeks.

Instructor Myshkina, captured near Warsaw, testified that she was raped by two officers who beat her and took away her clothes...

The Red Army field theater performer Topolnitskaya, captured near Warsaw, reveals that she was interrogated by drunken officers; she claims that she was beaten with rubber bands and hung from the ceiling by her legs.

Not allowing even the thought of the possibility of similar conditions of existence for Polish prisoners of war in Russia and Ukraine, even on the basis of reciprocity, the Russian and Ukrainian Governments will still, if the Polish Government does not take the necessary measures, will be forced to apply repression to Polish prisoners of war in Russia and Ukraine.

Ioffe

WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 122. Op. 4. D. 71. P. 11. L. 1-5.

RGASPI. F. 5. Op. 1. D. 2001. L. 202-204

Soviet Commission for Prisoners of War Affairs

(Excerpts from the letter)

Two Jews were taken from custody to a room of Polish soldiers, where blankets were thrown over their heads and they were beaten with anything to the accompaniment of singing and dancing to muffle the screams of those being beaten.

The fact remains that in addition to the powerful influence of the Sov. No one can help Russia through repressions against Polish officers and prisoners.

Watering the fields inside the camp with sewage...

During the last epidemic of typhus and dysentery in the Strzhalkovsky camp, up to 300 people died. a day, of course, without any help, because they didn’t even have time to bury them: the constantly replenished gravediggers did not have time to fulfill their duty before they died. In the dead bodies, corpses lay in stacks, eaten by rats, and the serial number of the list of those buried exceeded the 12th thousand, while during the entire German war it reached only 500.

The chronic lack of dressing materials forced the surgical department to not change dressings for 3-4 weeks. The result is a lot of gangrene and amputations.

80-190 people die from typhus and cholera. daily. Patients are placed two on a bed, and illnesses are exchanged. Due to lack of beds, patients are discharged the next day after the temperature drops. New attacks - and the result: in the dead room there are corpses up to the ceiling and mountains around it. The corpses lie for 7-8 days.

Graves two shovels deep were dug in the frozen ground. There are thousands of such graves.

AVP RF.F.384.Op.1.D.7.P.2.L.38-43 vol.

Camp survey results

In the Shchelkovo camp, prisoners of war are forced to carry their own excrement on themselves instead of horses. They carry both plows and harrows.

AVP RF.F.0384.Op.8.D.18921.P.210.L.54-59.

AVP RF.F.0122.Op.5.D.52.P.105a.L.61-66.

Report of Moisei Yakovlevich Klibanov, who returned from Polish captivity

As a Jew I was persecuted at every turn.

24/5-21 years. Minsk.

RGASPI. F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.48-49.

Report of Ilya Tumarkin, who returned from Polish captivity

First of all: when we were taken prisoner, the slaughter of Jews began, and I was spared death by some strange accident. The next day we were driven on foot to Lublin, and this transition was a real Golgotha ​​for us. The bitterness of the peasants was so great that the little boys threw stones at us. Accompanied by curses and abuse, we arrived in Lublin at the feeding station, and here the most shameless beating of Jews and Chinese began...

RGASPI.F.63.Op.1.D.199.L.46-47.

From the statement of captured Red Army soldiers

former camp Strzhalkovo

now 125th work department. Warsaw, citadel

The prisoners in the camp were deprived of all clothing and wore Adam costumes...

He (Lieutenant Malinovsky), as a sadist, morally corrupt, enjoyed our torment of hunger, cold and illness. Besides this, it's time. Malinovsky walked around the camp, accompanied by several corporals who had wire lashes in their hands, and whoever he liked ordered to lie down in a ditch, and the corporals beat as much as was ordered; if the beaten one moaned or begged for mercy, it was time. Malinovsky took out his revolver and fired.

If the sentries (posterunki) shot the prisoners then. Malinowski gave 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks as a reward. The following phenomena could be observed more than once: a group led by por. Malinovsky climbed onto machine gun towers and from there fired at defenseless people driven like a herd behind a fence

Originally signed:

Martinkevich Ivan, Kurolapov, Zhuk, Posakov,

Vasily Bayubin

WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 384. Op. 1. P. 2. D. 6. L. 58-59 pp.

Mr. Chairman of the Polish delegation

Russian-Ukrainian-Polish Mixed Commission

There were cases when prisoners of war were not allowed out of their barracks for 14 hours; people were forced to send their natural needs into cooking pots, from which they then had to eat...

WUA of the Russian Federation. F. 188. Op. 1. P. 3. D. 21. L. 214-217.

SupremeemergencycommissionerByaffairs of struggleWithepidemicsColonel of Medical Service Professor Dr.E. Godlevskymilitaryto the Minister of PolandTO. SosnkovskyOprisoners of warXVPulawahAndWadowice

Top secret

Mister Minister!

I consider it a duty of my conscience to bring to the attention of Mr. Minister my observations that I made in some of the camps and places of deployment of prisoners of war that I visited. I am forced to do this by the feeling that the situation existing there is simply inhuman and contrary not only to all hygiene requirements, but also to culture in general.

Here are the facts: during my stay in Pulawy on Sunday, November 28, I was informed that in the bathhouse that the Commissariat for the Fight against Epidemics installed in the local barracks, several prisoners were dying every day. Therefore, I went at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, accompanied by doctors, captain Dr. Dadey and lieutenant Dr. Vuychitsky, to the indicated bathhouse and found on a table used for folding things a corpse, next to which other prisoners were undressing for bathing. In another room of the same bathhouse, a second corpse and two people in agony lay in the corner. The prisoners in the bathhouse were trembling with their appearance: they were so hungry, exhausted and exhausted.

The head of the camp, Major Khlebovsky, in a conversation with me, said that the prisoners were so unbearable that “from the dung heap that is in the camp,” they constantly chose potato peelings to eat: therefore, he was forced to post a guard near the dung. However, he argues that this is not enough, and believes that this manure heap will need to be surrounded with barbed wire to protect the waste dumped there.

There were 4 days during which people were not given food at all.

It is completely unacceptable for dying people to be dragged into a bathhouse, and the corpses then carried to hospital beds with the sick.

We need to feed the prisoners better, since the situation that exists now, for example in Pulawy, simply means starvation of the people we took prisoner. If the previous situation there remains, then, as is clear from the figures given above, in 111 days everyone in the camp in Puławy will die out.

...Please believe me, Mr. Minister, that the motive for this letter was not a desire to criticize the military authorities or your government. I know well that the concept of war is associated with various difficult trials for people; I have been observing them for 6 years. But as a Pole and a person who has been working in the oldest Polish school for 19 years, I perceive with pain what I see in our camps of prisoners who are unarmed and today can no longer harm us.

CAW. Oddzial I Sztabu MSWojskowych. 1.300.7.118.

№ 1462 Inf. III. C.1/2 22 g.

To the office of the Minister of Military Affairs

... The camp in Tukholi is especially famous, called the “death camp” by internees (about 22,000 prisoners of the Red Army died in this camp).

BossIIDepartment of the General Staff Matushevsky, lieutenant colonel attached to the General Staff.

CAW. Oddzial II SG. I.303.4.2477.

P. S. Was it not this confession of a high-ranking Polish official that turned out to be the reason for the retaliatory measures of the USSR Government when in 1940 (according to documents recently declassified by the Kremlin) they were executed exactly22005 Polish officers?!

(These and other unknown materials about Stalin’s time will see the light in the book I promised “STALIN and CHRIST”, which will be an unexpected continuation of the book “HOW WE KILLED STALIN”. The delay in publication is due to the fact that only recently it was possible to buy out the archives, without which the new book would not be possible would make sense)

(mostly captured officers of the Polish army) on the territory of the USSR during the Second World War.

The name comes from small village Katyn, located 14 kilometers west of Smolensk, in the area of ​​the Gnezdovo railway station, near which mass graves of prisoners of war were first discovered.

As evidenced by documents transferred to the Polish side in 1992, the executions were carried out in accordance with the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940.

According to an extract from minutes No. 13 of the Politburo meeting of the Central Committee, more than 14 thousand Polish officers, police officers, officials, landowners, factory owners and other “counter-revolutionary elements” who were in camps and 11 thousand prisoners in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus were sentenced to death.

Prisoners of war from the Kozelsky camp were shot in the Katyn forest, not far from Smolensk, Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky - in nearby prisons. As follows from a secret note from KGB Chairman Shelepin sent to Khrushchev in 1959, a total of about 22 thousand Poles were killed then.

In 1939, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army crossed the eastern border of Poland and Soviet troops captured, according to various sources, from 180 to 250 thousand Polish military personnel, many of whom, mostly ordinary soldiers, were later released. 130 thousand military personnel and Polish citizens, whom the Soviet leadership considered “counter-revolutionary elements,” were imprisoned in the camps. In October 1939, residents of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were liberated from the camps, and more than 40 thousand residents of Western and Central Poland were transferred to Germany. The remaining officers were concentrated in the Starobelsky, Ostashkovsky and Kozelsky camps.

In 1943, two years after the occupation of the western regions of the USSR by German troops, reports appeared that NKVD officers had shot Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. For the first time, the Katyn graves were opened and examined by the German doctor Gerhard Butz, who headed the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center.

On April 28-30, 1943, an International Commission consisting of 12 forensic medicine specialists from a number of European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Croatia, Holland, Slovakia, Romania, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Czech Republic) worked in Katyn. Both Dr. Butz and the international commission concluded that the NKVD was involved in the execution of captured Polish officers.

In the spring of 1943, a technical commission of the Polish Red Cross worked in Katyn, which was more cautious in its conclusions, but the facts recorded in its report also implied the guilt of the USSR.

In January 1944, after the liberation of Smolensk and its environs, the Soviet “Special Commission to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution of prisoners of war Polish officers in the Katyn Forest by the Nazi invaders” worked in Katyn, headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army, academician Nikolai Burdenko. During the exhumation, examination of material evidence and autopsy of corpses, the commission found that the executions were carried out by the Germans no earlier than 1941, when they occupied this area of ​​the Smolensk region. The Burdenko Commission accused the German side of shooting the Poles.

Question about the Katyn tragedy for a long time remained open; The leadership of the Soviet Union did not recognize the fact of the execution of Polish officers in the spring of 1940. According to the official version, in 1943 the German side used the mass grave for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union to prevent the surrender German soldiers captured and attract the peoples of Western Europe to participate in the war.

After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, they returned to the Katyn case again. In 1987, after the signing of the Soviet-Polish Declaration on Cooperation in the Fields of Ideology, Science and Culture, a Soviet-Polish commission of historians was created to investigate this issue.

The Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the USSR (and then the Russian Federation) was entrusted with the investigation, which was conducted simultaneously with the Polish prosecutor's investigation.

On April 6, 1989, a funeral ceremony took place to transfer symbolic ashes from the burial site of Polish officers in Katyn to be transferred to Warsaw. In April 1990, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev handed over to Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski lists of Polish prisoners of war transported from the Kozelsky and Ostashkov camps, as well as those who had left the Starobelsky camp and were considered executed. At the same time, cases were opened in the Kharkov and Kalinin regions. On September 27, 1990, both cases were combined into one by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

On October 14, 1992, the personal representative of Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to Polish President Lech Walesa copies of archival documents about the fate of Polish officers who died on the territory of the USSR (the so-called “Package No. 1”).

Among the transferred documents, in particular, was the protocol of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 5, 1940, at which it was decided to propose punishment to the NKVD.

On February 22, 1994, a Russian-Polish agreement “On burials and places of memory of victims of wars and repressions” was signed in Krakow.

On June 4, 1995, a memorial sign was erected in Katyn Forest at the site of the execution of Polish officers. 1995 was declared the Year of Katyn in Poland.

In 1995, a protocol was signed between Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Poland, according to which each of these countries independently investigates crimes committed on their territory. Belarus and Ukraine provided the Russian side with their data, which was used in summing up the results of the investigation by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

On July 13, 1994, the head of the investigative group of the GVP Yablokov issued a resolution to terminate the criminal case on the basis of paragraph 8 of Article 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR (due to the death of the perpetrators). However, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation canceled Yablokov's decision three days later, and assigned further investigation to another prosecutor.

As part of the investigation, more than 900 witnesses were identified and questioned, more than 18 examinations were carried out, during which thousands of objects were examined. More than 200 bodies were exhumed. During the investigation, all people who worked in government agencies at that time were interrogated. The director of the Institute of National Remembrance, Deputy Prosecutor General of Poland, Dr. Leon Keres, was notified of the results of the investigation. In total, the file contains 183 volumes, of which 116 contain information constituting a state secret.

The Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation reported that during the investigation of the Katyn case, the exact number of people who were kept in the camps “and in respect of whom decisions were made” was established - just over 14 thousand 540 people. Of these, more than 10 thousand 700 people were kept in camps on the territory of the RSFSR, and 3 thousand 800 people were kept in Ukraine. The death of 1 thousand 803 people (of those held in the camps) was established, the identities of 22 people were identified.

On September 21, 2004, the Main Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation again, now finally, terminated criminal case No. 159 on the basis of paragraph 4 of part 1 of Article 24 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation (due to the death of the perpetrators).

In March 2005, the Polish Sejm demanded that Russia recognize the mass executions of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest in 1940 as genocide. After this, relatives of the victims, with the support of the Memorial society, joined the fight for recognition of those shot as victims. political repression. The Main Military Prosecutor's Office does not see repression, answering that “the actions of a number of specific high-ranking officials of the USSR are qualified under paragraph “b” of Article 193-17 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1926) as an abuse of power, which had grave consequences in the presence of particularly aggravating circumstances, 21.09 In 2004, the criminal case against them was terminated on the basis of clause 4, part 1, article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation due to the death of the perpetrators."

The decision to terminate the criminal case against the perpetrators is secret. The military prosecutor's office classified the events in Katyn as ordinary crimes, and classified the names of the perpetrators on the grounds that the case contained documents constituting state secrets. As a representative of the Main Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation stated, out of 183 volumes of the "Katyn Case", 36 contain documents classified as "secret", and in 80 volumes - "for official use". Therefore, access to them is closed. And in 2005, employees of the Polish prosecutor's office were familiarized with the remaining 67 volumes.

The decision of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation to refuse to recognize those executed as victims of political repression was appealed in 2007 in the Khamovnichesky Court, which confirmed the refusals.

In May 2008, relatives of the Katyn victims filed a complaint with the Khamovnichesky Court in Moscow against what they considered to be an unjustified termination of the investigation. On June 5, 2008, the court refused to consider the complaint, arguing that district courts do not have jurisdiction to consider cases that contain information constituting state secrets. The Moscow City Court recognized this decision as legal.

The cassation appeal was transferred to the Moscow District Military Court, which rejected it on October 14, 2008. On January 29, 2009, the decision of the Khamovnichesky Court was supported by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

Since 2007, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) from Poland began to receive claims from relatives of Katyn victims against Russia, which they accuse of failing to conduct a proper investigation.

In October 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) accepted for consideration a complaint in connection with the refusal of Russian legal authorities to satisfy the claim of two Polish citizens, who are descendants of Polish officers executed in 1940. The son and grandson of Army officers reached the Strasbourg court Polish Jerzy Yanovets and Anthony Rybovsky. Polish citizens justify their appeal to Strasbourg by the fact that Russia is violating their right to a fair trial by not complying with the provision of the UN Human Rights Convention, which obliges countries to ensure the protection of life and explain every case of death. The ECHR accepted these arguments, taking the complaint of Yanovets and Rybovsky into proceedings.

In December 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decided to consider the case as a matter of priority, and also sent a number of questions Russian Federation.

At the end of April 2010, Rosarkhiv, on the instructions of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, for the first time posted on its website electronic samples of original documents about the Poles executed by the NKVD in Katyn in 1940.

On May 8, 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev handed over to the Polish side 67 volumes of criminal case No. 159 on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn. The transfer took place at a meeting between Medvedev and acting President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski in the Kremlin. The President of the Russian Federation also handed over a list of materials for individual volumes. Previously, materials from a criminal case had never been transferred to Poland - only archival data.

In September 2010, as part of the execution by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation of the Polish side's request for legal assistance, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation transferred to Poland another 20 volumes of materials from the criminal case on the execution of Polish officers in Katyn.

In accordance with the agreement between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, the Russian side continues to work on declassifying materials from the Katyn case, which was conducted by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office. December 3, 2010 at General Prosecutor's Office The Russian Federation transferred another significant batch of archival documents to Polish representatives.

On April 7, 2011, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office handed over to Poland copies of 11 declassified volumes of the criminal case on the execution of Polish citizens in Katyn. The materials contained requests from the main research center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, certificates of criminal records and burial places of prisoners of war.

As Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika reported on May 19, Russia has practically completed the transfer to Poland of the materials of the criminal case initiated upon the discovery of mass graves of the remains of Polish military personnel near Katyn (Smolensk region). Accessed May 16, 2011, Polish side.

In July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) declared admissible two complaints by Polish citizens against the Russian Federation related to the closure of the case of the execution of their relatives near Katyn, in Kharkov and in Tver in 1940.

The judges decided to combine two lawsuits filed in 2007 and 2009 by relatives of the deceased Polish officers into one proceeding.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

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

During the partition of Poland, up to half a million Polish citizens were captured by the Red Army. Most of them were soon released, and 130,242 people were taken into NKVD camps, including both members of the Polish army and others whom the leadership of the Soviet Union considered “suspicious” because of their desire to restore Polish independence. The military personnel of the Polish army were divided: the senior officers were concentrated in three camps: Ostashkovsky, Kozelsky and Starobelsky.

And on March 3, 1940, the head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria suggested that the Politburo of the Central Committee destroy all these people, since “They are all sworn enemies of the Soviet government, filled with hatred for Soviet system." In fact, according to the ideology that existed in the USSR at that time, all nobles and representatives of wealthy circles were declared class enemies and subject to destruction. That's why everything officers The Polish army was given a death sentence, which was soon carried out.

Then the war between the USSR and Germany began and Polish units began to form in the USSR. Then the question arose about the officers who were in these camps. Soviet officials responded vaguely and evasively. And in 1943, the Germans found the burial places of “missing” Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. The USSR accused the Germans of lying and after the liberation of this area, a Soviet commission headed by N.N. Burdenko worked in the Katyn Forest. The conclusions of this commission were predictable: they blamed the Germans for everything.

Subsequently, Katyn more than once became the subject of international scandals and high-profile accusations. In the early 90s, documents were published that confirmed that the execution in Katyn was carried out by decision of the highest Soviet leadership. And on November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation, by its decision, admitted the guilt of the USSR in the Katyn massacre. Seems like enough has been said. But it’s too early to draw a conclusion. Until a full assessment of these atrocities is given, until all the executioners and their victims are named, until the Stalinist legacy is overcome, until then we will not be able to say that the case of the execution in the Katyn Forest, which occurred in the spring of 1940, is closed.

Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 5, 1940, which determined the fate of the Poles. It states that “the cases of 14,700 former Polish officers, officials, landowners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, siege officers and jailers in prisoner-of-war camps, as well as the cases of 11 people arrested and in prisons in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus 000 members various espionage and sabotage organizations, former landowners, factory owners, former Polish officers, officials and defectors - to be considered in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution."

The remains of General M. Smoravinsky.

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

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

Identity card of chaplain (military priest) Zelkowski, killed in Katyn.

Members of the International Commission interview the local population.

Local resident Parfen Gavrilovich Kiselev talks with a delegation of the Polish Red Cross.

N. N. Burdenko

The commission headed by N.N. Burdenko.

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

Chief Katyn executioner: V. I. Blokhin.

Hands tied with rope.

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

Polish prisoners of war.

An international commission examines the corpses.

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

Polish Order on the found remains.

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

An excavated common grave.

The corpses were stacked in stacks.

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

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

Based on materials from http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_ %D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB

(Visited 331 times, 1 visits today)

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, thousands of captured Polish citizens, mostly officers, were shot by the Soviet NKVD over the course of several weeks. The executions, the decision of 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.

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, released in 2004 in connection with the closure of the official investigation, the NKVD opened cases against 14,542 Poles, while the deaths of 1,803 people were documented.

The Poles, executed in the spring of 1940, were captured or arrested a year earlier among (according to various sources) from 125 to 250 thousand Polish military personnel and civilians, whom the Soviet authorities, after the occupation of the eastern territories of Poland in the fall of 1939, considered “unreliable” and were moved to 8 specially created camps on the territory of the USSR. Most of them were soon either released home, or sent to the Gulag or to settlement in Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, or (in the case of residents of the western regions of Poland) 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, participants in uncovered counter-revolutionary rebel organizations, defectors, etc.”, the head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria proposed to be considered “inveterate, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power” and apply They are subject to the highest penalty - 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, in the Starobelsky camp near Kharkov - 3,820, in the Ostashkovsky camp (Kalinin, now Tver region) - 6,311 people, in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus - 7 305 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 into the executions began. The fact that the German field police were the first to present evidence of the guilt of the NKVD in 1943 predetermined the attitude towards this investigation in the USSR. Moscow decided that it would be most plausible to blame the fascists themselves for the execution, especially since during the execution the NKVD officers used Walthers and other weapons that fired German-made cartridges.

After the liberation of the Smolensk region by 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 the Warsaw Pact countries until 1990. The Soviet side made accusations regarding Katyn even after the end of the war as part of Nuremberg trials, however, it was not possible to provide convincing evidence of the Germans’ guilt; as a result, this episode did not appear in the indictment.

Confessions and apologies
In April 1990, Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski came to Moscow on an official visit. 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 Soviet state security officers. On April 13, 1990, TASS published a statement that, in part, read: “The identified archival materials taken together 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 - Vesti.Ru) and their henchmen. The Soviet side, expressing deep regret in connection with Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism."

Mikhail Gorbachev gave Jaruzelski lists of officers sent to 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 90s, during a visit to Warsaw, Russian President Boris Yeltsin apologized to the Poles. Representatives 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 repression was opened in Katyn, common not only to the Poles, but also to Soviet citizens who were shot by the NKVD in the same Katyn forest.

At the end of 2004, the investigation opened in 1990 was terminated by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation on the basis of clause 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 transferred to the Polish side, since the remaining 116, according to the military prosecutor, contain state secrets. Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in 2009.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an article published in the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza on the eve of a working visit in August 2009: “Shadows of the past can no longer darken today, and especially tomorrow, cooperation. Our duty to the departed, to history itself, is to do everything “In order to rid Russian-Polish relations of the burden of mistrust and prejudice that we inherited, turn the page and start writing a new one.”

According to Putin, “the people of Russia, whose fate was distorted by the totalitarian regime, well understand the heightened feelings of the Poles associated with Katyn, where thousands of Polish military personnel are buried.” “We must together preserve the memory of the victims of this crime,” the Russian Prime Minister urged. The head of the Russian government is confident that “the Katyn and Mednoe memorials, as well as the tragic fate of Russian soldiers taken captive by Poland during the 1920 war, should become symbols of common grief and mutual forgiveness.”

In February 2010, Vladimir Putin visited his Polish colleague Donald Tusk on April 7, where memorial events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre will be held. Tusk accepted the invitation, and Lech Walesa, the first prime minister of post-communist Poland Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as well as family members of the victims of 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 in Russia be recognized 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 references to the fact that the current authorities are not responsible for the crimes of the Stalinist regime. The termination of the case, and especially the fact that the resolution to terminate it, along with other documents, was considered secret and was not made public, only added fuel to the fire.

After the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office, Poland began its own prosecutorial investigation" massacre 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 gave the order for the execution, the names of the executioners, and also give a legal assessment of the acts of the Stalinist regime.

Relatives of some officers who died in the Katyn Forest appealed to the Main Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation in 2008 with a demand to consider the possibility of rehabilitating those executed. The GVP refused, and later the Khamovnichesky Court rejected the complaint against its actions. Now the demands of the Poles are being considered by the European Court of Human Rights.