What really happened in Katyn. Katyn tragedy: who actually shot the Polish officers. Falsification of archival documents

First, you need to understand how did Polish officers in the 40s end up in a place like Katyn? On September 17, 1939, under an agreement with Germany, the Soviet Union launched an offensive against Poland. It is worth noting here that with this offensive the USSR set itself a very pragmatic task - to return its previously lost lands - Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which our country lost in the Russian-Polish war in 1921, as well as to prevent the proximity of the Nazi invaders to our borders. And it was thanks to this campaign that the reunification of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples began within the borders in which they exist today. Therefore, when someone says that Stalin = Hitler only because they conspired to divide Poland among themselves, then this is only an attempt to play on a person’s emotions. We did not divide Poland, but only returned our ancestral territories, while at the same time trying to protect ourselves from an external aggressor.

During this offensive, we regained Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and about 150 thousand Poles dressed in military uniform were captured by the Red Army. Here, again, it is worth noting that representatives of the lower class were immediately released, and later, in 1941, 73 thousand Poles were transferred to the Polish general Anders, who fought against the Germans. We still had that part of the prisoners who did not want to fight against the Germans, but also refused to cooperate with us.

Polish prisoners taken by the Red Army

Today there are 2 versions of the events of those days:

• Polish officers were killed by German fascists between September and December 1941;


• The Polish “flower of the nation” was shot by Soviet soldiers in May 1940.

Remains of executed Polish officers

• the corpses of the Polish officers had a high degree of preservation, which did not correspond to their being in the ground for three whole years;


• water got into grave No. 5, and if the Poles had really been shot by the NKVD, then within three years the corpses would have begun to undergo adipocyration (the transformation of soft parts into a gray-white sticky mass) of internal organs, but this did not happen;


• surprisingly good preservation of shape (the fabric on the corpses did not decay; the metal parts were somewhat rusty, but in some places retained their shine; the tobacco in the cigarette cases was not spoiled, although over 3 years of lying in the ground both the tobacco and the fabric should have suffered greatly from dampness) ;


• Polish officers were shot with German-made revolvers;


• the witnesses interviewed by the Nazis were not direct eyewitnesses, and their testimony was too vague and contradictory.

“The members of the international commission - all, I note, except the Swiss expert, from countries either occupied by the Nazis or their satellites - were brought by the Nazis to Katyn on April 28, 1943. And already on April 30, they were taken out of there on a plane that landed not in Berlin, but at a provincial intermediate Polish airfield in Biała Podlaski, where the experts were taken to a hangar and forced to sign a completed report. And if in Katyn the experts argued and doubted the objectivity of the evidence presented to them by the Germans, here, in the hangar, they unquestioningly signed what was required. It was obvious to everyone that the document had to be signed, otherwise they might not have made it to Berlin. Later other experts spoke about this.”

Katyn. Smolensk Spring 1943. German doctor Butz demonstrates to a commission of experts documents found on murdered Polish officers. In the second photo: Italian and Hungarian “experts” examine the corpse.

• the first 3 pages were printed on one typewriter, and the last on another;


• the font of the last page is found on a number of obviously authentic NKVD letters from the years 39-40, and the fonts of the first three pages are not found in any of the authentic NKVD letters of that time identified to date [from later expert opinions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation].

The second version of events is primarily based on the one led by the chief military surgeon, Academician N. Burdenko, in 1944. It is worth noting here that after Goebbels staged a performance in 1943 and forced, on pain of death, forensic experts to sign medical reports beneficial to fascist propaganda, there was no point in Burdenko’s commission to hide anything or hide evidence. In this case, only the truth could save our country.
In particular, the Soviet commission revealed that it was simply impossible to carry out a mass execution of Polish officers without the knowledge of the population. Judge for yourself. In pre-war times, the Katyn Forest was a favorite vacation spot for residents of Smolensk, where their dachas were located, and there were no restrictions on access to these places. It was only with the arrival of the Germans that the first bans on entering the forest appeared, increased patrols were established, and in many places signs began to appear threatening to shoot people entering the forest. In addition, there was even a pioneer camp of Promstrakhkassa nearby. It turned out that there were facts of threats, blackmail and bribery of the local population by the Germans to give them the necessary testimony.

The commission of academician Nikolai Burdenko works in Katyn.

• a very small part of the corpses (20 out of 925) had their hands tied with paper twine, which was unknown to the USSR in May 1940, but was produced only in Germany from the end of that year;


• complete identity of the method of shooting Polish prisoners of war with the method of shooting civilians and Soviet prisoners of war, widely practiced by the Nazi authorities (shot in the back of the head);


• the fabric of clothing, especially overcoats, uniforms, trousers and outer shirts, is well preserved and is very difficult to tear by hand;


• the execution was carried out with German weapons;


• there were absolutely no corpses in a state of putrefactive decay or destruction;


• valuables and documents dated 1941 were found;


• witnesses were found who saw some Polish officers alive in 1941, but who were listed as executed in 1940;


• witnesses were found who saw Polish officers in August-September 1941, working in groups of 15-20 people under the command of the Germans;


• Based on the analysis of injuries, it was decided that in 1943 the Germans performed an extremely insignificant number of autopsies on the corpses of executed Polish prisoners of war.

As can be seen, the Soviet commission presented very significant arguments in its defense. But, despite this, among the accusers of our country, in response, there is a version that Soviet soldiers deliberately shot Polish prisoners with German weapons according to Hitler’s method in order to blame the Germans for their atrocities in the future. Firstly, in May 1940 the war had not yet begun, and no one knew whether it would start at all. And in order to pull off such a cunning scheme, it is necessary to have exact confidence that the Germans will be able to capture Smolensk at all. And if they can capture it, then we must be absolutely sure that, in turn, we will be able to take these lands back from them, so that later we can open the graves in the Katyn Forest and blame ourselves on the Germans. The absurdity of this approach is obvious.

It is interesting that the first accusation against Goebbels (April 13, 1943) came just two months after the end of Battle of Stalingrad(February 2, 1943), which determined the entire further course of the war in our favor. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the final victory of the USSR was only a matter of time. And the Nazis understood this very well. Therefore, accusations from the Germans look like an attempt to take revenge by redirecting

“If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.”
"We do not seek the truth, but the effect"
Joseph Goebbels

During World War II, both sides of the conflict committed many crimes against humanity. Millions of civilians and military personnel died. One of the controversial pages of that history is the execution of Polish officers near Katyn. We will try to find out the truth, which was hidden for a long time by blaming others for this crime.

For more than half a century, the real events in Katyn were hidden from the world community. Today, information on the case is not secret, although opinions on this matter are ambiguous among historians and politicians, as well as among ordinary citizens who participated in the conflict between the countries.

Katyn massacre

For many, Katyn became a symbol of brutal murders. The shooting of Polish officers cannot be justified or understood. It was here, in the Katyn Forest in the spring of 1940, that thousands of Polish officers were killed. The mass murder of Polish citizens was not limited to this place. Documents were made public according to which, during April-May 1940, more than 20 thousand Polish citizens were exterminated in various NKVD camps.

The shooting in Katyn has long complicated Polish-Russian relations. Since 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the State Duma have recognized that the mass murder of Polish citizens in the Katyn Forest was the activity of the Stalinist regime. This was made public in the statement “On the Katyn tragedy and its victims.” However, not all public and political figures in the Russian Federation agree with this statement.

Captivity of Polish officers

Second World War for Poland began on September 1, 1939, when Germany entered its territory. England and France did not enter into conflict, awaiting the outcome of further events. Already on September 10, 1939, USSR troops entered Poland with the official goal of protecting the Ukrainian and Belarusian population of Poland. Modern historiography calls such actions of aggressor countries the “fourth partition of Poland.” Red Army troops occupied the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. By decision, these lands became part of Poland.

The Polish military, defending their lands, could not resist the two armies. They were quickly defeated. Eight camps for Polish prisoners of war were created locally under the NKVD. They are directly related to the tragic event, called the “execution in Katyn.”

In total, up to half a million Polish citizens were captured by the Red Army, most of whom were eventually released, and about 130 thousand people ended up in camps. After a while, some of the ordinary military, natives of Poland, were sent home, more than 40 thousand were transported to Germany, the rest (about 40 thousand) were distributed among five camps:

• Starobelsky (Lugansk) - 4 thousand officers.
• Kozelsky (Kaluga) - 5 thousand officers.
• Ostashkovsky (Tver) - gendarmes and police officers in the amount of 4,700 people.
• allocated for road construction - 18 thousand privates.
• 10 thousand ordinary soldiers were sent to work in the Krivoy Rog basin.

By the spring of 1940, letters to relatives, which had previously been regularly transmitted through the Red Cross, stopped coming from prisoners of war in three camps. The reason for the silence of the prisoners of war was Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which connected the fates of tens of thousands of Poles.

Execution of prisoners

In 1992, a proposal document dated August 3, 1940 from L. Beria to the Politburo was made public, which discussed the issue of shooting Polish prisoners of war. The decision on capital punishment was made on March 5, 1940.

At the end of March, the NKVD completed the development of the plan. Prisoners of war from the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps were taken to Kharkov and Minsk. Former gendarmes and police officers from the Ostashkovsky camp were transported to the Kalinin prison, from which ordinary prisoners were taken in advance. Huge pits were dug not far from the prison (Mednoye village).

In April, prisoners began to be taken out for execution in groups of 350-400. Those sentenced to death assumed that they would be released. Many left in the carriages in high spirits, not even realizing that they would soon die.

How the execution at Katyn took place:

• the prisoners were tied up;
• they threw an overcoat over their heads (not always, only for those who were especially strong and young);
• led to a dug ditch;
• killed with a shot in the back of the head from a Walther or Browning.

It was the latter fact that for a long time indicated that German troops were guilty of crimes against Polish citizens.

Prisoners from the Kalinin prison were killed right in their cells.

From April to May 1940 the following were shot:

• in Katyn - 4421 prisoners;
• in the Starobelsky and Ostashkovsky camps - 10,131;
• in other camps - 7305.

Who was shot in Katyn? Not only career officers were executed, but also lawyers, teachers, engineers, doctors, professors and other representatives of the intelligentsia mobilized during the war.

"Missing" officers

When Germany attacked the USSR, negotiations began between the Polish and Soviet governments regarding joining forces against the enemy. Then they began to search for the officers taken to Soviet camps. But the truth about Katyn was still unknown.

None of the missing officers could be found, and the assumption that they escaped from the camps was unfounded. There was no news or mention of those who ended up in the camps mentioned above.

The officers, or rather their bodies, were found only in 1943. Mass graves of executed Polish citizens were discovered in Katyn.

Investigation of the German side

German troops were the first to discover mass graves in the Katyn Forest. They exhumed the excavated bodies and conducted their investigation.

The exhumation of the bodies was carried out by Gerhard Butz. International commissions were brought in to work in the village of Katyn, which included doctors from German-controlled European countries, as well as representatives of Switzerland and Poles from the Red Cross (Polish). Representatives of the International Red Cross were not present due to a ban by the USSR government.

The German report included the following information about Katyn (the execution of Polish officers):

• As a result of the excavations, eight mass graves were discovered, from which 4,143 people were removed and reburied. Most of the dead were identified. In graves No. 1-7 people were buried in winter clothes (fur jackets, overcoats, sweaters, scarves), and in grave No. 8 - in summer clothes. Also in graves No. 1-7 were found newspaper scraps dating from April-March 1940, and there were no traces of insects on the corpses. This indicated that the execution of Poles in Katyn took place in the cool season, that is, in the spring.
• Many personal belongings were found with the dead; they indicated that the victims were in the Kozelsk camp. For example, letters from home addressed to Kozelsk. Many also had snuff boxes and other items with the inscription “Kozelsk”.
• Tree cuttings showed that they were planted on the graves about three years ago from the time of discovery. This indicated that the pits were filled in in 1940. At this time, the territory was under the control of Soviet troops.
• All Polish officers in Katyn were shot in the back of the head with German-made bullets. However, they were produced in the 20-30s of the 20th century and were exported in large quantities to and Soviet Union.
• The hands of those executed were tied with a cord in such a way that when trying to separate them, the noose was tightened even more. The victims from grave No. 5 had their heads wrapped so that when they tried to make any movement, the noose would strangle the future victim. In other graves, the heads were also tied, but only those who stood out sufficiently physical strength. On the bodies of some of the dead, traces of a tetrahedral bayonet, like a Soviet weapon, were found. The Germans used flat bayonets.
• The commission interviewed local residents and found that in the spring of 1940, a large number of Polish prisoners of war arrived at the Gnezdovo station, who were loaded into trucks and taken towards the forest. The local residents never saw these people again.

The Polish commission, which was present during the exhumation and investigation, confirmed all German conclusions in this case, without finding any obvious traces of document fraud. The only thing the Germans tried to hide about Katyn (the execution of Polish officers) was the origin of the bullets used to carry out the killings. However, the Poles understood that representatives of the NKVD could also have similar weapons.

Since the autumn of 1943, representatives of the NKVD took up the investigation of the Katyn tragedy. According to their version, Polish prisoners of war were engaged in road work, and when the Germans arrived in the Smolensk region in the summer of 1941, they did not have time to evacuate them.

According to the NKVD, in August-September of the same year, the remaining prisoners were shot by the Germans. To hide traces of their crimes, representatives of the Wehrmacht opened the graves in 1943 and removed from them all documents dating from after 1940.

The Soviet authorities prepared a large number of witnesses to their version of events, but in 1990 the surviving witnesses retracted their testimony for 1943.

The Soviet commission, which carried out repeated excavations, falsified some documents, and completely destroyed some of the graves. But Katyn, the history of the tragedy of which haunted Polish citizens, nevertheless revealed its secrets.

Katyn case at the Nuremberg trials

After the war from 1945 to 1946. The so-called Nuremberg trials took place, the purpose of which was to punish war criminals. The Katyn issue was also raised at the trial. The Soviet side blamed German troops for the execution of Polish prisoners of war.

Many witnesses in this case changed their testimony; they refused to support the conclusions of the German commission, although they themselves took part in it. Despite all the attempts of the USSR, the Tribunal did not support the prosecution on the Katyn issue, which actually gave rise to the idea that Soviet troops were guilty of the Katyn massacre.

Official recognition of responsibility for Katyn

Katyn (the shooting of Polish officers) and what happened there have been reviewed by different countries many times. The United States conducted its investigation in 1951-1952; at the end of the 20th century, a Soviet-Polish commission worked on this case; since 1991, the Institute of National Remembrance was opened in Poland.

After the collapse of the USSR in Russian Federation We also took up this issue again. Since 1990, a criminal investigation by the military prosecutor's office began. It received #159. In 2004, the criminal case was dropped due to the death of the accused.

The Polish side put forward a version of the genocide of the Polish people, but the Russian side did not confirm it. The criminal case on the fact of genocide was discontinued.

Today, the process of declassifying many volumes of the Katyn case continues. Copies of these volumes are transferred to the Polish side. The first important documents on prisoners of war in Soviet camps were handed over in 1990 by M. Gorbachev. The Russian side admitted that the Soviet government in the person of Beria, Merkulov and others was behind the crime in Katyn.

In 1992, documents on the Katyn massacre were made public, which were stored in the so-called Presidential Archives. Modern scientific literature recognizes their authenticity.

Polish-Russian relations

The issue of the Katyn massacre appears from time to time in Polish and Russian media. For Poles, it has significant significance in the national historical memory.

In 2008, a Moscow court rejected a complaint about the execution of Polish officers by their relatives. As a result of the refusal, they filed a complaint against the Russian Federation with the European Court. Russia was accused of ineffective investigations, as well as of neglecting the close relatives of the victims. In April 2012, he qualified the execution of prisoners as a war crime, and ordered Russia to pay 10 of the 15 plaintiffs (relatives of 12 officers killed in Katyn) 5 thousand euros each. This was compensation for the plaintiffs' legal costs. It is difficult to say whether the Poles, for whom Katyn has become a symbol of family and national tragedy, achieved their goal.

Official position of the Russian authorities

Modern leaders of the Russian Federation, V.V. Putin and D.A. Medvedev, share the same point of view on the Katyn massacre. They made statements several times condemning the crimes of the Stalinist regime. Vladimir Putin even expressed his assumption, which explained Stalin's role in the murder of Polish officers. In his opinion, the Russian dictator thus took revenge for the defeat in 1920 in the Soviet-Polish war.

In 2010, D. A. Medvedev initiated the publication of documents classified in Soviet times from “package No. 1” on the website of the Russian Archive. The Katyn massacre, the official documents of which are available for discussion, is still not fully resolved. Some volumes of this case still remain classified, but D. A. Medvedev told the Polish media that he condemns those who doubt the authenticity of the documents presented.

On November 26, 2010, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted the document “On the Katyn Tragedy...”. This was opposed by representatives of the Communist Party faction. According to the accepted statement, the Katyn massacre was recognized as a crime that was committed on the direct orders of Stalin. The document also expresses sympathy for the Polish people.

In 2011 official representatives The Russian Federation began to declare its readiness to consider the issue of rehabilitation of the victims of the Katyn massacre.

Memory of Katyn

Among the Polish population, the memory of the Katyn massacre has always remained part of history. In 1972, a committee was created in London by Poles in exile, which began collecting funds for the construction of a monument to the victims of the massacre of Polish officers in 1940. These efforts were not supported by the British government, as they feared a reaction Soviet power.

By September 1976, a monument was opened at the Gunnersberg cemetery, which is located west of London. The monument is a low obelisk with inscriptions on the pedestal. The inscriptions are made in two languages ​​- Polish and English. They say that the monument was built in memory of more than 10 thousand Polish prisoners in Kozelsk, Starobelsk, Ostashkov. They went missing in 1940, and part of them (4,500 people) were exhumed in 1943 near Katyn.

Similar monuments to the victims of Katyn were erected in other countries of the world:

• in Toronto (Canada);
• in Johannesburg (South Africa);
• in New Britain (USA);
• at the Military Cemetery in Warsaw (Poland).

The fate of the 1981 monument at the Military Cemetery was tragic. After installation, it was removed at night by unknown people using a construction crane and machines. The monument was in the form of a cross with the date “1940” and the inscription “Katyn”. Adjoining the cross were two pillars with the inscriptions “Starobelsk” and “Ostashkovo”. At the foot of the monument were the letters “V. P.”, meaning “Eternal Memory”, as well as the coat of arms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the form of an eagle with a crown.

The memory of the tragedy of the Polish people was well illuminated in his film “Katyn” by Andrzej Wajda (2007). The director himself is the son of Jakub Wajda, a career officer who was executed in 1940.

The film was shown in different countries, including in Russia, and in 2008 he was in the top five of the international Oscar award in the category for best foreign film.

The plot of the film is based on a story by Andrzej Mularczyk. The period from September 1939 to the autumn of 1945 is described. The film tells the story of the fate of four officers who ended up in a Soviet camp, as well as their close relatives who do not know the truth about them, although they guess the worst. Through the fate of several people, the author conveyed to everyone what the real story was.

“Katyn” cannot leave the viewer indifferent, regardless of nationality.

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

The name comes from the small village of 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 were captured by Soviet troops, according to different sources, from 180 to 250 thousand Polish troops, many of whom, mostly privates, were then 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.

The question of the Katyn tragedy remained open for a long time; 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, the German side used the mass grave in 1943 for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union, to prevent the surrender of German soldiers and to 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, the relatives of the victims, with the support of the Memorial society, joined the fight for recognition of those executed as victims of 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 Polish Army officers Jerzy Janowiec and Antoni Rybowski reached the Strasbourg court. 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 referred a number of questions to the 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 in 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. On December 3, 2010, the Prosecutor General's Office of 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

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

Missing officers

On August 8, 1941, against the backdrop of the outbreak of war with Germany, Stalin entered into diplomatic relations with his newfound ally, the Polish government in exile. As part of the new treaty, all Polish prisoners of war, especially those captured in 1939 on the territory of the Soviet Union, were granted an amnesty and the right to free movement throughout the territory of the Union. The formation of Anders' army began. However, the Polish government was missing about 15,000 officers who, according to documents, were supposed to be in the Kozelsky, Starobelsky and Yukhnovsky camps. To all the accusations of the Polish General Sikorski and General Anders of violating the amnesty agreement, Stalin replied that all the prisoners were released, but could escape to Manchuria.

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

re-enactment

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

The details also attracted attention. V.V. Kolturovich from Daugavpils outlined his conversation with a woman who, together with fellow villagers, went to look at the opened graves: “I asked her: “Vera, what did people say to each other while looking at the graves?” The answer was the following: “Our careless slobs can’t do that - it’s too neat a job.” Indeed, the ditches were perfectly dug under the cord, the corpses were laid out in perfect piles. The argument, of course, is ambiguous, but we should not forget that according to the documents, the execution of such a huge number of people was carried out in the shortest possible time. The performers simply did not have enough time for this.

Double jeopardy

At the famous Nuremberg Trials on July 1-3, 1946, the Katyn massacre was blamed on Germany and appeared in the indictment of the International Tribunal (IT) in Nuremberg, section III “War Crimes”, about cruel treatment of prisoners of war and military personnel of other countries. Friedrich Ahlens, commander of the 537th regiment, was declared the main organizer of the execution. He also acted as a witness in the retaliatory accusation against the USSR. The tribunal did not support the Soviet accusation, and the Katyn episode is absent from the tribunal’s verdict. All over the world this was perceived as a “tacit admission” by the USSR of its guilt.

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

After Gorbachev admitted the guilt of the USSR, researcher on the Katyn issue Vladimir Abarinov in his work cites the following monologue from the daughter of an NKVD officer: “I’ll tell you what. The order regarding the Polish officers came directly from Stalin. My father said that he saw an authentic document with Stalin’s signature, what should he do? Put yourself under arrest? Or shoot yourself? My father was made a scapegoat for decisions made by others.”

Party of Lavrentiy Beria

The Katyn massacre cannot be blamed on just one person. Nevertheless, the greatest role in this, according to archival documents, was played by Lavrenty Beria, “Stalin’s right hand.” The leader’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, noted the extraordinary influence that this “scoundrel” had on her father. In her memoirs, she said that one word from Beria and a couple of forged documents was enough to determine the fate of future victims. The Katyn massacre was no exception. On March 3, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria suggested that Stalin consider the cases of Polish officers "in a special manner, with the application of capital punishment to them - execution." Reason: “All of them are sworn enemies of the Soviet regime, filled with hatred of the Soviet system.” Two days later, the Politburo issued a decree on the transport of prisoners of war and preparations for execution.

There is a theory about the forgery of Beria’s “Note”. Linguistic analyzes give different results; the official version does not deny Beria’s involvement. However, statements about the falsification of the “note” are still being made.

Frustrated hopes

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

Before being sent to prisoners who sincerely believe that they are being sent to safe place, were vaccinated against typhoid and cholera - apparently to calm them down. Everyone received a packed lunch. But in Smolensk everyone was ordered to prepare to leave: “We have been standing on a siding in Smolensk since 12 o’clock. April 9, getting up in the prison cars and preparing to leave. We are being transported somewhere in cars, what next? Transportation in “crow” boxes (scary). We were taken somewhere in the forest, it looked like a summer cottage…” - this is the last entry in the diary of Major Solsky, who rests today in the Katyn forest. The diary was found during exhumation.

The downside of recognition

On February 22, 1990, the head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, V. Falin, informed Gorbachev about new archival documents found that confirm the guilt of the NKVD in Katyn execution. Falin proposed to urgently formulate a new position of the Soviet leadership in relation to this case and inform the President of the Polish Republic, Wladimir Jaruzelski, about new discoveries in the matter of the terrible tragedy.

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

This is what Valentin Alekseevich Alexandrov, a senior official of the CPSU Central Committee, told Nicholas Bethell: “We do not exclude the possibility of a judicial investigation or even a trial. But you must understand that Soviet public opinion does not entirely support Gorbachev's policy regarding Katyn. We in the Central Committee have received many letters from veterans’ organizations in which we are asked why we are defaming the names of those who were only doing their duty in relation to the enemies of socialism.” As a result, the investigation against those found guilty was terminated due to their death or lack of evidence.

Unresolved issue

The Katyn issue became the main stumbling block between Poland and Russia. When a new investigation into the Katyn tragedy began under Gorbachev, the Polish authorities hoped for a confession of guilt in the murder of all the missing officers, the total number of which was about fifteen thousand. The main attention was paid to the issue of the role of genocide in the Katyn tragedy. However, following the results of the case in 2004, it was announced that it was possible to establish the deaths of 1,803 officers, of whom 22 were identified.

The Soviet leadership completely denied the genocide against the Poles. Prosecutor General Savenkov commented on this as follows: “during the preliminary investigation, at the initiative of the Polish side, the version of genocide was checked, and my firm statement is that there is no basis to talk about this legal phenomenon.” The Polish government was dissatisfied with the results of the investigation. In March 2005, in response to a statement by the Main Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, the Polish Sejm demanded recognition of the Katyn events as an act of genocide. Members of the Polish parliament sent a resolution to the Russian authorities, in which they demanded that Russia “recognize the murder of Polish prisoners of war as genocide” based on Stalin’s personal hostility towards the Poles due to defeat in the 1920 war. In 2006, relatives of the dead Polish officers filed a lawsuit in the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, with the aim of obtaining recognition of Russia in the genocide. The end to this pressing issue for Russian-Polish relations has not yet been reached.

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