Katyn massacre

• 1. Invasion And Captivity

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  On the 17th of September 1939, the Red Army advanced into Poland with little resistance. Polish forces under orders from their own government did not engage the Soviet troops. The invasion resulted in the capture of between 250,000 and 454,700 Polish soldiers and policemen. Most prisoners were freed or escaped quickly, but 125,000 remained imprisoned in camps run by the NKVD. These camps included Kozelsk at the Optina Monastery, Ostashkov on Stolobny Island near Lake Seliger, and Starobilsk. By November 1939, the NKVD held about 40,000 Polish prisoners of war. Of these, roughly 8,000 to 8,500 were officers and warrant officers. Another 6,000 to 6,500 were police officers. The remaining 25,000 were soldiers and non-commissioned officers assigned to forced labor. On the 19th of September 1939, Lavrentiy Beria ordered the creation of a Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees. This body managed the transport of Poles to camps in western Russia.

• 2. The Execution Order

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  On the 5th of March 1940, six members of the Soviet Politburo signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish nationalists and counterrevolutionaries. Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Mikhail Kalinin all signed the document. The order targeted prisoners kept in camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus. Historian Gerhard Weinberg noted that Stalin wanted to deprive a future Polish military of its talent. The executions began after the 3rd of April 1940. A total of 21,857 Polish internees and prisoners were executed according to declassified documents from 1990. Of these, 14,552 were prisoners of war from three main camps. Another 7,305 were held in prisons in western Byelorussia and Ukraine. About 4,421 came from Kozelsk camp. Another 3,820 came from Starobelsk. Six thousand three hundred eleven came from Ostashkov. The remaining 7,305 were killed in various prisons across the region.

• 3. Mass Graves Discovery

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  In early 1943, German officer Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff received reports about mass graves near Katyn Forest. He passed these reports to his superiors in Berlin by March or April 1943. On the 13th of April 1943, Reichssender Berlin broadcast news of the discovery to the world. The broadcast charged the Soviets with carrying out the massacre in 1940. Joseph Goebbels used this discovery as propaganda to drive a wedge between Poland and its Western Allies. Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it requested an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Soviet Union claimed that Nazi forces had killed the victims during their advance westward. NKVD operatives Vsevolod Merkulov and Sergei Kruglov issued a report on 10, the 11th of January 1944 concluding that German soldiers shot the officers. This cover-up operation included destroying evidence and threatening witnesses who disagreed with the official line.

• 4. Western Denial And Silence

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  On the 24th of April 1943, the British government pressured the Poles to withdraw their request for a Red Cross investigation. Winston Churchill assured Stalin that any such investigation would be a fraud. Unofficial UK documents concluded Soviet guilt was a near certainty, but the alliance remained more important than moral issues. In the United States, Navy Lieutenant Commander George Earle produced a report in 1944 concluding the massacre was committed by the Soviet Union. President Franklin D. Roosevelt rejected the conclusion and ordered the report suppressed. Earle spent the rest of the war in American Samoa. Documents released in September 2012 revealed that U.S. POWs Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr sent coded messages indicating they saw proof implicating the Soviets. Major General Clayton Lawrence Bissell destroyed Van Vliet's 1945 report. Washington kept this information secret to appease Stalin during the war against Nazi Germany. The Madden Committee investigated the matter from 1951 to 1952, concluding that NKVD forces killed over 4,000 Polish officers captured in 1939.

• 5. Cold War Censorship

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  In Poland, pro-Soviet authorities covered up the matter following the war. Katyn became a forbidden topic in the Polish People's Republic. Government censorship suppressed all references to the crime. Even mentioning the atrocity was dangerous. Democracy groups like the Workers' Defence Committee defied censorship in the late 1970s despite arrests and beatings. In 1981, Solidarity erected a memorial with the inscription Katyn, 1940. Police confiscated it and replaced it with an official monument blaming Hitlerite fascism. In the Soviet Union, KGB head Alexander Shelepin proposed destroying documents related to the massacre on the 3rd of March 1959. His note to Nikita Khrushchev included information about the execution of 21,857 Poles. This document survived and eventually became public. Katyn remained a political taboo until the fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1989. The Soviet Union continued to deny responsibility for decades after the war ended.

• 6. Post-Soviet Revelations

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  On the 13th of April 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the NKVD had executed the Poles. He confirmed two other burial sites similar to Katyn: Mednoye and Piatykhatky. On the 30th of October 1989, a delegation of several hundred Poles visited the Katyn memorial. Zbigniew Brzezinski attended this visit and commented on the symbolic nature of the site. On the 13th of April 1990, the USSR formally expressed profound regret and admitted secret police responsibility. Future Russian president Boris Yeltsin released top-secret documents from Package No. 1 to Polish president Lech Wałęsa in 1990. These documents included Beria's proposal dated the 5th of March 1940 to execute 25,700 Poles signed by Stalin. In November 2010, the Russian State Duma approved a declaration condemning Stalin and other Soviet officials for ordering the massacre. A civil rights group called Memorial said the ruling could lead to court decisions opening up secret documents. Russia handed over copies of 137 of the 183 volumes of unclassified material.

• 7. Modern Geopolitics

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  On the 10th of April 2010, an aircraft carrying Polish president Lech Kaczyński crashed in Smolensk while en route to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre. All 96 people aboard died. The crash prompted conspiracy theories and major echoes in international press. In June 2022, Russia removed the Polish flag from the memorial complex following the invasion of Ukraine. Pro-government activists parked heavy machinery with flags of the Russian Federation outside the Katyn Memorial Cemetery on the 10th of April 2022. On the 28th of June 2022, the Leningradsky Court of Kaliningrad forbade distribution of a book about the crime. It claimed the book rehabilitated Nazism. In April 2023, Russia ordered all Polish flags removed from the site before commemoration. RIA Novosti reported in November 2023 that FSB Department for St. Petersburg handed over unique archival documents claiming Nazi involvement. These documents included testimony of a German soldier who said he took part in burials in early September 1941. In 2021, the Russian Ministry of Culture downgraded the memorial complex at Katyn from federal to regional importance.