1940 Katyn massacre – the Soviet’s ‘big mistake’

New evidence has surfaced in Russia about the WWII Katyn Crime, revealing that Soviet authorities circulated information internally about the 1940 massacre of Poles in 1953.

The materials are noteworthy, as Moscow only officially acknowledged guilt for the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers in 1990.

The mainly reserve officers were executed by the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) during the Katyn Crime. The shootings took place at several locations across the Soviet Union.

After invading the Soviet Union in 1941, the Germans discovered over 4000 bodies in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. The Russians claimed that the Nazis had carried out the crimes.

The new evidence concerns the 1953 trial of former Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs and Chief of the Secret Police, Lavrentiy Beria, who was put on trial shortly after Stalin's death the same year.

Previously unpublished documents relating to the case have emerged in a book by historian Oleg Mozochin titled The Political Bureau and the Trial of Beria.

One document is a 1953 report sent by Russia's Attorney General Roman Rudenko to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Georgy Malenkov.

The report includes sections of an American report on the Katyn Crime, in which there are alleged quotes made by Beria referring to “a big mistake” that was made concerning Polish officers that were being detained on Soviet territory in 1940.

As it was, this “big mistake” threw the wartime alliance of the Soviet Union and the West up in the air as Hitler sought to capitalise on Soviet guilt. The Nazis unleashed the news in 1943,

Ultimately, however, America and Britain played down the allegations of Soviet guilt, so as not to rupture the alliance. (nh/pg)


Source: IAR