Thursday 29 April 2010

The Ghosts of Katyn Wood


Documents have finally been published that prove, once and for all, that Stalin personally authorised the murder of thousands of captured Polish officers at Katyn Wood and other places in 1940. I never had any doubt about this; I've read biographies of the man and know that nothing of importance in the old Soviet state ever happened without his authorisation. I also know that he personally signed many death lists during the Great Purge.

Still, this is an important development, not for a select band of scholars, who have long had access to the Russian archives, but for the public at large, for Poles in particular. For many years after the massacres the Soviet state was in denial about what happened, blaming the Germans, though they gave the lie to this assertion by refusing to allow the matter to be raised at the Nuremberg Trials of the major Nazi war criminals. Although a new openness began after the collapse of communism it has taken time for the full truth to come out, bound up as the question has been with issues of national pride. It proves once and for all that the assertion of people like Vevgeny Dzhugashvili, the tyrant's grandson, that he was somehow not personally responsible, is disingenuous in the extreme.

It comes at just the right moment, not long after the death of the Polish president, killed on his way to a commemorative ceremony. It's a welcome gesture by Dimitry Medvedev, the Russian president. One can only hope this is the beginning of a better understanding between the two nations, nations that have a long history of mutual animosity despite a common racial identity.

By any definition Katyn was a terrible crime, the massacre of close on 22,000 unarmed prisoners by the agents of the NKVD, the Soviet state security apparatus, the predecessor of the present MGB. One of the documents made public is a note by Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD and one of Stalin's vilest henchmen, whom he once referred to in a joking mood as 'our Himmler.' In this he proposes that the Poles, who included priests, writers, professors and aristocrats as well as military officers, should all be shot. This particular document, which carries Stalin’s signature and a red 'top secret' stamp, is dated March 1940. There are other documents, coming after the Stalin era, showing that the Soviets were determined to keep the matter secret.

Responsibility was finally admitted by Mikhail Gorbachev only in 1990, when he expressed his 'profound regret', a bold gesture by the one decent man the communist state ever produced. But for history, for future generations, tangible proof is in every way better than expressions of regret, no matter how sincere. The ghosts of Kaytn can finally rest.

11 comments:

  1. "It's a welcome gesture by Dimitry Medvedev, the Russian president". The Heroic Government of the mighty Russian Federation have acted with un-paralleled honour in their handling of Katyn and indeed the death of members of the Polish state in the wake of the aeroplane crash.
    Unlike post-Nazi West Germany, The Russian leaders needed no Anglo-American prodding to say and do the honourable thing, after nearly a century of slavery under Bolshevism. President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have done this without for a moment compromising the dignity of the Russian People, and furthermore without resorting to the a-historical censorship of free speech that persists in Germany and Austria to this very moment.
    As Enoch Powell said, "Of all the nations of Europe, Britain and Russia are the only ones, though for opposite reasons, which have this thing in common: that they can be defeated in the decisive land battle and still survive. This characteristic, which Russia owes to her immensity, Britain owes to her moat". Russia needs our support and we need Russian support--what Russia doesn't need, is the most racialist Foreign Secretary in the history of the Realm provoking Ukrainian fascists in their military aims against The Russian Federation.

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  2. Thanks, Garrett; I wholly agree.

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  3. Indeed, I only wish Miliband could be sent to a Gulag for the speech he made at Sevastopol two years ago. He's the worst Foreign Secretary in history.

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  4. Yes, a point I've made before. How wretched it is to see this mediocrity, this Banana Man, stand where once stood the likes of Palmerston.

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  5. Indeed, I don't use the terms 'best in history' nor 'worst in history' lightly. I know a little something about Foreign Secretaries, and you Mr. Milibananna are the worst. You are a fraud, you are a racialist, you are incompetent, and you are dangerous.

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  6. Mind you, I was never fond of Palmserston as Lord Derby wasn't--but for all our disagreements he was a great man, as a man, and a prolific man as a Foreign Secretary.

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  7. He was the giant of the nineteenth century. That does not mean to say that I approve of all of his actions, of course.

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  8. That's quite right. He was to the 1850s what Churcihll was to the 1940s....the difference is that I supported Churchill. You see I'm a Derby/Disraeli chap...but this goes without saying.

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  9. Hasn't every nation got its own Katyn, either on the giving side or the receiving side, maybe both? History teaches us many things, one important one for me is the evil that lies in the soul of every nation, group or tribe!

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  10. The capacity for evil, that is certainly true, jaycee.

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