The Real Stalin Series: Katyn

GERMANS COMMITTED THE KATYN FOREST MASSACRE

All the evidence I secured showed that the Polish group in London was more interested in doing something against Russia than in doing anything for Poland. This made it easy to understand why they accepted and spread the Goebbels story about the murder of 10,000 Poles in Smolensk. Their unhesitating acceptance of this Nazi propaganda caused the Soviet government to sever relations with the Polish government-in-exile in 1943. It will be remembered that the Germans captured Smolensk on the night of July 15th 1941. Almost two years later Goebbels broadcast to the world that the Russians had killed 10,000 Polish prisoners there, and that their bodies had been found in the Katyn Forest. The Polish government-in-exile immediately gave credence to the Nazi allegation by asking the international Red Cross to investigate. It seemed a preposterous charge. If the Russians had really killed the Poles it would have been known by the people of Smolensk and the Germans would certainly have found out about it almost immediately. It was not the sort of thing that the Germans would have kept quiet about for two years. The Red Army retook Smolensk on September 25, 1943, and the Soviet government immediately instituted an investigation of a massacre.
I visited the Katyn Forest with American, British, Chinese, and French correspondents. Dr. Victor Prozorovsky, Director of the Moscow Institute of Criminal Medical Research, showed me about. The 10,000 bodies had been dug up, and the Russians were systematically examining everything found on them as well as performing autopsies. Eleven doctors were working continuously. I watched some of the autopsies, which were very thorough. The bodies, including the internal organs, were remarkably well preserved. The doctor said that this alone was sufficient to prove the falsity of the charge.
The Russians found letters on the bodies dated after the Germans occupied the city, thus proving that the victims could not had been killed at the time alleged. We talked with a Russian priest whose parish was in the Katyn Forest. He had been driven out of this church by the Germans, and then the building had been surrounded by barbed wire and SS men. The priest declared that the Germans had killed the Poles there. A Russian who had served under the Germans testified that the German authorities had ordered the death of the Polish prisoners. The diary of the Mayor who fled with the Germans contained clear evidence that the Germans had committed the murders. However, the fact which impressed me as much as any other, was that the corpses still had their fine leather boots. I had seen, traveling at the front, that it was general Russian practice to remove the boots of the dead. It seemed unlikely that they would have made an exception in this case, and left 10,000 pairs of good boots behind. Every correspondent who visited Katyn Forest came away convinced that it was another Nazi atrocity.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 99

In 1943, near the railway station of Katyn, in the forest near the village of Kozy Gory, a vast burial ground of several thousand Polish officers was discovered. The Nazis at once declared that this was the work of Soviet hands', while a special commission in Moscow stated that it was simply another example of Nazi brutality. A series of documents have been found in a special section of the Main Soviet Archives which make it plain that Katyn was in fact the work of Beria'a agency, though no single document has yet been found bearing his signature or that of any of his henchmen actually ordering the massacre. The order must either have been destroyed after the act or have been given orally.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 360

Each one of them [Polish officers] had been shot in the back of the neck with a German bullet.
Nekrich and Heller. Utopia in Power. New York: Summit Books, c1986, p. 404

KATYN GRAVES STORY DECLARED GRIM FRAUD
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, June 28.
The story of the mass graves at Katyn, which caused a world sensation two years ago, was a propaganda stunt staged by Goebbels and Ribbentrop to cause a split between Russia and her western allies, says a report received here through special channels that is supported by a message from Oslo tonight. A Himmler close collaborator, SS Brigade Leader Schellenberg, is declared to have given this sensational information during an examination at Allied Headquarters in Germany last Tuesday. He is quoted as saying that 12,000 bodies were taken from German concentration camps and attired in old Polish uniforms to make them appear to be Polish officers.
Tonight a corroborative report was received from Oslo, where Erik Johansen--recently repatriated prisoner from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany--tells an interesting story about German production of false identification documents for bodies in Katyn mass graves.
Johansen says a special section of the concentration camp was completely isolated and strongly guarded by SS men, whereupon forty to sixty Jewish prisoners were picked out to forge the documents. They received the best optical instruments obtainable so the work could be done to perfection. They made passports, letters, etc. and even wallets, which were treated with a special chemical fluid to make them look worn.
Before the German capitulation all machines, instruments and material used were destroyed and the Jewish specialists were killed to prevent the secret from getting out, he said.
New York Times, June 29, 1945 p. 2

Katyn Forest Massacre
from Military-Historical Journal, 1991
by Romyald Sviatec

Who gained more from the murder of the Polish officers?
In order to answer this question, it is necessary to, at least sketchily, clarify the relations of the Germans and the Russians toward the Poles. It is known that the Germans started the war with Poland, as they required Polish lands and Polish workers. From the first days of the occupation, they began to destroy the Polish intellectual elite. The movement of the Russians into the eastern part of Poland had a different character, which was expressed in the note of the Soviet Government handed to the Polish ambassador in Moscow. The Polish-German war exposed the insolvency of the Polish state. In the course of ten days of military (German) operations, Poland lost all of its manufacturing and cultural centers. Warsaw, as a Capital of Poland, did not exist any more. The Polish government fell apart and did not show signs of life. This meant that the Polish state and its government factually ceased to exist.
With this, the agreements that had been concluded between the USSR and Poland were no longer valid--left to itself and abandoned without direction. Poland became a convenient field for all kinds of the accidental and unexpected, capable of threats to the Soviet Union. Because of this, being until then neutral, the Soviet government could not be in different to these facts any more, as also to the fact that the Ukrainians and the White Russians,--being of the same blood (as the Russians)--and living on the territory of Poland, and having been thrown to the mercy of such destiny, remained unprotected.
In view of such a situation, the Soviet government gave an order to the High Command of the Red Army that the army should cross the frontier and take under protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western White Russia. After this took place, the war between Poland and the Soviet Union was officially ended and Poland represented no more of a danger for the USSR....
The situation with the Germans was exactly the opposite. In spite of the fact that the German armies were occupying Poland, the war between the two states was continuing, as some of the Polish army were fighting against the Germans in France and England, and therefore, any Polish officer presented to the Germans a potential danger.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 197-198

Being in Varkut, Camp No. 10, [Romyald Sviatec] met a Major of the German Army who, from 1941, found himself in Smolensk. From him, I found out that it definitely was the Germans who operated several camps for Polish war prisoners. In one conversation, I got interested in his knowing about Katyn. He answered me directly that this was the work of the hands of Germans, as it was in the interests of Germany to commit this massacre.
He was sincerely surprised that the Polish officials were blaming the Russians. The Major stated that a good soldier, especially an officer, must die, if his Motherland is perishing. He stated that after he had fallen to the Russians as a prisoner, he understood very well that he might die, and if that would be his fate, he would accept that as a good German soldier. He also knew the attempt by General Sikorski in Moscow to free the Polish officers and soldiers, which he said would assist the Soviet-Polish agreement. This German major did not, in the slightest, consider his Polish officers' massacre by Germany as a crime. To his way of thinking, these Polish officers represented a danger to the German Reich. This was also the opinion of most of the other German prisoners of war.
In Camp No. 11 in Varkut, I met Vlodzhimir Mandryk, who, before the war and during the period of occupation, worked in the main post office in Smolensk. He absolutely insisted that near Smolensk, from 1940 there were German camps for Polish prisoners of war. He was adamant that the Germans murdered the Poles.
By his account of the period between August and October of 1941, letters to Polish prisoners of war ceased to arrive and be processed by the post office. Any letters that kept on coming to the prisoners, the Germans gave the post office orders to destroy all these letters. Also, at this time, Mandryk recalls the Germans told everyone in Smolensk that the Polish officers were relocated back in Polish territory.
...Amongst the many recollections which I read about Katyn, there was a book by Stanislaw Svjanevich by the name of "In the Shadow of Katyn," and also in the book by Joseph Chapskov, "Upon the Inhuman Earth." I learned that Polish war prisoners were treated very well by the Russians. In 1940, there were three Polish generals in POW camps--Minkewich, Smorovinsly and Bakhaterebur. When these prisoners were departing the camps, the Soviet authorities gave them a farewell banquet, especially for the higher officer corps. The Russians wanted to show the Germans that they are civilized and knew how to treat prisoners. This might be looked upon as having little meaning, but if you lived with the Russians during those hard times of war, you would appreciate the real meaning of that gesture.
The Russians wanted to show the Polish officers that they, the Russians and Poles have one common enemy, therefore, uniting together would be in the interests of everyone. No one can convince me that it was the Russians who murdered these Polish officers. [This was also shown by] the Polish-Russian agreement of 1941 when thousands of Polish prisoners of war were freed from the camps, and the formation on Soviet territory of the Polish army took place.
In July 1952, together with a group of invalids, I was directed into the region of Irkutsk to camp No. 233. Here, I got acquainted with Father Kozera, who showed a great interest in the Katyn massacre. During the eight years we were together in many camps, he accumulated many interesting materials, which brought him to the final conclusion that the Katyn crime was perpetrated by the Germans.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 206-209

...Altogether, I spent nine years in the Soviet Union--two years in exile and seven years in camps. During that time, I went through much, met thousands of interesting people, but I also know that if the Soviets had wanted to get rid of the Polish officers, they would have sent them to the " Novaya Zemlya" to work and thus, be productive.
I am far from praising the Soviet system.... I also do not pretend that I am not guilty of many things. There were people that got into the NKVD and the party who were real enemies of the system. They got rid of many dedicated people. But I cannot keep quiet on this Katyn event. I must defend the Russian people, if only to correct the existing lie that is being nurtured and promoted to this day about the Katyn massacre.
Even though I do not like the communist system, I must admit that this system has shown decency and follows the established law and order of the system....
With all the documentation that I have in my hands, I state categorically that the accusations by the Polish government in London, England were made solely for political reasons.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 206-211

Katyn Forest Massacre-- Conclusion of Romyald Sviatec
In conclusion of this sad history, I would like to advise the Poles that they once-and-for-all discontinue and stop the insults regarding their Eastern neighbor, since the borders of Poland have been enlarged as the result of the Second World War, for the benefit of Poland.
Every true Pole must not only be satisfied with this, but also appreciate the country which was responsible for saving Poland from practical extinction. I returned from the Camp in 1956 and visited our Western territories. Only then did I realize the economical importance of the new Polish borders and in my heart I forgave the Soviets for their jailing me, because it was Stalin and the USSR which brought and formed these new important borders for Poland.
For all those who still stubbornly dream about Poland from the Baltic to the Black Sea, I suggest that they read the letter by Winston Churchill to the Poles. It calls for those Poles who are not aware of history or what it is they want, nor what they now possess, and do not wish to know or admit that it was the Soviet Union through its sacrifices of many millions of its people and soldiers, so the Poles could have their own independent state--which they were never able to gain by their own strength:
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 222

[In a November 7, 1944 letter Churchill stated:]
1. ...
2. ...
3. Moreover, without the Russian army, Poland would have been destroyed or brought into slavery and the Polish nation itself would have been wiped off the face of the earth. Without the valiant Red Army, no other power on earth would have been able to accomplish this. Poland now will be an independent, free country in the heart of Europe with wonderful and better territories than the one she had before. And if she will not accept this, Britain removes from itself all obligations and lets the Poles themselves work out their own agreement with the Soviets.
4. I don’t think that we can be asked to give any further assurances and promises to Poland regarding their borders or their attitude regarding the USSR. Poland fell in days to German Nazis, while the Polish government at that time refused to receive help from the Soviet Union.
Those Poles that are now vying for leadership in Poland must think that we, the British, are stupid that we would start a war against our USSR ally on behalf of the demands to restore the Polish eastern borders which had the majority of non-Poles living in those territories. A nation that proved to the world that it could not defend itself, must accept the guidance of those who saved them and who represent for them a perspective of genuine freedom and independence.
Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 224

POLAND ’S NOV 1939 ATTACK ON THE SU CHANGED THE STATUS OF POLISH PRISONERS

            In the Soviet intervention into Poland, the USSR detained between 250-300 thousand Polish soldiers and officers. Most were released from detention centers. However, some 130,242 persons were maintained in detention camps of the NKVD, before their situation changed.
            In November 1939, the Polish government in exile, as arrogant and bullish as ever, declared war on the USSR, supposedly in reply to the Soviet-Finnish War. The Poles went as far as creating a special brigade to be sent to fight the Red Army in Finland. By this act of war, the Polish government changed the status of the Polish soldiers still detained in the USSR. They now become automatically prisoners of war, and thus those still remaining in NKVD camps could not be released.
Mukhin, Y.I., Katyn Detective,1995

20,000 POLISH PRISONERS COULD NOT BE RELEASED UNTIL THEIR CASES WERE JUDGED

            After the official inclusion of the territory captured by Poland in 1920 into the USSR, the Polish prisoners of war automatically became citizens of the USSR. By decision of court, it was named illegal for the NKVD to detain and force these soldiers to work. Therefore, most soldiers and petty officers were all released into civilian life as citizens of the USSR. However, there was a group of people that could not be released. These were those charged with crimes against the non-Polish and Polish population in the newly liberated areas as well as for war crimes against the USSR. This group comprised members of Poland's military and governmental elite, gentry, landlord and manufacturers. There were plenty of war crimes committed by these people, such as the mass execution of Soviet prisoners of war in 1920 and active support for diversionary and terrorist groups against the USSR. It was decided to keep these individuals, numbering more than 20,000, in detention camps of the NKVD until a Special Commission of the NKVD examined their cases and decided upon a sentence for them.
Mukhin, Y.I., Katyn Detective,1995

POLISH CASES WERE JUDGED BY A SPECIAL COMMISSION AND THE RESULTS WERE AS FOLLOWS

The Decision of the Special Commission of the NKVD

            The action of sentencing these foreign officers to war crimes was against international laws of the time. It was also not the time for the USSR to take such steps. War would soon come, and to publicly announce that some of the Polish officers were being considered as war criminals, could not help the USSR. Foreign imperialists, who were only looking for an opportunity to attack the USSR, would see this as an opportunity. Therefore, it was decided to keep this as secret as possible. A Special Commission of the NKVD was organized to individually investigate each case of the persons accused of crimes against the people or war crimes. Starting from December 1939, the administration of each camp in which the prisoners were being detained, started selecting those prisoners to be investigated by the Special Commission of the NKVD. On December 31, 1939 L. Beria sent the order for the camps to deliver the names of the suspected officers. By February 20, 1940 the order was issued to release from camps all those individuals who were sick, invalid or representatives of the working intelligentsia. After a lengthy review by the members of the Special Commission, a decision was reached. The first time the conclusion of the NKVD was made publicly available in its entirety was in September 1993 in the "Military-Historical Magazine." This document was found in the Archives of the USSR. The decision of the Special Commission of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) was the following:

1. To give the status of war criminal to the persons considered socially dangerous; to exile for the period of up to 5 years under public supervision in the districts specified by the NKVD; to sentence them for the period of 5 years under public supervision with the prohibition of residing in the capitals, large cities and industrial centers of the USSR; to imprison in correctional-working camps and isolate in the camps for a period of up to 5 years, and to send outside the limits of the USSR foreign citizens considered socially dangerous.

2. To give the status of war criminal to the persons convicted of espionage, sabotage, diversion and terrorist activity and to imprison for the period from 5 to 8 years.

            Starting from March 16 1940, individual cases were reviewed by the Special Commission of the NKVD and sentences were established for them. Some individuals were found not guilty of wrong doing and were returned to the prisoner of war status or were released. It was decided by the Special Commission that the privilege of correspondence be removed from the prisoners that were sentenced. The reason for this was that they were no longer prisoners of war, but war criminals, and thus the Soviet authorities were under no obligation to allow this privilege.

            Furthermore, the fact that the Polish officer elite had been sentenced as war criminals could not be released publicly. Releasing such information to the world would have been damaging to the USSR, especially in this time when allies, even half-hearted ones, were necessary. However, not all the detained prisoners were sentenced. Those that were not, were placed in prisoners of war camps from where they could freely correspond. Furthermore, the Special Commission of the NKVD issued orders to the Starobelsk prisoners of war camp, where the Polish officers were previously held, to destroy the documentation regarding their prisoner of war status. An order was issued from L. Beria on September 10, 1940 to the commander of the camp to destroy the stock-taking documents of the prisoners of war. This order from Beria had no security clearance, and therefore could be viewed by anyone. The existence of this order has been seen by the western "historians" as evidence that the officers had been executed and that the Soviets were trying to cover their tracks. This is not the case. In the order of Beria and in following orders to the Starobelsk camp, the camp administration is asked to make copies of the prisoner's photographs and some other additional files which were to be sent to the Kharakov UNKVD. The reality of this order is that the status of the officers had changed, from prisoners of war to war criminals. They had moved from the jurisdiction of the NKVD to that of the UNKVD, which dealt with such cases. Documents about their prisoner of war status could be destroyed, since they served no more purpose. But the pictures of the prisoners were sent to the UNKVD, where new criminal files were opened for the prisoners.

            With this, the work and jurisdiction of the Special Commission of the NKVD was finished. The prisoners were moved from the Starobelsk camp to three separate camps near the Smolensk area. These camps were specially set up by the UNKVD for the Polish officers.

            Since 1943, the USSR was forced to publicly admit that the Polish officers and other individuals were sentenced to imprisonment in correctional and working-camps for the period of 5 to 8 years without the right of correspondence. Since that time, the USSR has been accused of lying. Indeed, it was concluded by the Nazis and the western imperialists that the USSR had sentenced these individuals to death instead of imprisonment. However, the discovery of the actual decision of the Special Commission of the NKVD, has proved beyond a doubt that the USSR was not lying. The prisoners were indeed sentenced to terms of imprisonment, or as in the case of foreign nationals, to exile. The decision of the Special Commission of the NKVD should never have been doubted because in 1941 several individuals of foreign nationality were exiled outside the USSR. Among them was a Polish officer of German origins, R. Shtiller, who was deported to Germany and revealed information about the sentencing. Furthermore, those Polish officers found not guilty were returned to their prisoner of war camps, from where they could freely correspond. The entire investigation of the NKVD begs the question, that if the intention was to kill the prisoners, why carry out such a lengthy investigation of individual cases and release persons found not guilty? If the intention was to execute them, none of this would have been done. However, as with most truthful evidence on Katyn, this information is rejected and kept hidden as much as possible by the western and Russian revisionist historians. Instead, these "historians" and the Gorbachievite gang, resorted to forgeries and lies on the decision of the NKVD.

            On June 22 1941, Germany launched its invasion of the USSR. At the time, Poland still held its declaration of war against the USSR. It wasn't until after the war had started, that the Polish government in exile retreated its declaration. In July 30 1941, the government of Sikorsky entered into negotiation with the USSR about the release of the remaining Polish prisoners and about the organization of a Polish Army from these. By early August 1941, it was decided to create a Polish Army in the USSR under the command of Polish General Anders (who was one of the prisoners), called the Anders Army. Sikorsky promised Stalin that the Anders Army would remain in the USSR and fight against the Germans. All he wanted in return was that 25,000 Polish soldiers be sent to the Middle East to join the British Army. Stalin agreed, and in 1941 the Anders Army was created and armed. Sikorsky also asked Stalin about the fate of the missing Polish officers. Stalin avoided the question, giving the answer that he did not know (while the Soviet press made up imaginative theories of what happened). But the truth was that Stalin indeed did not know what had happened. By that time the Germans had taken Smolensk and the Polish camps and the Soviets did not know what happened to them. Also, this was not a priority for the Soviet Union. In any case, Stalin organized a committee to find out what happened to the Polish officers. They could not find out what happened to them, except that they had been captured by the Germans. On this, we shall talk about later.

            Anders, being of the Polish military elite and as arrogant as usual, had a deep hatred for the USSR. The USSR was sacrificing much by arming these Polish soldiers. At a time when weapons had to be taken out of museums to arm the defenders of Moscow, the Anders Army was being armed with the best weapons. In an act of treachery, which was second nature for the elite Polish officers, Anders led his army of 114,000 into Iran. He abandoned the Red Army and abandoned the fight for his homeland to run away to Iran to join the British. This was indeed a great blow to Polish-Soviet relations. Never again would Stalin trust the Polish government in exile, and proved once more their treacherous and cowardly nature. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers and officers still remained in the USSR. these were organized into the Polish People's Army, under the command of the PKKA. This was created in October 1941 and fought alongside the Red Army until the end of the war. By the Battle of Berlin, the Polish People's Army numbered 400,000. They were the only Polish troops to participate in the liberation of their country from the Nazis.

            First, lets begin with the "proofs" of the Nazis. Following the liberation of Smolensk from the Germans in September 1943, a Special Commission was established, headed by Academician N.N. Burdenko. Following a lengthy investigation of the area, questioning of witnesses and the excavation and study of 925 bodies, the Burdenko Commission wrote a 56 page report. This report was made public in 1944. Since then, the revisionist historians have accused the report of being simply a propaganda document with no truth in it. However, this assessment does not hold. In 1990, a "Top Secret" version of the Burdenko report was discovered. This "Top Secret" document was sent by Burdenko to the heads of the Soviet government.

            The Burdenko Commission refuted all the points of the German and International investigation, except for the fact that there were 12,000 bodies. First to be examined was the location of the burial itself. The Germans claimed that the Katyn forest was an isolated area which had served as an execution ground for many years. In reality, Katyn was a popular area of vacationing. The NKVD vacation home was located only 700m away from the burial places. There resided the wives and children of the NKVD officers on vacation there. The city and surrounding population frequented the Katyn forest as a place of vacationing. Villagers came to the forest for picking mushrooms or for pasturing their animals. The area was not closed off the public in any way. Furthermore, the burial was only 200m from the Smolensk-Vitebsk highway. This was a heavily traveled road, with thousands of people crossing it every day. Could this be an area where executions were carried out for many years? Could this be the area where for months, 12,000 people were buried? It was not possible for the Soviets to carry out this act in such a place. Surely the NKVD could have found an area which was far more secure than this, an area where the only witnesses would have been bears. Most importantly, this revelation about Katyn proves the Germans were lying. According to the findings of the Burdenko Commission, it wasn't until the Germans occupied the area that the woods were closed to the population. Signs were put up, warning anyone who entered that they would be shot. A German military unit was stationed on the grounds of the Katyn forest, closing off the area.

            And about the cabin found by the Germans directly next to the graves (where the Germans said the executions had been carried out). It was in actuality a cabin for the Pioneers! It appears, that the exact area of the burials was a favorite ground for the Pioneers to set up their summer camp. Therefore, a permanent cabin was build on that area for housing materials for their use (while the Pioneers themselves slept in tents).

            The Burbenko Commission also answered the question of what had happened to the Polish prisoners after their camps were overrun by the Germans. The directors of the prisoner camps were located and questioned. The director of camp 1ON, Major of Security V.M. Vetoschinikov, testified about what happened. According to him, he received orders about the evacuation of the prisoners from the camp. However, he had not received any instructions on how to carry this out, since phone connections had been cut off. He and some employees of the camp drove to Smolensk to clarify the situation. He met with Engineer S.V. Ivanov, head of transportation on the western stretch of the Smolensk railway. Vetoschinikov asked Ivanon for a few train cars to transport the prisoners. However, at the time the evacuation of the city population was being carried out. Therefore, Ivanon told him not to expect any train cars since none were available. Vetoschinikov tried to contact Moscow about permission to evacuate by foot, but could not contact them. By that time, the 1ON camp was cut off from Smolensk and the director had no idea what had happened to the prisoners or their guards.

            Officer Ljubodzetsk witnessed what occurred in the 1ON camp after Vetoschinikov did not return. According to him, the evacuation of the camp started to be carried out by foot. However, the Polish officers rebelled. They said they wanted to wait for the Germans and surrender to them. At least the Germans, they thought, would treat them in accordance to international norms. The majority of the prisoners decided to remain in the camp and wait for the Germans. Only a few of the prisoners agreed to the evacuation - those of Jewish origin. Therefore, it has been proven that the Polish officers were alive and in the camps by the time the Germans captured them. The Burdenko Commission gathered testimonies from a number of other eyewitnesses from the neighboring villages. According to several of them, they had seen Polish prisoners in the area near Smolensk as late as September 1941.

            The Burdenko Commission went on to investigate if anyone had actually seen the process of execution of the Polish officers by the Germans. They found three women, the cooks of the NKVD vacation house, A.M. Aleksejava, O.A. Michailova, and S.P. Konachovskaja. At the time, the house was the base for a German military unit. According to the women, this was the Staff building for a Construction Battalion No.537-1. There were 30 persons stationed at this place, according to the cooks. They could not remember the names of all of them, except for a few. The commander of the battalion was Lt. Colonel Arnes. Others were Lt. Colonel Rekst, Lt. Hott, Sgt. Luemert and few others whom the women could remember. They witnessed the entire procedures of the Germans. Though they never witnessed an execution, they were aware of what was going on. According to all three women, several trucks regularly arrived at the residence starting from September 1941. They would not come directly to the residence at first. Coming off the main highway, the trucks would stop somewhere between the highway and the residence. The officers of the 537th would go into the woods. About half an hour later, individual shots in succession begun to be heard. About 1 hour after the trucks had stopped, they reached the building and all would disembark. They would go into the house and wash themselves in the bathroom. They would then proceed to drink heavily. The women were not allowed out of the kitchen when the drivers and the other members of the convoy arrived. They were kept in the kitchen, cooking meals for them. On several occasions, the women noticed fresh blood stains on the uniforms of at least two officers. The cooks usually left their work in the evening. According to them, the officers had the unusual habit of sleeping until 12 o'clock. They suspected that they conducted the same business during the night. They also saw Polish officers on at least two occasions. On one occasion, one of the women was allowed to go home after her usual hours, in the evening. Walking on the road, she noticed a group of 30 prisoners. She recognized them as Polish because she had seen their uniforms before, while they were conducting construction work for the Soviets. On another occasion, two of the women accidentally saw two Polish officers inside the residence, surrounded by German officers. The women were chased back into the kitchen and there was a large fuss around the officers. A few minutes later, the women heard two shots. They had been warned several times to be careful about what they saw and not to tell anyone. As punishment for their intrusion, one of the women was locked in the basement of the building for 8 days while the other two for 3 days. After they realized what was going on, they quit their jobs on various excuses.

            The conclusion that can be drawn from the testimonies of these three women is that the Polish officers were being executed by the Germans in the autumn of 1941. Apparently, several trucks were carrying groups of 30 or so prisoners to the Katyn woods. Stopping "between the highway and the residence", or approximately 200m from the highway, the prisoners were unloaded. There awaited them the 30 members of the 537th in addition to the drivers and escorting soldiers. The prisoners were individually executed directly above their burial grounds and were thrown into their graves. This is a scene which can be seen many times in German footage of executions, where a German officer stands behind a kneeling prisoner, shoots him in the back of the head and throws him into an open grave. Following their work, all the German officers, soldiers and drivers went into the residence to clean off the blood or dirt and to celebrate with drinks. Now it was finally proven what had happened to the Polish officers.

            The Burdenko Commission started excavation of the burial grounds in Katyn on January 16, 1944. The Commission dug up 925 bodies from those which had not already been examined by the Germans. There was a multitude of physical evidence on the bodies themselves. An obvious feature of the bodies was the heavy gray overcoat of the Polish officers. The question must then be asked, if the Polish officers were shot in the spring of 1940, as the Germans claim, why were they wearing coats? The only explanation for this is that they were not killed in the spring, but in a cold season, perhaps in autumn.

            The hands of some Polish officers had been tied using a white braided cord. At the time, the USSR was the largest producer of hemp rope. In fact, the only kind of rope produced in the USSR in the pre-war years was hemp rope. Smolensk was one of the main centers of production. Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that this was not rope produced in the USSR, but in some other foreign country.

            The most obvious forensic evidence to look for in a murder case is the bullet and the bullet case. It was determined by the investigation on the 925 bodies, that most bullets had made an exit whole in the front of the head or in the face. In 27 cases, the bullet had remained inside the head. It was determined, the kills were made with low-velocity pistols. Many bullet cases were found in the graves. These were primarily of a 7.65mm caliber, but there were also a few 6.35mm caliber and even fewer 9mm bullets. The inscription on the 7.65mm bullets were "Genshov and K", a German producer of cartridges known also as "Geko". So the bullets were produced in Germany! The question must then be asked, did the USSR make use of such weapons? Perhaps there was some export of 7.65mm cartridges to the USSR from Germany? The truth is the USSR made no use of any kind of gun with a 7.65mm caliber. The standard bullet size for Soviet pistols, including the TT, was 7.62mm. The USSR did make use of several types of guns with a 6.35mm caliber, but Germany also produced 59 types of pistols with a 6.35mm caliber. Also, USSR did not have a 9mm pistol until after the war, the Makarov pistol. Therefore, it is proven beyond a doubt that the executions were carried out with bullets produced in Germany and with guns which the Soviet Union did not possess. The only explanation is of course that these were carried out by the Germans. As for the German claim of having found bullet cases with Soviet inscriptions on them, this can only be propaganda since no producer, caliber or type of case was mentioned (on all Soviet cartridges the name of the factory of production is mentioned).

            The bodies were searched for documentation of any sort. Many documents and papers were recovered. Among them, were at least 9 documents with dates from 12 November 1940 to 20 June 1941. These included 2 letters, one received and another not sent out, one icon and a number of camp receipts. The existence of these papers is proof that the prisoners were still alive until at least the German invasion started.

            And what about those leaves the Germans supposedly found in the graves? If these leaves had fallen into the graves, and 3 years later (the Germans claimed the Poles were killed in 1940) they were still distinguishable to be birch leaves, then they must have been dry at the time of their fall. A fresh leaf would decompose very quickly and there would be nothing left of it. A dry leaf, especially birch leaves, can maintain their form for a long time if buried. But even they, cannot maintain their shape after 3 years. So there must be a different explanation. If the murders happened in the spring of 1940, then there would have been no dry leaves. And as is known leaves fall from the trees in the fall. Perhaps in the fall of 1941, or one and a half years before they were exhumed.

Investigation of the PKK and International Commission

            Even more physical evidence about the bodies in Katyn comes from the investigators of the International Commission itself, who examined the bodies in 1943 under German supervision. Two members of the forensic team of the International Commission, Czechoslovakian Professor of forensic medicine F.Gaek and Bulgarian forensic scientist Marko Marks, were questioned on the matter. Marks was arrested in 1944 by the Bulgarian People's Government and accused of lying on his Katyn investigation. Instead, Marks told them he did not lie, but that his real report was never made public by the Germans (thus Marks was freed). According to his experience, on May 1 1943, the team was flown from Katyn to Berlin. On the way to Berlin, their plane landed in an isolated military airfield. There, the members of the commission ate dinner. They were then given a prepared report on what they saw, which they had to sign. According to Marks, the report the Germans made public was only signed by the members of the commission, but not written by them. Instead, as Marks accounts, the members wrote individual reports which the Germans did not make public. In these reports, the conclusion of the commission was that the bodies in Katyn were too well preserved to have been buried 3 years earlier. Instead the commission concluded the bodies had been killed one to one and a half year earlier, in late 1941 or early 1942.

            The findings of the Polish Red Cross (PKK) were also the same. On the death certificates they made for the victims at Katyn, they specified no date of death. According to its members, who testified after the war, they could not agree on a conclusion. Most thought the killings had been carried out one to one and a half years earlier and not 3 years as the Germans claimed. However, they could not write such a thing. Therefore it was decided to leave the time of death simply blank.

            The PKK and the International Commission, as well as experts invited from other countries, examined in detail the bodies the Germans had laid out for them. The way in which these examinations were carried out was bizarre. The PKK members were present in the exhuming of the 4143 bodies they examined. The Germans had rounded up people from the neighboring villages to dig out the bodies. Once the bodies were out, the peasants were forced to search their uniforms for documents and papers of any kind. Once these were found, they were placed in individual folders with a number. The same number was placed on the body with a metal tag. The documents found in the bodies were not given to the PKK. By order from Berlin, all diaries, letters, receipts and orders were to be sent to Germany immediately for translation into German. The PKK members were given only the passports and other identification papers of the prisoners. Now it becomes obvious why the investigators found no documents with dates after the spring of 1940. Any document which would have contained a date was taken to Germany for "translation", and only then made public. The PKK and other commissions were given only documents which did not contain any dates or hints of when they were killed.

            The examination of the bodies themselves was even more revealing as to their time of death. According to the pathologist and forensic experts, the bodies were in a good condition. The tissue on the bodies was still attached. The skin on the hands, face and neck had turned gray, and in some cases greenish brown. There was no complete decomposition of the bodies and no putrefaction. In the bodies, muscles and tendons were still visible. Limbs were also still attached. When the bodies were carried out by the peasants, no parts of the bodies came apart. The uniforms of the bodies was still in good condition and held together well. The metallic parts of their uniforms, such as belts, buttons and nails, was still metallic and shiny in some areas. They were not rusted completely.

            Bodies decompose faster in the warm seasons of the year, spring and summer. In winter bodies decompose very little and are as if in refrigeration. If the German version of the story were true, and the officers were killed in the spring of 1940, then there would have been 3 summer seasons between that time and April 1943. However, if the bodies had been killed in the autumn and winter of 1941, as the Soviet version of events goes, then there would have been only 1 summer season between that time and April 1943. In 3 summer seasons, the bodies would have been in a far more advanced stage of decomposition than the commissions found. For this reason the conclusion of both PKK and International forensic experts was that the bodies were killed one to one and a half years earlier, during the German occupation of the area. However, such a conclusion could not be made public by Germany.

            The decomposition of the bodies was also the reason for the German delay in excavating the area. According to them, the location of the graves was discovered in March 1942. Excavation of the bodies started more than 1 year later. The Germans knew that since the bodies had been buried in the autumn and winter of 1941, they were still not decomposing by March 1942. Therefore, it was necessary to wait at least one summer for the bodies to decompose, and then excavate them in the spring of 1943.

Revisionist Evidence Refuted

            The two eyewitnesses presented by the Gorbachevites are indeed lying about what really occurred. But it is not them who are to be blamed. They had no other choice. Soprunenko refused to admit that he received such an order for several months. The daughter, fearing for her and her fathers safety, said it was true that her father had seen an order from Stalin to kill the prisoners. The old man denied it, until after months of intimidation and threats was forced to tell them what they wanted to hear. But the Gorbechevite inspectors had not taken into consideration one detail. Soprunenko had already been asked the question of what happened to the Polish officers. He was asked this by the Committee that Stalin organized in the fall of 1941 to find out what happened to the Polish officers (on behalf of Sikorsky). The documentation the general-major received and sent on this matter was found in the Archives of the USSR as "Top Secret" documents. The truth, that Soprunenko had said in the fall of 1941, was finally found out and shattered the lies of the revisionists. One of the first persons questioned in 1941 on what happened to the Polish officers was precisely General-Major Soprunenko. Soprunenko wrote several documents under the title "Top Secret". In these documents Soprunenko says the UNKVD "is at a loss" about what happened to the Polish officers. It did not know! He also wrote a document about the release of prisoners of German origin to Germany in a prisoner exchange program. But his reply to the Commission was that the UNKVD did not know. If the general-major had indeed been ordered by Beria to execute the Polish officers, he would have replied "on the indication of Comrade Beria, the Polish officers were shot." Remember that the documents were "Top Secret". No one would have seen them, except for people who would have sent such on order themselves! Why hide an order of Stalin and Beria...from Stalin and Beria? Yet Soprunenko made no such comment. He never received or saw such an order. He placed the responsibility for the disappearance of the prisoners on himself and on the UNKVD. So the truth of what the old man knew became known in the "Top Secret" documents, and the testimony he was forced to give to the Gorbachevite inspectors was proven to be false.

            The testimony of Tokarev was false as well. He knew the Gorbachev inspectors would not quit until they heard what they wanted to hear. So Tokarev, being smarter than these revisionists, told them exactly what they wanted to hear, and at the same time hinted in his testimony he was only pulling their tail. The whole story of how the executions were carried out makes absolutely no sense. Even according to the German investigation, the pistols used in executing the Poles were low-velocity pistols. Tokarev says the executioners used TT pistols. TT pistols are very high-velocity guns, with a muzzle velocity of 420m/s. It is very powerful, and at a point blank range, it would not have produced a simple entry and exit wound. At that range, it would have carried away with it half the head! To give an impression of its power, even today the only hand guns that compare to its power are magnum revolvers. Furthermore, when shooting indoors against brick or cement walls, it ricochets off the walls and hits the executioners themselves! Therefore, TT pistols are never used for executions at close range and inside buildings. TT pistols also have a caliber of 7.62mm. No such bullets were found in the Katyn graves. Of course, Tokarev was aware of this, but his questioners were not.

            The most obvious aspect of Tokarev's false testimonial is his description of the execution process. Tokarev says the executions were carried out in the UNKVD buidling in the middle of Smolensk. How can executions of 300 prisoners per day be kept secret in a large prison in the middle of a city? It cannot. The executions, if they were 6000 per month, went on for 2 months. If the executions were to be carried out in absolute secrecy, the building had to be emptied of personnel for 2 months. All the other prisoners, the guards, the office personnel, the telephone operators, the janitors, the cooks and storekeepers of the complex had to be sent home for 2 months and operations of the UNKVD had to be shut down for that period. Guards would have to be placed outside the building, indeed a long way out of the building, to keep people from coming near enough to hear the shooting. Could all this have been carried out in secret in the middle of a city? Of course not. It makes no sense, and Tokarev knew this. Furthermore, is it possible for 10 guards to execute 300-200 prisoners every day? According to Tokarev, they were executed in groups of 10-40 people. The entire process, according to Tokarev, was to take them out of their cells, take them to an office room to be identified and to complete necessary documentation, take them to special room to be executed. Afterwards, they were loaded into trucks from the back door of the building and taken to their burial sites. This entire process would have taken a very long time, especially for a small group of 10 guards. The prisoners would have been less than cooperative. It is hard to drag 10-40 men who know that they are going to be executed. So the time elapsed in this process is even longer. If there are 10 hours of daylight in April, and Tokarev said the executions were carried out during the daylight hours, then there was a 2 minute time period for the execution of every person in order to kill 300 persons per day. This is the time if the guards take no breaks and eat nothing during this process. Furthermore, if the prisoners were killed in the UNKVD building in the middle of the city, why were there bullet cases in the graves of the Polish officers? It is simply impossible. The Burdenko Commission already showed how the Germans, who were master executioners, carried out their actions.

Forged Documents

            As a final chapter to the Katyn drama, the Gorbachevite "historians" announced in 1992 the discovery of three documents, undeniably proving Soviet guilt in Katyn. The first document was a request by Beria to the Political Bureau, to give the order to execute the Polish officers. The second document, is the protocol of the Political Bureau for its Session No.13, where the request of Beria is noted. The third document is a letter from Shepelin to Khrushchev dated March 3 1959, informing him that all documentation on Katyn would be destroyed.

            All three of these documents are false, and this article shall prove so. The letter of Beria to the Politburo is of most importance. It is also the most obvious fake. In the letter dated March 5 1940, Beria says he thinks it necessary that "the NKVD" propose to "the NKVD" to transfer the cases for 14,700 prisoners of war and 11,000 arrested people. It asks the Politburo in request I, to order "the application to them of the highest measure of punishment - execution". In request II, it asks that the sentences for the persons be carried out without their presence and without representation for them. In request III, it asks the Politburo to appoint this matter to a "troika" made up of Kabulov, Merkulov and Bashtakov. This letter is under the title "Top Secret". On the first page of the document, it is signed by Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan, Voroshilov. The names of Kaganovich and Kalinin are added under these, where they express "after".

            The mistakes and inconsistencies in this letter are many. To start, the letter is "Top Secret". Standard procedure for a "Top Secret" letter were to write on the letter the name of the person who typed it, the names of all the persons who have seen the document, the names of all persons to whom this letter is to be sent, the number of copies made of this letter, the carbon paper used to make a copy of it and finally the tape of the typewriter used to make this paper. For the "Beria document", none of these exist. Without these precautions, it is not a "Top Secret" letter. The forger of this document either was not aware of the requirements of a "Top Secret" paper, or such requirements could not be forged by them. Either way, this paper immediately looses its value, and furthermore shows it is a forgery.

            But the mistakes do not stop here. The signatures of the members of the Politburo go against the form. In this letter, 4 members of the Politburo have simply signed their names. By this act, they have rejected the request of Beria. You see, if the members of the Politburo agreed to send out an order or to carry out a request, it was necessary for them to sign the document, and to write next to their signatures "agreed" or "after". In order for the request to be agreed and the order to be sent out, the members had to express their agreement to the request or their agreement to an order being sent. If they simply signed the paper, it meant that the members had read the document, but had not agreed to it and had not sent out any orders. The forger was obviously not aware of this and has made the mistake. Even if this request is authentic, which it is not, it was not accepted by the Politburo.

            On the first page of the document, along with the four signatures of Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov, the forger added the names of Kaganovich and Kalinin underneath these. What the forger was not aware of, is that both Kaganovich and Kalinin were absent from the 13th Session of the Politburo in March 1940. They could not have placed their signatures on this document.

            Beria's requests contain even more proof that it is a forgery. Beria's requests that he finds it necessary for the NKVD to propose to the NKVD, makes no sense. Why would Beria find it necessary to propose to Beria? This is a mistake which the forger accidentally made. Why he made this mistake shall be discussed below.

            In Beria's third request, he asks for the creation of a "troika" of three individuals mentioned by name. This entire request makes no sense. When a troika is created, its members are never mentioned by name. They are mentioned by their post. What was to happen if one of the members died or was removed from his post? Was the troika destroyed or was this person, who was no longer in position, still in the troika? It could not have been done in this way. For an example, the reader should refer to the above decision of the Special Commission of the NKVD, where its members are identified only by their post. It is not important who the individuals are. The individuals in the posts may change, but the troika still stands.

            Furthermore, this document gives no indication as to who should receive or should be informed of the decision of the Politburo. The only person mentioned is L. Beria. But in a document such as this, the names of the persons to receive it are also included. Otherwise, how is Kabulov to know he is a member of the "troika"? This document is "Top Secret". It is given to him only by the Politburo. Furthermore, the persons in charge of carrying out the orders of the Politburo, in this case the people or organs to carry out the executions, must also be named. Otherwise, if it is simply announced to them by a second or third party, it is no longer a "Top Secret" decision, but something for the whole world to know. This document contains no such names.

            The request for execution to the Politburo is a further mistake of the forger. Such a request would never have been made. The Politburo did not have the authority to make such an order. The only body capable of issuing an order for execution was the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, specifically the Supreme Court of the USSR. Only by decision of the Supreme Court could an execution be carried out. The Court also established special "troikas", which by authority of the Court had the power to sentence to execution. In this document, Beria is asking the Politburo to create a "troika" to sentence people to death. It was impossible! Only a decision of the Supreme Court could have created such a "troika". An example of how such a process was carried out, happened in 1941. The German advance was threatening to capture the prison at Orel, where important members of anti-Soviet groups were being held. It could not be allowed for them to fall into the hands of the Germans, who would use them against the USSR. Therefore, a meeting of the Supreme Court was called where it issued an order for execution, and only then were the prisoners executed. Even in the most pressing of times, 1941, the rule of Soviet law was not broken. So why was Beria asking the Politburo for such a decision?

            The question must be asked, why did the forger make such mistakes? The reason for them is that the forger used an original document from Beria to the Politburo. The forger needed an original document to have a document number and to keep the same characteristic style of Beria. He did not change the first page, except for adding the names of Kaganovich and Kalinin (which the forger thought should have been there). However, the forger changed the second page, Beria's requests. So in the original document of Beria it read "...the NKVD finds it necessary to propose to the Special Commission of the NKVD..." Then it would make sense. The forger however, removed the Special Commission, since its decision was to sentence the officers to a maximum of 5 years of imprisonment. Therefore, in the original document, Beria's request was not to execute the prisoners, and thus disagree with the conclusion of the Special Commission. It was in agreement with the Special Commission. Instead of ordering an execution, the original document should have read " with the application to them of the sentence of 5-8 years of imprisonment as specified by the Special Commission of the NKVD". Also, in the original there was no request for the creation of a troika. Only then would this document make sense. It was only asking the members of the Politburo to agree to allow the NKVD to propose to the Special Commission of the NKVD the transfer of files to them and to allow the NKVD to propose to the Special Commission to carry out its investigation of individuals without their presence and without the presence of their representation. This original request of the document is supported in the fact that on March 16, 1940, the Special Commission started receiving personal information on the prisoners and began its individual sentencing. This is the exact request of Beria's original letter to the Politburo.

            If the original document had read as such, then the signatures on the first page are transformed into an agreement. This is not bizarre, but if the Politburo was not asked to carry out an order or to take any action, but only to agree, then a simple signature would have sufficed. If there were no orders or actions to be carried out, then none had to be specified next to the names. So by changing the requests of Beria, the forger also changed the decision of the Politburo. Nevertheless, this document so proudly displayed by the revisionists is no doubt a fake.

            The second document is the protocol of the Politburo on the request of Beria. It confirms all the requests of Beria, the execution of the prisoners and the creation of the "troika" with the members Beria mentioned. This is the letter that is taken from the logs of the Politburo and sent to the persons specified in Beria's request are to receive it. However, since no such persons were indicated on the letter of Beria, to whom was this protocol sent to? Furthermore, since by their simple signatures, the members of the Politburo did not agree to Beria's request, why was a protocol of the Politburo made for it? Also, it does not contain the signature of the Secretary of the Politburo. Without the signature, it means nothing. This second document is simply a continuation of the first one, an attempt of the forgers to show the Politburo agreed and sent out an order. Just as the Korger changed the original Beria document to suggest execution, so was changed the original protocol of the Politburo.

            The third document is very poorly made and seems to have the purpose of telling all other historians not to search documents on Katyn any more, Khrushchev has destroyed them all! On this letter of Shepelin to Khrushchev, there is no number at all and there is no signature. It follows no form. Nevertheless, in this letter Shepelin tells Khrushchev that all documents on Katyn will be destroyed since they have no "historical value" to anyone. How did Shepelin think that documents on executions of thousands of foreign nationals, had no value to anyone? Among the documents Shepelin mentions, are the stock-taking documents of the prisoners of war from their camps, mentioned among them is Starobelsk camp. As we have already seen, an order was sent from Beria to the commander of Starobelsk in September 1940, to destroy the stock-taking documents of the prisoners of war since criminal cases for them would be opened. How did these stock-taking documents reappear in 1959 for Shepelin to destroy? For the prisoners of war sentenced to prison by the Special Commission of the NKVD, criminal cases were opened and there existed no more documents of their prisoner of war status. Also, in this document, the protocol to execute the Poles is said to have come from the Politburo of the CPSU. Shepelin simply refers "to the protocol of the Politburo of the CPSU to execute..." The problem with this is that the CPSU did not exist until 1952. In 1940, there was no such government body! In 1940, it was called the Politburo of the AUCP(B) (All Union Communist Party - Bolshevik). Also, Shepelin cannot simply refer to such a "Top Secret" document without quoting it or without including a copy of it for Khrushchev. Otherwise, how would Khrushchev know what Shepelin was talking about. Yet all these simple mistakes are made by the forger.

            All three documents are forgeries. There are only a few authentic documents recovered on Katyn (the resolution of the Special Commission, the orders to Starobelsk ext.) Any additional documents on Katyn, such as the criminal cases of the prisoners, were located in the Smolensk Archives. Unfortunately, the Smolensk Archives were captured by the Germans during WW2 and later by the Americans. If these documents exist anymore, they are in the hands of the Americans, and will thus never be revealed. Nevertheless, it is important to show that the revisionists have no documents implicating the USSR, but instead resort to forgeries and lies.

Conclusion

            What conclusion can be drawn from the evidence, counter-evidence, documents, forgeries and heaps of propaganda on Katyn? For 60 years the anti-communist forces of the world have told us Katyn was a Soviet responsibility. The Nazis proclaimed this as a crime of the Jewish communists. They used it as one of the many pretexts for placing into concentration camps and slaughtering tens of millions of Soviet citizens and Jews. The western imperialists used the Nazi pretext in the 1950s, to place on trial communists. They used it to launch a crusade against communism, to protect their empires and colonies, slaughtering more millions. The anti-communists and scoundrels ruling the USSR in the 80s and 90s used Katyn as a pretext for destroying the USSR and throwing the Soviet people into the brutal exploitation of capitalist and Mafiosi gangsters. Millions more died. Today, the modern revisionist "historians" would like to exonerate the Nazis of any responsibility. Today they use Katyn as yet another pretext to show how the Soviets "fabricated" the Holocaust and how they "fabricated" Auschwitz and all the other unimaginable crimes of the Nazis. Katyn has always been used as a weapon of the fascists and imperialists for justifying their murderous campaigns. The truth on Katyn however is far from what these Nazi sympathizers and scoundrels would like us to believe. Katyn was the work of the Nazis. It is they who killed the Polish officers after capturing them from Soviet camps. The conclusion one should draw simply from the heaps of lies, propaganda and forgeries the imperialists and Nazi-sympathizers, is that Katyn is their responsibility. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the Nazis to conduct their "international" investigation as they did and for the Gorbachevite revisionists to create fake documents. But beyond their lies and forgeries, one should look at the truth on Katyn. The truth stands that the Polish officers were sentenced to terms of prison for their various war crimes. To tell the truth, no one should feel sorry for these Polish officers. They were traitors and cowards in the face of their country and people. However, they did not deserve a German bullet in the back of their head. Only a Polish bullet would have sufficed for their crimes against the Polish people.
Mukhin, Y.I., Katyn Detective,1995

STALIN SEVERS TIES WITH POLISH GOVT BECAUSE IT SUPPORTS WITH HITLER ON KATYN

            [Personal and secret message from Josef Stalin to Winston Churchill on April 21, 1943]
            The behavior of the Polish government towards the USSR of late is, in the view of the Soviet Government, completely abnormal and contrary to all the rules and standards governing relations between two allied states.
            The anti-Soviet slander campaign launched by the German fascists in connection with the Polish officers whom they themselves murdered in the Smolensk area, in German-occupied territory, was immediately seized upon by the Sikorski Government and is being fanned in every way by the Polish official press. Far from countering the infamous fascist slander against the USSR, the Sikorski Government has not found it necessary even to address questions to the Soviet Government or to request information on the matter.
            The Hitler authorities, having perpetrated a monstrous crime against the Polish officers, are now staging a farcical investigation, using for the purpose certain pro-fascist Polish elements picked by themselves in occupied Poland, where everything is under Hitler’s heel and where no honest Pole can open his mouth.
            Both the Sikorski and Hitler governments have enlisted for the “investigation” the head of the International Red Cross, which, under a terror regime of gallows and wholesale extermination of the civil population, is forced to take part in the investigation farce directed by Hitler. It is obvious that this “investigation,” which, moreover, is being carried out behind the Soviet Government’s back, cannot enjoy the confidence of anyone with a semblance of honesty.
            The fact that the anti-Soviet campaign has been started simultaneously in the German and Polish press and follows identical lines is indubitable evidence of contact and collusion between Hitler,the Allies’ enemy,and the Sikorski Government in this hostile campaign.
            At a time when the peoples of the Soviet Union are shedding their blood in a grim struggle against Hitler Germany and bending their energies to defeat the common foe of the freedom-loving democratic countries, the Sikorski Government is striking a treacherous blow at the Soviet Union to help Hitler tyranny.
            These circumstances compel the Soviet Government to consider that the present Polish government, having descended to collusion with the Hitler Government, has, in practice, severed its relations of alliance with the USSR and adopted a hostile attitude to the Soviet Union.
            For these reasons, the Soviet Government has decided to interrupt relations with that Government.
            I think it necessary to inform you of the foregoing, and I trust that the British Government will appreciate the motives that necessitated this forced step on the part of the Soviet Government.
Richardson, S, Ed. The Secret History of World War II. NY: Richardson & Steirman, 1986, p. 91-93

Katyn

Part I. The storing place, the circumstances around the discovery and the release of these documents

1. It is unknown where the ”Closed package no. 1” was stored before December 1991. The circumstances around the “miraculous discovery” of these documents, which was made by the employees at the Soviet Presidential Archive, are also shrouded in mystery.

M. S. Gorbachev claimed that he, until December 1991 had not seen these documents, while in the two “Closed packages” of the Politburo regarding Katyn, were stored all other documents, which were dealing with the guilt of the German side in the Katyn massacre. Only a few days before Gorbachev’s resignation from office as the president of the Soviet Union, the archive employees delivered on December 24, 1991 (as implied at their own initiative) through Gorbachev’s chief of staff Grigory Revenko the package with the found documents (“Zhizn’ i reformy” (“The Life and the Reforms"), book 2, Moscow 1995, pp. 348-349).

A. N. Yakovlev claimed both in his book ”Sumerki” (”The Dawn”) and in several articles and appearances, that he up to December 24, 1991 had never seen these documents. In addition Yakovlev revealed an important detail, namely that in the package with the Katyn documents that was delivered to Gorbachev on that day also was a certain “Serov’s letter”. But in the archive list for the “Closed package no. 1” that was delivered from Gorbachev to Yeltsin that letter is missing.

A. Yu. Yablokov claims in his book ”Katynskij sindrom …” (“The Katyn syndrome”) on p. 386: ”In July 1992 the then head of the President’s Administration Yu. V. Petrov, the President adviser D. A. Volkogonov, the head of the Main Archives R. G. Pichoya and the manager of the Archive A. V. Korotkov went through the most secret materials in the Russian President Archive. On September 24, 1992 they opened the “Closed package no. 1”.

This means that somebody is lying – either Gorbachev and Yakovlev, who claim that these documents were stored by Gorbachev and that they in early winter of 1991 were delivered to Yeltsin in Yakovlev’s presence, or the archive employees who claim that they found this package themselves first in the fall of 1992. In this case, however, it is clear that both the former and the latter are lying. Those documents have not been found in any archives or packages. They have been forged but they have not been able to fabricate a coherent story and force everyone who is featured in this case to learn it by heart, especially not the senior managers, why each one has been forced to lie based on what he managed to remember.

2. The documents in question were made public for the first time in fall of 1992 during the meeting of the Constitution Court as evidence of the guilt of the Soviet Communist Party for the Katyn massacre, but already a cursory examination by the judges revealed their falseness, which resulted in the fact that the Constitution Court in its final verdict did not even mention these accusations.

3. That these are forgeries is attested by the fact that these indeed sensational ”documents” were not presented to the Russian public immediately after they have been discovered, despite the fact that the press had been filled with quotes from them. After the fiasco in the Constitution Court the text from some of these documents was published only after two years and then not in any known historical magazines but in so called “periodical edition”, the magazine “Voyennye arkhivy Rossii” (“Russia’s Military Archive”). After the release of no. 1 of the magazine, in which some of these forgeries were published along with other genuine documents from Russian archives, the magazine and its Editorial disappeared without a trace.

4. In this the first publishing of these ”documents” the publishers did not indicate the peculiarities of these documents from a case management point of view, which directly testified about their falseness, i.e. the publishers themselves realized that they were publishing forgeries.

5. In the magazine ”Voprosy istorii” (”Historical questions”) no. 1/1993, where these “documents” were described for the first time in Russia, they only described three of the five documents, but even despite such a shortening this issue was not sent to the subscribers and the libraries until 1995.

6. In Russia they have up to this day not yet officially published the most prominent (when it comes to the degree of falseness) documents from the “Closed package no. 1” – the so-called “print-out for Shelepin” (not to be confused with “Shelepin’s letter”!). This confirms once again that the publishers themselves were well aware of, and still are, the fact that these by them published documents are forged.

Part II. Information that does not go with real historical facts

7. In the documents from the ”Closed package no. 1” it talks about the formation of a certain “special NKVD troika”, which, as it says, had sentenced the Poles to execution. But in the large amount of real genuine archive documents from that period there is not the slightest hint of either the formation of any “troika” (as claimed in these documents) or that any Poles whatsoever had been executed in the Soviet Union in 1940 by any extrajudicial process. To use the words of the specialist in archive system, A. P. Kozlov, “these documents stand out because they run counter to other real indisputable facts from this time which are known from genuine sources”.

8. The real court troikas were provided during these years to sentence the accused, dependant on their guilt, and to acquit the innocent. In “Beria’s letter” the troika is not assigned any judicial rights, but provides to execute all Poles, i.e. the “troika” is not assigned any defined judicial work. Such a “troika” is directly embarrassing for the individual who made it up. The real Beria would never have suggested to the Politburo that they should pull up three senior NKVD employees (including him) from their usual work, in order to sit down and sign 22 000 pieces of paper, which no one other than themselves would read.

9. In the creation of the “troika” the key principle for the establishment of the court troikas which would consist of the top people from the NKVD (the Ministry of Interior) and the AUCP(b) (the Communist Party) and with the mandatory participation of a prosecutor.

10. In this “troika” they violated the principle of the members’ equal responsibility – to the two top NKVD officials (the People’s Commissar and his first deputy) they had added a third rank chief. In the real court troikas it was inconceivable with the participation of the subordinates to any of the members of the troika.

11. Beria could not suggest that they should create a “troika”, since all court troikas recently had been abolished by a joint decision of the Soviet government (Sovnarkom) and the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CC AUCP(b)), i.e. no “troika” was now possible seen from the legal law. After the joint decision had been made no decision executable could neither execute nor even arrest anyone at the orders from such an illegal “troika”, which had been officially forbidden in the Soviet Union by the government and the party.

12. If you assume that these documents from the “Closed package no. 1” are genuine, then it means that the Politburo at the Communist Party’s Central Committee had exceeded its powers – the Politburo took a decision to establish a “troika” despite the fact that the party’s leading agency – the Central Committee (CC) – had abolished them. Such is simply inconceivable. In a decision of November 17, 1938 from the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR (Sovnarkom, i.e. the government of the Soviet Union) and the CC AUCP (b) – the party’s leading agency, which is superior to the Politburo, ordered the following: “Liquidate the court troikas which have been created in accordance with orders from the NKVD of the USSR and the troikas at the militia’s oblast-, krai- and republic boards. From now on all cases shall in accordance with the prevailing legislation be forwarded for investigation to the courts or to the Special Council of the NKVD of the USSR.”

13. In the documents from the “Closed package no. 1” they have in no way included those 395 captured officers, policemen, and border guards, who – while the other POWs were sent to the correction- and labor camps at GUZhDS – were sent to the POW camps in Yukhnov and then to Gryazovets.

14. The “Politburo decision”, which was put into these “documents”, was impracticable for Beria: in pure self-preservation his surroundings would have found a way how to avoid to carry out such a criminal order from the People’s Commissar. It was a similar performance of their chief’s criminal orders that during 1937-38 had led to the execution of the closest collaborators to one of Beria’s predecessors Yagoda (who held the post as People’s Commissar of the NKVD until September 1936). And not long before these events, on February 4, 1940, they had for the same reason executed deputy assistants to Yezhov (who was succeeded by Beria as People’s Commissar and who was also executed on February 4, 1940). The whole world knew that the Poles were in captivity in the Soviet Union and no one in the top management of the NKVD would dare to take any risks by carrying out an illegal order of their execution issued by Beria, who had been working in the NKVD for only a year and a half and of which he had held the post as People’s Commissar only a little bit more than fifteen months.

Part III. Internal contradictions

15. ”Beria’s letter” contains a suggestion to execute 25 700 citizens from former Poland, while ”Shelepin’s letter” says that only 21 857 were actually executed. No explanations are given to on what ground another 3 843 Poles, who obviously were sentenced to execution, avoided being shot.

16. In “Beria’s letter” 14 736 officers and 18 632 inmates are declared as being “inveterate enemies of the Soviet power”, but it is suggested that they execute 14 700 of the former and 11 000 of the latter; this without any explanation about what to do with the remaining “inveterate” enemies and how they should separate the former from the latter. By such a decision the powers of the “troika” were delegated to the direct decision enforcers at spot and they were forced to decide themselves who should be sentenced to execution, which is inconceivable and something that could never exist in a real decision by Beria.

17. According to the notes at the back of the “print-out copy for Beria” they have during the period of March 5, 1940 to November 15, 1956 printed two extra copies of the “print-out copy for Beria” and that they had destroyed two copies on November 15, 1956. Given the strict confidentiality that surrounded the documents in the “Closed package no. 1” such manipulations with the print-out copies, which is unknown whom they were meant for, cannot be explained in a rational way.

Part IV. “Beria’s letter” no. 794/B (N. 794/Б)

18. Seen purely from a formal and legal point of view, “Beria’s letter” no. 794/B is a forgery because of the elementary fact that its key attributes – the date and the number – do not correspond to each other. Because according to the official registration the letter 794/b, which was sent to Stalin from the NKVD, was dated February 29, but in the archives they have found an entirely different letter with the same number – 794/B from the same March 1940 – but without a date indication. In order to understand the absurdity in the situation, imagine a person whose passport is full of errors and as date for its issuing is stated March but that later after a control of the Ministry of Interior it is found that this passport has been issued in February!

19. In “Beria’s letter” the resolution and the signatures of the Politburo members are written in a way that the lines of the “letter” during the signing must have been in a vertical position. No real right-handed leader signs that way. However, a specialist in forged signatures could write just like that – if he wanted to leave a hidden hint in the document that it was forged.

20. “Beria’s letter” has a number but no date. In a genuine document that is impossible since they are the one and the same note in the registration record, and then the date is more important than the number.

21. In “Beria’s letter” generals have been written on the same line as the lieutenant colonels, which was impossible for a genuine NKVD document. In all genuine NKVD documents the generals were written on a separate line and were never mixed even with the colonels.

22. According to a certificate from the Archive Board of the FSS, letter no. 794/b had been registered at the NKVD secretariat on February 29, 1940. In a genuine Beria letter from February 29 there could be no records from Soprunenko’s information from March 3, which appear in “Beria’s letter” from the “Closed package no. 1”. Consequently “Beria’s letter” no. 794/B with this information is a forgery.

23. The first three pages in “Beria’s letter” are not written on the same typewriter as page four (there is even an expert opinion available that proves that). A court would understand that such a thing was impossible for a genuine NKVD letter, because if you change the beginning of a document after the People’s Commissar has signed it, then it is the same thing as committing a crime.

24. Page four is written on a typewriter that has been used to type other recognized genuine Beria letters, while the three first pages are written on a typewriter whose font they still have not been able to trace in any of the fifteen Beria letters covering the period December 1939 to September 1940 that have been found in the archives and which they have up to date investigated.

This reveals the most probable way around the forgery of the letter.

The forgers probably took from the archive Beria’s genuine letter no. 794/b dated February 29, 1940 which contained a suggestion that the Poles would be sentenced by the Special Council of the NKVD (SC) to various fixed-penalties in prisons or labor camps. The forgers destroyed the first pages and instead printed three new ones which were converted in a way that it would like Beria was suggesting that the POWs should be shot. After that they added to these three forged pages a fourth one (the genuine) in which Beria suggested a quantitative (“troika”) and a personal (Beria, Merkulov, Bashtakov) composition for the Special Council. According to the “Regulation for the Special Council” its qualitative and personal composition would differ depending on the kind of matters that would be investigated. If the event occurred inside the borders of a union republic, then one of the members would be that republic’s People’s Commissar of the NKVD, if the matter was strictly criminal law then also the head of the militia’s (i.e. the police) board would be in it. In this particular case Beria suggested a special council with reduced staffing – consisting of three people – a troika. He suggested himself as chairman (he was the chairman of the SC according to the Regulation), his first deputy (also a member of the SC according to the Regulation) and the head of the department who prepared all cases regarding the POWs for the investigation in the Special Council – for the convenience of the organization and the implementation of meetings. Beria’s suggestion was logical, but still relinquished from what was provided in the “Regulation for the Special Council” – the head of the First Special Department, as a member of the SC, was not named which was the reason why Beria coordinated his suggestion with the Politburo.

But the Politburo did not share Beria’s view. They felt that they could not allow the People’s Commissar himself in this case to waste his time on a routine screening of up to 20 000 criminal law cases. That is why Stalin deleted Beria from the list and instead of him kept the Premier Deputy People’s Commissar of the NKVD Merkulov, as chairman of the Special Council and supplemented with Kobulov who was the head of the NKVD:s Main Department for Economy and by his employment dealt with investigation matters concerning the POWs and their use for labor. Worth noting is that Stalin did not write Kobulov’s last name above Beria’s deleted name (which would have meant that Kobulov had been appointed chairman) but wrote his name after Merkulov and before Bashtakov. That is, if you assume that the first three pages in “Beria’s letter” are forgeries and that the genuine letter was about the Special Council, then such a letter is completely consistent with all known historical facts.

Part V. The “print-out copy from the Politburo protocol” no. 1 (addressed to Beria)

25. The printed form begins with a warning: ”Must be returned within 24 hours to the 2nd Department at the Special Sector of the Central Committee”, and to the left there is another warning vertically written in the form: “The comrade who has received these documents do not have the right to forward them, nor to show them to anyone else, unless it is particularly admitted by the CC. Duplication of the said documents and production of prints from them is categorically forbidden. The note and the date for the superscription are to be made on each document personally by the comrade to whom it is addressed and shall contain his personal signature. Based on: the decision at the plenary meeting of the CC AUCP(b) on August 18, 1924.”

The “print-out copy for Beria” is the first copy (the original) unlike the “print-out copy for Shelepin” which is a re-print. It was precisely the original that in accordance with the delivery would be sent to Beria for superscription. This is witnessed, among other things, by the notes on the back, among them a hand-written note about another mailing to Beria which is supposed to have been done on December 4, 1941. But in the “print-out copy for Beria” there are no notes or signatures whatsoever from L. P. Beria that would confirm that he would have noted the print-out copy in 1940 and 1941.

26. In the “print-out copy for Beria” the for the genuine print-out copies mandatory facsimile signature from the Secretary of the Central Committee J. Stalin and the stamp with a relief of the CC AUCP(b) are missing.

27. The “print-out copy for Beria” is printed on a form that was not the standard form used by the Politburo in its case management. To date there are only two known copies of such a form – both are from the “Closed package no. 1” regarding Katyn.

28. On the form for the “print-out copy for Beria” the absolutely mandatory element for all official documents from the CC AUCP(b) is missing, namely the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” All the forms meant for documents that were sent to other agencies, always began with the Communist’s most important slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!”

Part VI. The “print-out copy from the Politburo protocol” no. 2 (addressed to Shelepin)

29. The document on this AUCP(b)-form is attested with a CPSU stamp. This constitutes such a climax of the forgers’ senile dementia that this one thing only was enough for the Constitution Court to realize that it was dealing with forged documents and not associate the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with the murder of the Polish officers.

30. In the “print-out copy for Shelepin” Stalin’s signature, the mailing date and the last name of the addressee have been typed with another typewriter.

31. The print-out copy is dated February 27, 1959 which would mean that the Poles continued to be in camps up to that date and that not before 1959 it was decided to shoot them.

32. The Politburo addressed the directive of the troika’s foundation and the execution to Shelepin but of the ”troika’s” original members, only Bashtakov was still alive.

33. In order to attest the signature Stalin in 1959 returned from the grave and arrived at the meeting of the Politburo.

34. Outwardly the ”print-out copy for Shelepin” is designed as an attested copy but is in reality not attested by any official at all at the CC CPSU. The forgers were not aware of the elementary, namely that the round stamp at any institution was stamped on top a signature. The purpose with the signature is to certify the genuineness of the signature.

35. On the front of the print-out copy there is a signature made with ink “Return. 27/II-59” which is a gross violation of the elementary rules for storing of documents under which it is strictly forbidden for the archive employees to make any notes whatsoever in the documents with the exception of cases when they are allowed to write a new page number with an ordinary pencil in the upper right corner when a case is being hardcovered again.

36. In the print-out copy they have erased the previous addressee’s name “Com. Beria” and the date “March 5, 1940”. Instead of them they have written a new surname “Com. Shelepin” and a new date “February 27, 1959”. Such changes in the text were also categorically forbidden according to the rules for archiving of documents.

37. In the same way as the ”print-out copy for Beria” the ”print-out copy for Shelepin” is printed on a form that was not used in the Politburo’s normal work and misses the mandatory slogan ”Workers of the world, unite!”.

Part VII. “Shelepin’s letter” N-632-sh (Н-632-ш)

38. “Shelepin’s letter” was sent to the CC CPSU through the KGB office since it has a mailing number (N-632-sh; Russian Н-632-ш) and the mailing date March 3, 1959 and from that follows that the absence of an inward registration at the CP CPSU in March 1959 is a sign of a forgery.

39. In the “letter” there are no notes or directives whatsoever from a single secretary at the CC CPSU – the forgers were unable to think of any, but then it seems that none of the secretaries at the Central Committee had ever seen Shelepin’s letter which is impossible when it comes to a letter from the chairman of the KGB.

40. When describing the “decision of the Politburo” which should have been in front of the person who issued “Shelepin’s letter”, that person wrote “decision of the CC” which could not occur – Shelepin did definitely know the difference between the Central Committee (CC) and the Politburo (PB).

41. When describing the ”decision of the Politburo at AUCP(b)”, someone wrote ”CC CPSU”. But neither Shelepin nor the person who issued the authentic letter that was addressed to the supreme leader of the country could have confused the name of the party in such an important document.

42. Already in the second sentence of “Shelepin’s letter” it says: “Altogether 21 857 people were executed after a decision from a special troika at the NKVD USSR, of them: in the Katyn forest (Smolensk oblast) 4 421 people, in the Starobelsk camp near Kharkov 3 820 people, in the Ostashkov camp (Kalinin oblast) 6 311 people and 7 305 people were executed in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.”

But with the help of thousands of documents they have identified, and also made it an integrated part of the version which condemns Russia, the fact that in April-May 1940 they had transported the Polish POWs from the camps in Starobelsk and Ostashkov and that they at that time were still alive! How could the real Shelepin, at the same time has he was looking at genuine documents, write that the Poles were shot in the Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps?

43. The real Shelepin could not have written that the Starobelsk camp is located “near Kharkov” at the same time he looked at genuine documents. Because in the genuine documents the real address to the Starobelsk was stated; it was certainly not located in the Kharkov oblast, but in the Voroshilovgrad oblast – almost 250 kilometers from Kharkov!

These are far from all signs that prove that the documents in the “Closed package no. 1” were forged.

The forged documents in the “Closed package no. 1” are all tightly linked to each other by their contents. This means that all signs of forgery in one of them constitute evidence that also the others are forged. This was the reason why the Constitution Court not only chose not to rely on this evidence but also chose not to publish these for Russia embarrassing documents in the final compilation.

The forgery specialist Kozlov claims that 7 signs of forgery are more than enough to reveal a false document. In this case we are dealing with three interrelated historical texts which contain at least 43 signs of forgery!

One can expand this list and add more signs of forgery, namely as follows:

44. The forgeries were introduced for the first time during one of the meetings of the Constitution Court in the “CPSU case” (an investigation of the past activities of the Soviet Communist Party) and in the first versions “Beria’s letter” not only contained the number 794/B but also the date “March 5”. During the meeting on October 16, 1992, Yu. M. Slobodkin (from the CPSU defense) was discussing this date with the chairman of the Constitution Court Zorkin and called the court’s attention to the fact that Beria’s letter was dated March 5 and that the Politburo meeting had also taken place on March 5. It had never happened before that a letter was treated on the same day as it was written. The discussion around that date remains in the protocols of the Constitution Court and the fact that the date has disappeared in later versions of the forgeries is another sign that indicates that these are false.

45. No official would have stamped “Shelepin’s letter” that was sent in 1959 with an ingoing registration number from 1965. Because from that follows that the office employee at the Public Sector of the Central Committee had withheld a top secret letter from the Secretary General of the Central Committee for 6 years and 6 days! And that office employee who had stamped it in that way would have been held responsible for illegally storing a secret letter in an unknown place. Who could guarantee that he had not delivered the letter to the American embassy in order to be photographed? For example, Voznesensky, chairman of the Gosplan and one of the highest deputies in the Soviet government, had been executed in 1950, accused of having both wasted documents and to have delivered them to other hostile states. Did really the office employee at the Central Committee have to induce such a charge against himself?

46. Even more amusing seems the fact that the letter contains another stamp with the date March 20, 1965. This means that the letter from the former and since long resigned KGB head Shelepin, really had been forwarded to the now retired Krushchev, who then would have read the letter and sent it to another department at the Central Committee, where the letter was received and registered.

Those who forged these documents, believed that the stamps in the letters were nothing more than decorations, but the forgers did not realize that these are notes from people that they have received the letters for storage from a person, from whom they are obligated to receive them, and that they bear the highest responsibility for these letters not being read by any outsiders.

47. The letter is handwritten, but not by Shelepin, and is registered in the KGB office and thus sent by ordinary mail. If one believes that the letter is genuine, then it means that in 1959 there was only one typewriter throughout the whole of KGB and also that one had broken before then.

48. In “Shelepin’s letter” it is said that the “case files for the POWs” from the Starobelsk camp still remain in 1959 and that they are stored in the archive, but these case files had been burned already on October 25, 1940 about which Inspector Pismennyj and the sergeant for state security, Gaydidey, had compiled a document which still today is stored in archives.

49. “Shelepin’s letter” is written with a thick Polish accent. Only foreigners could look at it in a way that if there was a state named the Soviet Union then there should also have been the “Soviet power agencies”. Inside the Soviet Union nobody would have said it in that way, since the word “Soviet” absolutely clearly and firmly belonged to the legislative branch of power inside the Soviet Union – Supreme Soviet (Verkhovnyj sovet), the Oblast council (oblastnoy sovet), the District council (rayonnyj sovet). But then it was not called the “Soviet power agencies” but the “agencies for the Soviet power”, and only that since “Soviet” in the latter case meant that it is not about the belonging to a state but is a proper name for a specific power agency. (By the way these “agencies for the Soviet power” had nothing at all to do with the Katyn case). And the names of these agencies were never confused even by the average citizens, even less by the KGB employees! Therefore it really sounds bad when it says in “Shelepin’s letter”: “For the Soviet agencies … at the initiative from the Soviet power agencies”. The words seem to have their origins from abroad much the same way as “mine, yours, not understand” (a Russian jocularity when describing someone who is not very knowjavascript:void(0)ledgeable in the Russian language).

Kozlov said that one of the signs of forgery in one of the documents that he had looked at was the full name “Central Committee of the Communist Party” instead of “CC CPSU”. Indeed, who inside the CC CPSU would have misunderstood what the CC CPSU meant? So also in this case: the real Shelepin or the KGB employee would never had written “Soviet power agencies”, in a similar case they would rather have used a more exact term like “party-state agencies” (partiyno-gosudarstvennyje organy).

Abbreviations:

AUCP(b) (All Union Communist Party (bolsheviks), Russian VKP(b) Vsesoyuznaya kommunisticheskaya partiya (bol’shevikov)) – the name of the Soviet Communist Party, the name AUCP(b) was used 1925-1952

CC (Central Committee, Russian: Tsentral’nyj komitet) – The Central Committee (i.e. the leading agency of the Communist Party)

CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Russian: KPSS, Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza) – The Soviet Communist Party (the name CPSU were used 1952-1991)

FSS (Federal Security Service, Russian: Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti) – The Russian security service today

Gosplan (or Gosplan USSR, Russian: Gosudarstvennyj planovyj komitet soveta ministrov) – The State Plan Committee of the Soviet Ministerial Council (a central Soviet plan agency which among other things developed the so-called Five Year Plans)

GUZhDS (or GUZhDS NKVD USSR, Russian: Glavnoye upravleniye zheleznodorozhnogo stroitel’stva NKVD SSSR) – The main directory for the rail road building at the NKVD (formed in 1940, renamed GULZhDS NKVD USSR in February 1941)

KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) – The Committee for State Security (KGB, earlier NKVD, nowadays FSS)

NKVD (Narodnyj komissariat vnutrennikh del) – The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (then the name of the Soviet Ministry of Interior)

Sovnarkom (Sovet narodnykh komissarov) – The Council of the People’s Commissars (the government of the Soviet Union)

Troika (Russian: Troika, also Osobaya troika NKVD) – NKDV troika (an extrajudicial body which imposed sentences 1935-1938, usually on oblast level. The troikas consisted of the senior NKVD chief of the oblast in question, a secretary of the oblast committee and a prosecutor.)

USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Russian: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) – the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, i.e. the Soviet Union.

http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2010/07/katyn-49-signs-of-falsification-of.html

KATYN: LAZAR KAGANOVICH'S LAST TESTIMONY

The well known Russian military historian, doctor in history of science, A. N. Kolesnik has to the editorial staff of “The truth about Katyn” forwarded extracts of stenograph from his personal conversations with the former member of the Politburo of the Communist Party, L. M. Kaganovich.

Altogether A.N. Kolesnik conducted six conversations with L. M. Kaganovich between 1985 and 1991 around different historical subjects. Out of censorship reasons it is not possible to release the stenographs from these conversations without considerable cuts and edits, not even in small parts, since the direct speech from Kaganovich is full of ugly words and swearing which characterizes his attitude to the leadership of Hitlerite Germany, to the leading circles of bourgeois Poland and to the leaders of the “Gorbachovite” perestroika, and in particular in person to A. N. Yakovlev.

The dates for A. N. Kolesniks conversations with L. M. Kaganovich and their duration are documented by the employees of the KGB who guarded the stairwell where L. M. Kaganovich were living. If necessary the dates and the duration of the conversations can be established more thoroughly with the help of archival information, since the guards were obligated to register all the visitors in a special logbook. Apart from that all the visitors were photographed with a special camera which automatically fixed the date and the time for the film shooting.

The conversation about the Katyn issue, during which L. M. Kaganovich for the first time announced the information of the exact amount of citizens from former Poland that had really been executed on Soviet territory between November 1939 and July 1941, took place on November 6, 1985 in Moscow in L. M. Kaganovich’s apartment which was located at Frunzenskaya naberezhnaya, house 50 and lasted for 2 hours and 40 minutes, from 6.40 pm to 9.20 pm. Present at this conversation was also Lazar Moiseyevich’s daughter Maya Lazarevna, who stenographed everything that was said.

Later it turned out that the conversation also had been recorded with the help of special technical equipment by the employees of the KGB who in silence conducted reconnaissance of L. M. Kaganovich. That became obvious, when A. N. Kolesnik was called by the operative KGB employee Captain Ryazanov, who in a categorical form demanded that the content of the completed conversation could not be made public.

During the conversation on November 6, 1985, L. M. Kaganovich said that during the spring of 1940 the Soviet leadership was forced to make a very difficult decision to execute 3 196 criminals among those who were citizens of former Poland, but L. M. Kaganovich said that it was absolutely necessary in the then prevailing political situation. According to Kaganovich’s testimony, they had essentially sentenced to execution Polish criminals who had been involved in the mass extermination of captured Russian Red Guards 1920-1921, and employees of Polish punishment bodies who had compromised themselves with crimes committed against the USSR and the Polish working class during the 1920s and 1930s. Apart from them they had also executed criminals among the Polish POWs who had committed serious general crimes on Soviet territory after their internment in September-October 1939 – gang rapes, criminal assaults, murders and so on (L. M. Kaganovich said literally: “ …the fuckers, the bandits and the murderers …”).

Apart from Kaganovich, the former chairman of the Peoples Council of Commissars V. M. Molotov in a telephone conversation in 1986 estimated that the amount of executed citizens of former Poland 1939-1941 amounted to “about 3 000 people”.

The exact figure “3 196” Polish citizens who had been executed in the USSR in 1939-1941 was also decidedly confirmed by the former Soviet People’s Commissar for the Construction Industry, S. Z. Ginzburg, in a private conversation with A. N. Kolesnik.

S. Z. Ginzburg told A. N. Kolesnik little-known details of the Soviet excavation works in the Katyn forest. According to him the excavations of the graves with the Polish citizens were conducted in 1944 not only in Kozi Gory but also in at least two other places west of Smolensk. The excavations and the exhumations were conducted with the help of special construction- and assembly units, so-called OSMCh (in Russian osobye stroitelno-montazhnye chasti), which were under S. Z. Ginzburg’s operational management. Because of the period of time that had elapsed S. Z. Ginzburg could not remember the exact number of this OSMCh unit, but said that the unit in question had been formed shortly after the beginning of the war on the basis of one of the civilian building boards and that their staff in 1944 amounted to about 200 people. After the exhumation works they distributed to all the conscripts of the unit – at S. Z. Ginzburg’s request – one kilogram of chocolate as some kind of bonus.

A. N. Yakovlev, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee, started to earnestly interest himself in the contents of the conversations between A. N. Kolesnik and L. M. Kaganovich, and also showed great concern regarding a possible publication of Kaganovich’s testimony about the Katyn issue. At the end of 1989, right before his appearance in front of the 2nd Congress of People’s Deputies, A. N. Yakovlev turned, through A. N. Kolesnik, over a list of tendentiously selected questions about the Katyn issue with the suggestion of recording his answers at a tape recorder. The idea was to prepare Kaganovich’s answers in a proper way and confirm the version of the Soviet guilt in the Katyn massacre by his authoritative testimony. (Kaganovich said literally: “Tell this son of a bitch that I have had them spinning around my dick! I am from the family of a common meat pundit, but have been a member of the Central Committee and a minister, while they want us to fall back to 1914. The thing they have invented about Katyn – that will bounce back at them with bloody tears. They want us again to end up in a conflict with Europe. Because during the last war we indeed not only fought Hitler but with most other European countries!”

The perspective of a publication of the exact amount of Polish citizens that were executed in 1939-41 (3 196 people) and the true reasons for the executions, induced an extreme nervousness of Yakovlev and his surroundings. In exchange that A. N. Kolesnik should keep quiet about the information around the Katyn issue that he had received from L. M. Kaganovich, A. N. Yakovlev suggested that he could choose between six different senior posts.

When A. N. Kolesnik declined that offer, they arranged on directives from A. N. Yakovlev and D. A. Volkogonov a meeting between him and a representative for “competent bodies” who conducted a “preventive talk” with him in V. M. Falin’s (the head of the news agency APN) office. During the conversation threats were made to “bring him in on a long time”, if A. N. Kolesnik would go public on the facts about the Katyn issue that L. M. Kaganovich had told him.

When it became apparent that this measure had no effect, they brought prosecution on A. N. Kolesnik which ended with him being dismissed from the Military History Institute in 1993.

http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2010/07/katyn-lazar-kaganovichs-testimony.html

Katyn: “Beria’s letter” was written on two different typewriters

On March 31, 2009, Sergey Strygin (Russia’s leading Katyn-expert) turned to a licensed forensic expert, Eduard Petrovich Molokov with a request to analyse “Beria’s letter nr. 794/B” of “March __, 1940” in order to determine whether it was written on one or several typewriters.

Molokov has an expert diploma (issued in 1973 by the MVD, i.e. the Ministry of Interior of the USSR) and is entitled to conduct such investigations. He used a “MBS-10” microscope, which allows up to 32 times magnification, when analyzing the document. During the analysis of the “Beria letter” (which consists of four pages) he magnified the text 3 times and carefully compared the images.

Molokov found that pages 1, 2 and 3 are written on a different typewriter than page 4. He has, among other things, examined the letters’ distance from each other, their altitudinal and the clarity of the printing ink. His conclusion is that the pages 1, 2 and 3 are consistently equal. But page 4 (the one with Beria’s signature on) differs from the first three pages.

It should be added that the typewriter which was used to print page 4 has a font that is known to have been on one of the typewriters in Beria’s office, while the font from the typewriter that wrote pages 1-3 is unknown (it has not been found in any of the documents sent by Beria).

There is one other important detail. Molokov had only access to high definition digital colour copies that Strygin was allowed to do in the Russian archives some years ago. This means that Molokov did not have access to the physical letter, which in its turn means that such things as the age of the paper have not been possible to examine.

http://katynmassakern.blogspot.com/2010/07/katyn-berias-letter-was-written-on-two.html