Katyn massacre

Katyn massacre
Part of the Soviet persecution of Poles during World War II
Katyn-Kharkov-Mednoye memorial in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, Poland
Katyn massacre is located in USSR
Katyn massacre
LocationKatyn Forest, Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons in Soviet Union
DateApril–May 1940
TargetPolish people
Attack type
Mass murder
Deaths14,500–25,000
VictimsPoles
PerpetratorsNKVD, Soviet Union
Memo from Beria to Stalin which proposed the execution of Polish officers, policemen, etc.
Exhumation of the Katyn massacre victims, murdered in 1940 by order of Soviet authorities.
Bodies of Polish prisoners-of-war by the mass graves of the Katyn massacre, awaiting forensic examination, April 30, 1943.
Photo from the 1943 exhumation of a mass grave of Polish officers killed by the NKVD in the Katyń Forest in 1940. Inside of one of the largest graves.

The Katyn massacre refers to a series of mass murder of Poles committed by the Soviet Union during World War II. The Soviet secret police NKVD killed around 22,000 Polish prisoners of war in a forest near Katyn, about 20 km (12 miles) from Smolensk.

Perpetrators

In the 1980s, Michail Gorbachev said that Beria and Vsevolod Merkulov, head of the NKGB, were responsible. He said that the Katyn massacre was one of Stalin's atrocities. Beria was accused of treason and executed in 1953, so was Merkulov who was close to Beria. Beria and Merkulov were never tried for what they did at Katyn.

Victims

Many of the prisoners killed were mainly captured Polish soldiers, police, doctors, teachers, scientists, engineers and journalists. The Katyn massacre happened in April and May 1940. Stalin ordered it on Beria's advice. In April 1990, the Soviet regime admitted that it was responsible. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev officially apologised. The Katyn massacre is one in a series of similar massacres where up to 100,000 people were killed. Between 400 and 450 prisoners survived. People used their stories to change Soviet history books after the apology.

Tadeusz Tchórzewski - Katyn massacre memorial (2000) in Wroclaw, Poland.

Genocide question

Over the past decades, it has been debated whether the Katyn massacre could be seen as a genocide. Many Polish scholars, including historian Adam Basak, jurist Cezary Mik, Karolina Kosińska, and prosecutor Małgorzata Kuźniar-Plota, who investigated the massacre, believed that the Katyn massacre qualified as a genocide.

Historian Adam Basak noted:

[The Soviet Politburo's] intent was to destroy a part of the Polish national group [...] twenty-six thousand representatives of the intellectual elite, selected because of their social status and social function.

Jurist Cezary Mik called the massacre "genocidal murder of the Polish elite in Katyn and other places", while Karolina Kosińska said:

If we talk about a specific plan to destroy a group, we can undoubtedly point to the USSR's policy [. ...] various genocidal acts against the Polish nation, acts the most spectacular of which was the Katyn Massacre.

More importantly, prosecutor Małgorzata Kuźniar-Plota, who investigated the massacre, ruled that:

[The Katyn massacre] had all the characteristics of the crime of genocide specified in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Denial

Since the fall of communism, individuals on the political left have occasionally denied the Katyn massacre.

Examples

Poland

In December 2019, members of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) downplayed the Katyn massacre by saying that "the Soviets liberated Poland" from German occupation. The party was a successor to the communist party that ruled Poland between 1947 and 1989.

The said members were criticized for "falsifying Polish history" and "promoting a [communist] totalitarian system". British historian Norman Davies also commented that the Red Army soldiers did not know what freedom was but fought for their leaders to "bring all conquered countries under Bolshevik dictatorship".

Czechia

In December 2024, the Czech Constitutional Court (ÚS) rejected an appeal from Josef Skála, a former Communist Party deputy leader, who had previously been convicted for denying that the Soviets committed the Katyn massacre. The Court stated in its ruling,

Freedom of speech is not absolute and cannot justify denying established historical facts.

References

  1. 1 2 3
    • Zawodny, J. K. (2015-11-06). Death In The Forest; The Story Of The Katyn Forest Massacre. Pickle Partners Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78625-167-1.
    • Rogoyska, Jane (2021-05-06). Surviving Katyn: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-78607-893-3.
    • Kaczorowska, Teresa (2015-08-13). Children of the Katyn Massacre: Accounts of Life After the 1940 Soviet Murder of Polish POWs. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-8376-1.
    • Sanford, George (2007-05-07). Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-30299-4.
  2. 1 2 3
  3. ↑ Finnish: Tadeusz Tchórzewskin suunnittelema Katynin joukkomurhan muistomerkki (2000) Puolan Wroclawissa.
  4. 1 2 See Adam Basak, Katyń: Problem odpowiedziałności karnej sprawców w świetle Norymbergi, in 21 Studia na Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi 325, 325–60 (Karol Jonca ed., 1998).
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
  6. 1 2 See Cezary Mik, Lech Aleksander Kaczyński (18.6.1949-10.4.2010), 1/2 Kwartalnik Prawa Publicznego 5, 10 (2010) (describing the life as well as public and academic work of the late Lech Kaczyński, President of Poland, who, while heading a Polish delegation for the celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of the Katyn Massacre, died along with the ninety-five people accompanying him on April 10, 2010 in a plane crash in Smolensk).
  7. 1 2 Karolina Kosińska, Zbrodnia ludobójstwa w prawie międzynarodowym 34 (2009).
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 See Małgorzata Kuźniar-Plota, Kwalifikacja prawna Zbrodni Katyńskiej—Wybrane zagadnienia, in Zbrodnia Katyńska: W kRęgu Prawdy i Kłamstwa 46 (Sławomir Kalbarczyk ed., 2010).
  9. ↑ "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide". Welcome to the United Nations. Retrieved March 12, 2025.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 ""The Soviets liberated Poland" – Polish left-wing leaders criticised for WWII remarks". Notes from Poland. December 2, 2019. Retrieved March 11, 2025.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 "Czech Constitutional Court rejects appeal over denial of Soviet responsibility for Katyn massacre". Radio Prague International. December 16, 2024. Archived from the original on March 12, 2025. Retrieved March 11, 2025.