Professor Plotnikov of Katyn
Colonelcassad
August 24, 13:37
The question of the perpetrators of the death of Polish prisoners of war in Katyn (more precisely, in the tract of Kozi Gory) has been discussed for more than 70 years. More than once I turned to this topic and "LG". There are official estimates of the authorities. But there are many dark places left. His vision of the situation is shared by the professor of the Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU), Doctor of Historical Sciences Alexei Plotnikov.
- Alexey Yurievich, what was the total number of Polish prisoners of war?
- There are several sources, there are differences between them. In captivity to the Germans in 1939, according to various estimates, 450-480 thousand Polish military fell. In the USSR, there were 120-150 thousand of them. Cited by a number of specialists - primarily Polish - data on internment of 180 or even 220-250 thousand Poles are not documented. It should be emphasized that first these people - from a legal point of view - were interned. This is because there were no wars between the Soviet Union and Poland. But after on December 18, 1939, the Polish government in exile declared war on the Soviet Union (the so-called Anzher Declaration) because of the transfer of Vilna and Vilna to Lithuania, the internees automatically turned into prisoners of war. In other words, legally,
- How were their fates?
- Differently. The natives of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia were privatized privately and sergeantly at home even before the emigre government declared war on the USSR. How many of them were, it is not known. Then the USSR and Germany concluded an agreement according to which all prisoners of war, who were drafted into the Polish army from the territory that had departed the USSR, but taken prisoner by the Germans, were transferred to the Soviet Union, and vice versa. As a result of the exchange in October and November 1939, the USSR transferred about 25,000 prisoners of war - citizens of former Poland, natives of territories that had retired to the Soviet Union, and Germany - more than 40,000. Most of them, privates and sergeants, were dismissed to their homes. The officers did not let go. Also detained were officers of the border guard service, police and punitive structures - Who was suspected of involvement in sabotage and espionage activities against the USSR. After all, in 1920-1930-ies Polish intelligence was very active in the western regions of the Soviet Union.
By the beginning of 1940, there were no more than 30,000 Polish prisoners of war in the USSR. About 10 thousand of them are officers. They were distributed over specially created camps. There were 4500 Polish prisoners of war in the Kozelskoye camp (in 1940 - in the Western and now Kaluga region), in the Ostashkovsky (Kalininskaya, now Tver region) - 6,300, and 3,800 in the Starobelskoye camp (Voroshilovgrad, now Lugansk region). At the same time, the captured officers were kept mainly in the Starobelsky and Kozelsky camps. Ostashkovsky was mostly "soldier", officers - no more than 400 people. Some of the Poles were in camps in Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine. These are the initial figures.
- July 30, 1941, the Kremlin and the government of Sikorski signed a political agreement and an additional protocol to it. He provided amnesty to all Polish prisoners of war. These allegedly turned out to be 391 545 people. How does this relate to the figures given you?
- Indeed, under the amnesty in August 1941, there were about 390 thousand Poles. There is no contradiction here, as civilians were interned along with prisoners of war in 1939-1940. This is a separate topic. We are talking about prisoners of war - former Polish soldiers of the Polish Army.
- Where and how many, besides Katyn, during the Great Patriotic War Polish prisoners of war were shot?
- Exactly hardly anyone will call. At least because some of the archival documents are still classified. I will only say about two burials near Katyn (Goat's Gore). The first was in Serebryanka (Dubrovenka) near Red Bora, the second - while documented not confirmed - to the west of the village of Katyn. Information about him is contained in the memoirs of the daughter of one of the deceased Poles of Shchyradlovskaya-Peca.
- Your opponents claim that the Polish prisoners of war in Katyn were shot on Stalin's orders. Why do you disagree with them?
- Supporters of the Polish (more honestly say - Goebbels) versions do not explain, but ignore or frankly ignore the inconvenient facts for themselves.
I will list the main ones. First of all, it is proved: at the place of the shooting, we found German-made cartridges of 6.35 and 7.65 mm caliber (from GECO, and also from RWS). This shows that the Poles are killed from German pistols. In the arsenal of the Red Army and NKVD troops, there were no such weapons. Attempts by the Polish side to prove the purchase of such pistols in Germany specifically for the shooting of POWs are untenable. The NKVD organs used their regular weapons. These are revolvers, and officers have TT pistols. Both are 7.62 mm caliber. In addition, and this is also documented, the hands of some of the shot were tied with paper twine. In the USSR, this was not done then, but it was produced in Europe, including in Germany. Another important fact: documents on the execution of the verdict in the archives were not found,
Finally, documents were found on separate corpses. And the Germans during the exhumation in February-May 1943, and Burdenko's commission in 1944: certificates of officers, passports, other identity cards. This also speaks of the USSR's non-participation in the shooting. The NKVD would not leave such evidence - was categorically forbidden by the corresponding instruction. There would be no newspapers printed in the spring of 1940, and they were "found" by the Germans in places of burial in large numbers. In the autumn of 1941, the Germans could leave the documents they had shot: they had nothing to fear then, according to them. As early as 1940, the Hitlerites, without hiding, destroyed several thousand representatives of the Polish elite. For example, in the Palmyra forest near Warsaw. It is noteworthy that Polish authorities rarely recollect these victims.
"So they can not be declared victims of the NKVD."
- Will not work. The Polish version is untenable for a number of reasons. It is known that many witnesses saw the Poles alive in 1940-1941.
Archival documents on the transfer of cases on Polish prisoners of war for consideration of the Special Meeting (CCA) under the NKVD of the USSR, which had no right to sentence to execution, also could be condemned for a maximum of eight years in the camps. In addition, in the USSR there have never been mass executions of foreign prisoners of war, especially officers. Especially in extrajudicial order without registration of the corresponding procedures provided by law. This Warsaw stubbornly is not seen. And further. Until the autumn of 1941, in the tract of Kozi Gory there was no technical opportunity to shoot several thousands of people unnoticed. This tract is located 17 kilometers from Smolensk near the station Gnezdovo and until the war remained an open place for recreation of citizens. Here there were pioneer camps, a dacha of the NKVD, burnt by the Germans at retreat in 1943. It was located 700 meters from the busy Vitebsk highway. And the graves themselves are 200 meters from the highway. It was the Germans who surrounded this place with barbed wire and guard.
- Mass graves in the Copper Tver region ... Here, too, there is no full clarity?
- Tver (more precisely, the village of Mednoye near Tver) is the second point on the "Katyn map" where Polish prisoners of war were allegedly buried. Recently, the local community started talking about this in full voice. Everyone is fed up with the lies that the Poles and some of our fellow citizens are multiplying. It is believed that Polish prisoners of war, who were previously held in the Ostashkovsky camp, were buried in Copper. Officers, I remind you, there were no more than 400 people out of a total of 6,300 Polish prisoners of war. The Polish side categorically asserts that they all lie in Mednoye. This contradicts the data contained in the memorandums of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. They were sent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in connection with the consideration in 2010-2013 of the "Affairs of Yanovets and Others Against Russia". In the memorandums of the Ministry of Justice - and they reflect our official position - clearly stated, That at the exhumation held in 1991 in Mednoye, the remains of only 243 Polish soldiers were found. Of these, 16 were identified (identified by tokens).
- To put it mildly, significant discrepancies.
- It is necessary to speak directly: there is a frank and unprincipled manipulation. Despite this, the Poles erected in the Copper Memorial, hung signs with the names of allegedly shot and resting there 6,300 Poles. The figures I have mentioned allow us to present the scale of cynicism and falsification that the Poles resorted to and continue to resort to.
It's sad that they have like-minded people in our country. We will not guess their motives. But they have no arguments! This is the Jesuitism and shamelessness of the position of the present Warsaw: reject and ignore inconvenient facts and talk about your position as the only true and beyond doubt.
- There is also much controversy in this respect in the so-called "Katyn No. 3" - Kiev Bykovna.
- In 2012 in Bykovna by the then presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Komorowski and Yanukovych, a memorial was opened in memory of three and a half thousand Polish officers allegedly shot there (I draw your attention once again to the officers). However, this is not confirmed by anything. There are not even milestone lists that are in the "Katyn case". It is asserted that in the prisons of Western Ukraine there were 3,500 Polish officers. And allegedly all of them were shot in Bykovna.
Shocks the technique of discussion by opponents. We are used to giving facts and arguments. And we are called figures taken from the ceiling, documented not confirmed, and they are given out for indisputable evidence.
- Have you personally discussed with those national historians who adhere to the Polish position?
- I'd be glad! We are always open for discussion. But our opponents avoid discussions and contacts. They act on the principle of "scorpion under the stone." He usually sits out for a long time, but at some point he crawls out, bites and hides again.
- At the beginning of the year, a bill of Zelinsky's deputy entered the Polish Seim. He proposed to declare July 12 as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the "August raid" of 1945. In Poland it is called Little Katyn or New Katyn. The feeling that the Poles bake their Katyns as pancakes ...
- This once again confirms that Katyn as such has long been an instrument and at the same time a "source" of information war against Russia. We somehow underestimate this. But in vain.
On July 9, the Polish Seim adopted Zelinsky's law on "The Day of Remembrance on July 12". So now official Warsaw has another "anti-Russian bogey" ...
The history of the "Little Katyn" is as follows. In July 1945, an army and Chekist operation was carried out against gangs that committed killings and sabotage in the rear of the 1st Byelorussian Front. During the operation, more than seven thousand armed people were detained. Approximately 600 of them were linked to the Army of the Krajowa (AK). The Polish side claims that all were immediately shot. In Warsaw, they refer to one document - the cipher telegram of the Smersh chief Viktor Abakumov, to the USSR People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, Lavrenti Beria, No. 25212, dated July 21, 1945. There they allegedly talked about the liquidation of anti-Soviet formations and contained a "proposal to shoot" the aforementioned 592 Poles. But in the USSR, I repeat once again, such unconvicted executions have never been carried out, let alone foreign prisoners of war.
At that time, the staff of the Smersh SDM Smersh of the USSR NCO had no legal basis for the execution of the Poles. Order No. 0061 of the NKVD of the USSR of February 6, 1945, which introduced the right to shoot the bandits and saboteurs captured at the crime scene at the end of the war in the front-line zone, ceased to exist after the end of hostilities. It was officially abolished even before the "August operation". One thing this calls into question is the reliability of the encryption cited by the Poles.
The indiscriminate, "egalitarian" nature of the use of mass shooting to all 592 arrested "akovs", and only to them, also causes great doubt. The usual practice of the law enforcement agencies of the USSR at that time was the division of prisoners into contingents, categories and other criteria with the individual application of appropriate measures.
It is noteworthy that the coding given is composed with a gross violation of the norms of service subordination. The Smersh GUBC was not subordinate to the NKVD of the USSR and for this reason its head, Colonel-General Viktor Abakumov, who was directly subordinate to Stalin, in principle should not have sought "instructions" from the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. Especially - the instructions for the execution.
Recently, the examination carried out by the "cipher-telegram" clearly states that we are dealing with falsification. If only because part of the document is printed on one machine, and part - on the other. The publication of the data of this examination, I hope, will put an end to the Polish myth-making on these events.
However, there is no doubt that the "Little", "New" and other Katyns will be followed by others. Polish falsifiers of history have lost the sense of reality and are unlikely to stop.
- What about the so-called grave No. 9, discovered in Katyn in the spring of 2000?
- Indeed, in 2000, in Katyn, during the construction of a transformer station, a previously unknown burial site was discovered. On uniforms and other signs established: there are Polish soldiers. At least two hundred remains. On the discovery of a new grave, Poland responded by saying that the wife of the then Polish President Kwasniewski had arrived in Katyn, and laid flowers. But the Polish side did not react to the offer to conduct joint exhumation work. Since then, the "grave No. 9" for the Polish media is a figure of "deaf silence".
- What, there are "other" Poles?
- Paradox, but the remains of the "untested" compatriots of the official Warsaw are not needed. She only needs "correct" burials, which confirm the Polish version of the execution of "evil NKVD". After all, when exhuming the "unknown grave" - you can hardly doubt - will be found another evidence pointing to the German performers. For the sake of completeness, we must also speak about the actions of our authorities. Instead of initiating the exhumation, they classified all the materials. Russian researchers have not been allowed to "grave No. 9" for the sixteenth year already. But I am sure: the truth will prevail sooner or later.
- If we sum up the conversation, what questions are among the unresolved?
"I've already told you about the most part." The main thing is that the collected facts and evidence confirming the Germans' guilt in the execution of the Poles in Katyn are ignored by Warsaw and somehow "shamefully" ignored by our authorities. It's time to finally understand that the Polish side in the "Katyn issue" is a party that has long been not only biased, but also incomprehensible. Warsaw does not accept any "uncomfortable" arguments for itself and will not accept it. Poles will continue to call white black. They put themselves in a Katyn impasse, they can not get out of it, and they do not want to get out of it. Russia should show political will here.
Https://www.prometej.info/blog/istoriya/k atynskij-tupik / - zinc
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