75 years ago, Stalin signed the decision to execute in Katyn – Radіo Freedom

75 years ago, Joseph Stalin, together with other members of the Politburo of the CPSU (b), has signed a decision to execute more than 20 thousand captured Polish officers, to be known as the Katyn tragedy.

As the correspondent of Radio Liberty Alexei Dzikavitsky, about 22 thousand Polish citizens were shot in Katyn near Smolensk, in Kharkov, copper and possibly in Kurapaty near Minsk, without trial as “incorrigible enemies of Soviet power”.
 Information about mass executions of Poles at Katyn spread the Nazis in 1943 – they were so beneficial to strengthen the anti-Soviet sentiment in occupied Poland and its armed forces.

In turn, the Soviet propaganda accused the Germans of this crime, and only in April 1990, the Soviet Union admitted that the Poles were shot by the NKVD.

Poland insisted that the KGB executions have been recognized as genocide, but the Russian military prosecutor’s office in 2004 has been the investigation of the Katyn case, refusing to name the mass extermination of Poles as genocide and to bring someone or accountability.
 

From Warsaw correspondent of Radio Liberty Alexei Dzikavitsky