Katyn massacre

The Katyn massacre (not to be confused with the Khatyn massacre) refers to the mass executions of thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians (many of them Jewish) by Nazi Germany in eastern Ukraine and western Russia between 1941 and 1943, often misattributed to the Soviet Union and in particular the NKVD.

The massacres are named after the Katyn forest in Smolensk as the whole affair began in 1943 when German authorities announced their "discovery" of the mass graves of thousands of Poles who had supposedly been murdered by the Soviets there. In spite of the name however, many of the victims of the so-called "Katyn" massacre had in reality been murdered and buried in Kharkiv and Tver.

Although the Soviet government under Mikhail Gorbachev and the Russian government both acknowledged Soviet guilt for the massacre, there is substantial material evidence that the massacre was perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

In 2012, the Polish government announced that no more excavations could take place at the sites after the badge of a purported victim at Katyn (marked on the "official" Soviet documents) was found at another site of a massacre in Ukraine, that one attributed to the Nazis and committed no earlier than 1941.

Evidence of Nazi involvement

Map showing German invasion of the USSR, showing how in 1941, when the killings took place, Nazi Germany had already captured regions past the Katyn forest

Nazi Germany conquered Poland in 1939 and committed many massacres that looked very similar in nature to Katyn's in the following years. It was their modus operandi across Europe to shoot civilians from the back in front of a mass grave and execute children as well, which was unheard of from the Soviet Union. In 1943, as the Nazis were being pushed back from the USSR by the Red Army, they discovered the site and alerted the public. In Joseph Goebbels' diaries dated May 1943, he mentions that German munitions were found lodged in the bodies, but was initially unaware of German involvement. Goebbels launched an extensive campaign to publicize the massacre and attribute it to the Soviets. He likely hoped to drive a wedge between the Allied forces to buy some time from an imminent defeat. The Nazis claimed that the massacre had been committed in 1940, but most of the bullets found inside the graves were of German manufacture produced no earlier than 1941.

Additionally, it was impossible for the USSR to use German ammunition with their weapons. The Red Army used the 7.62mm calibre while the SS and Wehrmacht used the 7.92mm calibre; thus the bullets would not be compatible with typical Red Army weapons that could chamber up to 7.82mm calibre. For that contradiction to happen, the Red Army would have first needed access to German weapons and ammunition and, secondly, a reason to use them. The USSR had no reason to use German weapons and ammunition to pin the massacre on the Nazis as they were not the ones who publicized the massacre. Moreover, since Yeltsin later provided documents "signed" by Stalin and Beria to prove Soviet responsibility, the Red Army clearly had no intention of denying their involvement in the massacre, making it very unlikely that they would have opted to use German weapons for this execution specifically.

Historical revisionism against the Soviets

After Germany "discovered" the site in 1943 and attributed it to the Soviets, the story was picked up by bourgeois states that fed it to their war-time media. In 1990, the dying Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev and soon Boris Yeltsin "admitted" that the Soviets were responsible for the massacre and, after the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, under the Yeltsin government, produced documents signed by Stalin and Beria that "proved" Soviet responsibility.

Anti-communist historians claim that the NKVD, for example, moved prisoners of war from the Kozel‘sk, Starobelsk, and Ostashkov POW camps to various sites, including Katyn, to be executed. The language about execution however was forged by historians Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski. The original documents, procured by Grover Furr who translated them himself, refer to prisoner transport and never mention executions.

The power of attributing the massacre to the Soviets in bourgeois history lies in anti-communist arguments that equate the USSR (and thus communism) to Nazi Germany. This narrative also erases a war crime potentially committed by the Nazis – unsurprising once one learns the extent to which Nazi officers were rehabilitated, their past erased, to be used in the United States and German governments, as well as NATO. There is one simple question to ask, what would the Soviets gain from this massacre? Only bourgeois historians, feeding on their anti-communist delusions about Stalin, would find an answer: that the Soviets wanted to keep control of Poland and thus executed subversive elements. Principled marxist-leninists that have studied the Soviet Union themselves however know these delusions to be lies, and so this massacre would be the only one the USSR had ever committed; it would be completely out of place and was far more in line with the modus operandi of Nazi Germany. That is not to say however that the USSR did not have the death penalty and did not execute Nazi collaborators during war time.

Ties to Holocaust denial

The Katyn massacre is just as much Nazi propaganda today as it was 80 years ago. Neo-Nazis seek to diminish the scale of (or sometimes deny in its totality) the Holocaust, and one of the ways they do this is by falsely attributing the actions of Nazi leaders to Allied leaders, whether they be reformist social democrats like Franklin D. Roosevelt or communist revolutionaries such as Joseph Stalin. This includes but is not limited to the Katyn massacre. For example, Richard Verrall, a British Holocaust denier, wrote in the 1974 pamphlet Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last that the Soviets were "attempting to blame the Katyn massacre on the Germans" in order to get them convicted of war crimes. The publisher of this pamphlet, Ernst Zündel, also made mention of Katyn in advertisements.