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The Katyn massacre (not to be confused with the Khatyn massacre) refers to the mass executions of thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians in Eastern Europe which, while in reality were perpetrated by Nazi Germany sometime between 1941 and 1943, have been misattributed to the Soviet Union by anti-communist governments and historians, who claim that the massacres were carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940. The massacres are collectively named after the Katyn forest near Smolensk as the graves were first discovered there. However, many of the victims of the so-called "Katyn" massacre were actually murdered and buried in the Kharkiv and Tver Oblasts.
On 13 April 1943, German authorities announced that they had found thousands of bodies of Polish POWs near Katyn, which at the time was under German occupation. In an official report in the summer/autumn of 1943, Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Katyn, the Germans claimed the Soviets had shot the Poles. The Polish government-in-exile in London accepted the German account and held the Soviets to be responsible. The Soviet government responded with their own report in 1944 by the Burdenko Commission which blamed the Germans. (Full article...)
Khrushchev is considered to be responsible for numerous theoretical errors and policy mistakes which laid the groundwork for further problems—problems which eventually culminated in the overthrow of the Soviet Union. Most notably, he denounced former leader Joseph Stalin in his infamous "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress on 25 February 1956, blaming many of the USSR's problems on Stalin and his cult of personality (despite the fact that Khrushchev himself had been involved in maintaining this cult, and despite the fact Stalin himself opposed it) and initiating a policy of Destalinisation. (Full article...)
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