Echoes of Katyn

Try to read this history without thinking of today's headlines

On August 23rd, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, ideological enemies, concluded a non-aggression pact. A secret portion of the pact divided Eastern Europe between the two, with Poland cut in half. On September 1st, Nazi Germany attacked Poland (after staging a supposed Polish attack on a German radio station) and swiftly moved its forces into its half of the long-suffering country. On the September 17th, the Soviet Union invaded its half.

For the Soviets, it was a moment to savour.

During the First World War, Russia had been at war with Germany for three years when it was rocked by revolution. As Russian defences crumbled, the Germans had gone on the offensive in the east. To cut their losses and focus on the civil war, the new Soviet government negotiated with Germany for two months and finally agreed to dismantle much of the Russian Empire in Eastern Europe. Russia’s Polish territories were ceded to Germany. Russia let go of Finland and the Baltic countries, and it accepted Ukrainian independence. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3, 1918.

When the Germans were in turn defeated in Western Europe, on November 11, 1918, the Soviets repudiated the treaty and sent forces to take back the lands they had surrendered. After a long struggle in Ukraine — this is when the cry of “Slava Ukraini” was first heard — they succeeded. But an invasion of Poland was repelled. Thus, when the Soviets occupied eastern Poland in 1939, they saw themselves as merely restoring what was rightfully theirs as the inheritors of the Russian Empire — although the empire was, of course, recast as the family of socialist nations.

But then there was the problem of Polish nationalism and its insistence that even after more than a century under foreign rule — of Russians, Germans, and Austrians — the Polish people should still form a sovereign nation. Stalin dealt with that using methods he had developed within the Soviet Union.

Hundreds of thousands of Poles were ordered out of Poland and forced to settle in distant Kazakhstan or points further east.

The Soviets also targeted those who could rouse national feeling and organize resistance. Intellectuals, civic officials, police officers, and military officers were interrogated by officers of the NKVD (the earlier name of the KGB, which is now known as the FSB). Stalin ordered those deemed less than enthusiastic about Soviet rule to be liquidated.

The condemned were brought to an execution site at Katyn by the hundreds but shot one at a time. The NKVD’s lead executioner, Major General Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin, is believed to have personally shot some 7,000 people over the course of 18 days. In all, some 22,000 Poles were murdered.

When Nazi Germany turned on the Soviet Union, and it discovered the mass graves at Katyn, the Nazis made gleeful propaganda of the revelation. The Soviets denied everything. Later in the war, when the Red Army took back Katyn, the NKVD engaged in a careful coverup, including an “investigation” which supposedly proved the Nazis were to blame. Although Western intelligence officials concluded the Soviets were responsible, Western governments officially blamed Nazi Germany.

For decades after the war, the Soviet Union continued to lie about the Katyn massacre. Only in 1990 did the USSR admit guilt and express “profound regret.”

This is all distant history. But as anyone following the news this week knows, Faulkner was right when he wrote, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”