"Katynsky Labyrinth"

Irina Lagunina: Russian and Polish prime ministers honored 22 thousand Polish troops on Wednesday, shot by Soviet troops 70 years ago in the Katyn forest. Vladimir Putin did not apologize for this mass murder committed by the country whose successor was Russia. But he gave a political and legal assessment of this dark page of Soviet history, which the Kremlin tried to hide for many years.

The first book about Katyn, which was issued openly in the Soviet Union, was the book of Vladimir Abarinov “Katynsky Labyrinth”. Vladimir, tell us about the background of this book.

Vladimir Abarinov: In the era of Gorbachev’s perestroika and publicity, I worked in the Literary Gazeta in the department of foreign culture. He was engaged in a lot of English -language literature, publications. Then it was possible to publish a lot, published Orwell, and so on, all this was the first time in the Soviet Union. And including I was engaged in cinema, cinema. Polish cinema is my old love. In these cases, I often visited the Union of Cinematographers, I myself graduated from VGIK, and it was my almost my own home. If you remember, in the Union of Cinematographers in about 86-88, such a liberal leadership was formed, headed by Andrei Smirnov, and this was actually a roof for Russian reformers, for Soviet reformers, which then ended with the first congress of people's deputies. This all started there, under the roof of the Union of Cinematographers. There were a lot of all interesting, interesting events. And one of the events was a round table of Soviet and Polish historians and filmmakers on the topic "White spots in Soviet-Polish relations." I came there as a correspondent of the Literary Newspaper, recorded this discussion. Then I published a relatively small passage in the newspaper. And this, perhaps, is the first mention of Katyn in the Soviet press. This topic has been closed so far.

In any case, it was such an objective, balanced mention when the Soviet official version, the version of the so -called commission of Burdenko, was called into question. And it began with this. Because the Literary Newspaper was at that time a very popular publication. It is enough to say that there was a period, just this period when she had a circulation of 6.5 million copies - this is an unthinkable circulation in the present time. Therefore, for each of our us, we received just hundreds of letters from all over the Soviet Union. And after this publication, they began to wear letters just bags every day. And I realized that it was time to deal with Katynya seriously. In fact, the first step was to read and study these letters. In the end, one of these letters led me to a very accurate mark, he was written by a man named Lukin, who served in the NKVD convoy troops in 40 and participated in the escort of the Polish prisoners of war. He categorically denied the fact of execution. But the fact is that in this letter there was an accurate indication of the number of the military unit. With this number I went to the closed archive, I got to admit these archival funds, because I had a certificate of the Literary Newspaper correspondent in my pocket, and this certificate at that time opened almost any doors. It all started with this. This work ultimately took three years. Then I went to other archives, I began to look for witnesses, went to other witnesses. A total of three years.

Irina Lagunina: Let's listen to a fragment of the afterword to the Polish publication of this book:

"In the archive where I was looking for documents about Katyn, it was supposed to make all extracts in a special notebook with numbered pages so that it was impossible to tear out and take part of the records. After class, the notebook was to be stored by the archive workers who carefully viewed the recordings, finding out whether they were a state secret. Only after such a look it was possible to take home. I was very complicated by the work, I was almost sure that the Katyn business is still a state secret (there was nowhere to find out, because the list of GOSTIIN was also a state of guests).

Irina Lagunina: “Katynsky Labyrinth”, author Vladimir Abarinov. Vladimir, did you know exactly what to look for in the archives, or were you brought on the path some documents?

Vladimir Abarinov: I understood that I would not get to the most important documents. Other people worked next to me with a parallel course. People who had the official status of historians of academic institutions, they offended the thresholds of the Old Square, offended the thresholds of the CPSU Central Committee, the international department, other departments and tried to get to these very main documents that are now published. I did not have such opportunities, and I understood that these documents were unlikely to show, because I saw the unsuccessfulness of these attempts. But I knew that in jurisprudence there is the term “a set of indirect evidence” when the sum of indirect evidence is the same as direct evidence. And I went along this path, along the bypass path. I worked with the Archival Fund of the Nuremberg process, working documents of the Soviet delegation at the Nuremberg process. And a lot from there removed. I worked with other peripheral documents in relation to Katyn. And from these individual fragments of the information there was a puzzle, a general picture has developed.

I did not know, I honestly had no prejudice, there was no opinion on. I honestly versed, honestly weighed, honestly compared the facts. In fact, in this book there are quite a lot of information, which was not confirmed later. But I considered it necessary to publish it all the same, the information that emanated primarily from the people who were eyewitnesses of one or another episode of this Katyn epic. Because it has many stages. The first is a direct event, the direct liquidation of Polish prisoners in the spring of 40. The second stage is the falsification of the version, 43-44, the Burdenko commission. The third stage is preparation for the Nuremberg process, to officially confirm the guilt of the Germans in such an authoritative judicial areopaga as the Nuremberg process. And there they prepared witnesses in Lubyanka, worked with these witnesses. And then all the working documents and protocols of interrogations of witnesses in the Katyn case in Nuremberg, including witnesses of protection, because the German side introduced its witnesses. This, of course, was not published before me in the Soviet Union.

Irina Lagunina: Nevertheless, at what stage did you realize that this is still not the work of the Germans?

Vladimir Abarinov: Of course, there were doubts from the very beginning, there were simply logical inconsistencies, although supporters of this version find rather intricate explanations why the Germans were shot, not ours. In fact, this contradicted ordinary logic for many reasons, in which it may not make sense to deepen. But the decisive letter of Captain Lukin, with whom I went to the archive and after a very long, very careful study of documents of this archive, I restored the escort routes of prisoners of war, and they all converged where the corpses were then discovered.

Irina Lagunina: Another passage from the book of Vladimir Abarinov “Katynsky Labyrinth”

“Several important details. Before sending, all prisoners were vaccinated against typhoid typhoid and cholera - apparently, to calm them down, to inspire the thought of the upcoming transfer to the West (“ that, given the geographical position of Kozelsk, it was even true ”, Ezhevsky notes about this). Each stage received a dry rations, sugar and three herring: Judgled by the Herberry: Judgled by The daily norm was given - the road to Katyn, with numerous stops and delays, occupied just about a day. So, you got well. "Fiurte was taken away from Kozelsk on April 26 - this was one of the two stages in Yukhnov.

Such is the Polish version of the events performed in the Kozelsky camp in the spring of 1940.

Now we will open the book of orders on the 136th battalion for 1940.

On March 14, the battalion commander Colonel Interov decreases on a business trip to the headquarters of the 15th brigade, deployed in Minsk, on call. On March 18, he returns to Smolensk and on the same day leaves for Kozelsk. On March 18, the dispatcher of the Batalion Goryachko, Plahotnoy Battalion, Politruk Tooth* and a team of 48 people led by the commander of the 2nd company Lieutenant Khotchenko, a team of 45 people (senior junior commander of Nidelko), and another 10 days later, a team of 12 people (the eldest is the eldest is the foreman of Afanasenko), go to Kozelsk. During his stay in Kozelsk, Colonel Mezhov (he returned to Smolensk on May 14), nine convoys were organized. Of these, 3 - to the Yukhnovsky camp, 2 - to Smolensk, 1 - from Smolensk to Kozelsk and 3 - along the route Kozelsk - Gnezdovo. The Junior Lieutenant Bezmozgi, the commander of the ship of Karabelev and the foreman Gridnevsky) who went on April 8, 16 and 17, respectively). In the vicinity of Gnezdov, as you know, there was no camp, but there was and is the Katyn forest, or rather, that part of it, which is called the goat of the mountain, where mass burials of Polish prisoners of war were subsequently discovered. "

Irina Lagunina: Volodya, as you think, why this topic still causes such stormy emotions in Russia. For example, Vladimir Putin could not apologize for this crime of 70 years ago. Almost like a Serbian parliament for the execution in the Bosnian city of Srebrenitsa five years ago - but we will talk about this later.

Vladimir Abarinov: Because it is inscribed, it is generally mounted in a more general public discourse associated with the assessment of Stalinism, with an assessment of the period of repression. And besides, this topic corresponds to the topic of Russia's relationship with the outside world, primarily with the West, with Europe. These topics have always stood very sharply in Russia not only under the Soviet regime, we all know how at the dawn of the Russian statehood in the Moscow kingdom they reacted to strangers. This legend of the Polish intervention, that the Poles put their king on the throne, is actually a legend, but it has been stretching since then, everyone knows the opera Ivan Susanin, which has now been renamed life for the king. This is a very important, very serious, very fundamental discussion. And Katyn is just one of the elements of this discussion.

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  Irina Lagunina

  Head of Special Projects of Russian Service Radio Liberty

  Laguninai@rferl.org