Just a shooting

The Moscow City Court refused to recognize the Poles killed in Katyn as victims of repression

Another wedge has been driven into the already not rosy relations between Russia and Poland - this time by the Moscow City Court. The capital's Themis yesterday refused to accept for consideration the application of human rights activists from the Memorial society with a request to recognize the Polish soldiers who were shot in Katyn in 1940 as victims of political repression . This is the second court to refuse Memorial: the Moscow City Court upheld the decision of the lower one, the Khamovnichesky District Court, which issued a similar verdict in February. And it is clear that this verdict will not go unnoticed in Warsaw.

Let us recall that in April-May 1940, about 14.5 thousand Polish soldiers were shot in three special camps of the NKVD - Kozelsky, Ostashkovsky and Starobelsky. For now, last year’s decision of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, which found no grounds for recognizing Polish citizens as repressed, remains in force. According to GVP investigators, in relation to Katyn we can only talk about the commission of ordinary crimes, such as issuing illegal orders for execution or even abuse of power by officials. Back on September 21, 2004, the GVP closed the criminal case on the Katyn events due to the death of those responsible. Six months later, the chief military prosecutor of Russia, Alexander Savenkov, officially put an end to this matter and declared the personal composition of the perpetrators a state secret.

It is noteworthy that a similar technique - recognizing execution as a banal criminality - was used by both the prosecutor's office and the judges in another high-profile historical trial. Most recently, on May 11, the Moscow City Court essentially confirmed the refusal of the Prosecutor General’s Office to recognize Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family as victims of political repression. Roughly speaking, the perpetrators of the murder of the royal family were recognized as criminals, while it is known for certain that the decision of the Ural Regional Council to execute them was sanctioned by the Bolshevik elite - there is a protocol of the corresponding meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. There are probably similar documents on the Katyn case.

“I understand the logic based on which the court rejected this application - they say that foreign citizens cannot be recognized as victims of political repression. But among those repressed during Stalin’s time there were a large number of foreigners, and this did not prevent them from being recognized as victims,” Doctor of Historical Sciences Yakov Etinger, a researcher of political repressions in the USSR, who himself went through the Gulag, shared his opinion with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. According to Mr. Etinger, "the outrageous court decision cannot but complicate relations between Russia and Poland - especially since it contradicts what has been stated over the past 15 years." Yakov Etinger recalled that on April 13, 1990, the Soviet government, based on newly discovered data, recognized the culprits of the Katyn execution of the NKVD leaders - Lavrenty Beria and his deputy, head of the Main Directorate of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov. “The Russian authorities have repeatedly apologized to the Polish government, and the current head of state, together with ex-President of Poland Alexander Kwasniewski, even jointly laid wreaths at the memorial to fallen soldiers and officers,” Etinger emphasizes.

Nevertheless, the question of the rehabilitation of the victims of Katyn remains in limbo, despite the fact that Memorial is seeking recognition of only 16 Polish servicemen as victims of political repression. The Polish side insists on recognizing the mass shooting as a crime against humanity. The Katyn Committee, which includes relatives of the fallen officers, called for the dismantling of Soviet graves on Polish territory to begin if Russia does not recognize this crime as an act of genocide. By the way, among the relatives of the Katyn victims is the wife of the current president, Lech Kaczynski, Maria - her uncle was shot in a concentration camp.

According to the head of the Polish commission of the international human rights society Memorial, Alexander Guryanov, the verdict of the Moscow judges will be appealed to the Presidium of the Moscow City Court. “When there is no opportunity left to defend our case in Russia, we will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights,” Mr. Guryanov promised.

Mikhail MOSHKIN