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Just spotted this update from Poland's Gazeta newspaper. It lists no fewer than four occasions in past months in which Russian media have tried to rewrite the history of the Katyn massacre.
The first is from Rossiiskaya gazeta on 18th September 2007 and is already posted on this site (it never appeared on the rg.ru site as far as I can see).
Then came Komsomolskaya pravda on 22nd October which claimed that the Nazis did it and forced the Russians to blame the NKVD.
Then TV Tsentr (the Luzhkov station) reported on November 4th that the Stalin-era archival documents about the massacre were not authentic.
And now Nezavisimaya gazeta has, in its weekend supplement Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye claimed that the whole thing is impossible because the officers were shot with German bullets.
Anyone who could track down the URL the broadcast would be doing the cause of truth a favour.
Many thanks to those people who posted the links to the KP and NWO articles
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
More Katyn denial
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Трагедия Катыни и тайна бункера Гитлера
Так ли уж ясна картина совершенного в 1940-х годах под Смоленском преступления?
http://nvo.ng.ru/notes/2008-02-01/8_katyn.html?mthree=3
KP - http://www.kp.ru/daily/23988.5/76028
This is just a knee-jerk reaction to Polish whining. Gorby expressed regret, so did Yeltsin. The Russians think it's time to move on, having suffered about a 100 Katyns of their own. But what do the Poles want?
BTW, the liberal, pro-Western, pro-NATO, pro-American, anti-Russian President of Ukraine is now officially glorifying the UPA, who killed countless Poles. So where is your indignation? Oh I forgot. The new democratic Ukraine is now a key ally in the struggle with Russian windmills. They can do no wrong.
Katyn is a disguisting atrocity, one of the many carried out by the Stalin regime. A painful topic for modern Poland, an event that happened more than 60 years ago.
It has a lot of attention from historians, media and politicians, both Western, and East European.
Nevertheless, people tend to overlook the fact that 15-25 million Russians died in WWII, nearly half the population of UK at the time, for a little comparison. Westerners aren´t so keen to remember or even ever mention this nation´s tragedy, simply because they we´re communist, cold war enemies.
The Holocaust is remembered, wordwide, yet the West close their eyes on this extermination of Slav peoples that took place during WW II, not so bothered about the 40 million Chinese, who died during the Civil War and Japanese occupation.
Wouldn´t you call this overlooking history? Hiding the truth? It is beneficial to bring up Katyn in order to criticise Russia.
During WWII every fourth Belarussian was killed, something that fits under the definition of Genocide.
It is immoral to make a fuss out of one nations tragedy, and simply ignore and forget tragedies of other countries. It is wrong!
Poles, Jews, Russian, Communists, Ukrainians, Gypsies were all treated the same by the Germans, yet Europe only remembers the Jews, who died in concentration camps... millions of other deaths are simply forgotten, history is literally being re-written.
No one is ´doing this cause a favour´
I think Anton's comment risks being counted as "whataboutism". Certainly other nations' and peoples' suffering needs to be remembered. But overlooking one lot of massacres does not justify falsifying history about another crime. What makes the Katyn massacre unique was the systematic coverup. That is different from apathy. I agree with Andyk that Gorbachev and Yeltsin commendably condemned Katyn. It would be nice to see Mr Putin making it clear that he does not support the revisionists.
Sorry to disappoint you, Ed!
L. Kachinsky during his vist to Katyn Memorial in sept. 2007 openly declared that current Russia should not be held responsible for that crime.
Stalin's regime equally repressed many nations and groups, and russians are the majority. It is not morally correct to separate somebody and make them "exclusive victims". By no legal or moral principles should Russia or Putin be held responsible for Katyn or appealed to appologize for it. Our goverment many times admited the unhuman nature of Stalin's dictatorship and regretted about all the victims, and that's it, there will be and can not be nothing more!
And the point of Anton, what you are trying to expose as whataboutism, is the double standards West is trying to apply towards us. For some starnge reason it's only Russia being "investigated" as if np pother state during the las 60 years never commited or tryed to cover up it's crimes against humanity.
Mr. Lucas,
Your "whataboutism" argument really gets under my skin. The word is distasteful and the premise is flawed. So why don't I take the time and effort to remind you that Jesus was the first "whataboutist" here as well: "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Of course, next thing maybe you will find proof that Jesus was a KGB operative (what a fascinating topic for your next book this might be).
A propos, Mr. Lukas, you say its "It would be nice to see Mr Putin making it clear that he does not support the revisionists" -- how many apologies do you and our Polish friends and neighbors need? and how often? does my generation need to apologize? what about my kids? After all, as darussophile.blogspot.com (I am not associated with her blog, but she expresses the opinion of the most Russians I know quite well) expressed it, "If the Germans want to indulge themselves in national guilt, that's fine by us - but there is no way that Russia is going to be making apologies to the Baltic countries (which stage SS veterans rallies and continue to deny equality to their Russophone minorities to the present day), Poland (which instigated the 1919-21 Soviet-Polish War when Russia was weak), Romania or Hungary (which participated in Nazi aggression against the USSR) any time soon.
And what about the bombing of Dresden?? Destroying an entire city, killing around 30.000 civilians, and yet Britain does not recognize it as a war crime.
I´m sure it would be nice if the relatives or survivours of the event heard from Mr.Brown, that the act was immoral.
there is no way that Russia is going to be making apologies to the Baltic countries (which stage SS veterans rallies ... ),
And what about the bombing of Dresden?? Destroying an entire city, killing around 30.000 civilians, and yet Britain does not recognize it as a war crime.
The SS "rallies" and the Dresden bombing are quite connected.
I live in Estonia and one of the reasons why I am not outraged by the gathering of Estonian, Norwegian, and other SS troops at battlefields is because I know that most of those men were drafted against their will, and that they gather to remember their fallen friends and relatives, not to glorify the plans of Berlin, which mostly would have been unfavorable to them.
It's the same reason why I don't get outraged at seeing Red Army veterans gathering, even if one or two of them were responsible for the mass rapes and killings associated with that army.
It's also the same reason that when I see the Japanese commemorating their dead of Nagasaki or Hiroshima, I feel compassion in spite of Pearl Harbor, et cetera.
Older generations may have a problem letting this animosity go, but for me, all I see is old people trying to come to terms with a terrible youth that haunts them to this day. We should encourage mutual respect of national losses and pain to foster a more peaceful future.
... and continue to deny equality to their Russophone minorities to the present day)
Russians are considered a national minority and have the same rights of other national minorities to form a cultural autonomy. Estonian Swedes and Finns have already formed such autonomies.
A general problem is that Russia and its useful idiots have bungled their approach to this complex issue. They should understand that the idea that Estonia would become a bi-national state like Finland or Canada, is politically impossible. No one will ever vote for it nor support it. Not even the Estonian Social Democratic Party would support that.
The majority of this country is of one mind on the unilingual state policy. Even Russian-language private schools have introduced Estonian language education of their own free will.
BUT, seeing as most Estonian Russians live in a few places within this enormous country, it could make sense for Russia and its useful idiots to press for greater municipal rights, which are common in the rest of Europe.
It's easy to explain why Estonia won't become a bi-national nation. It's harder to explain why a city like Narva can't have bilingual signs or hold city meetings in Russian.
The useful idiots and Russia could make headway in suggesting such things. I personally feel disappointed when the traveling bureaucrats or patronizing Russian diplomats -- most of whom have never even visited Estonia -- make such stupid and politically impossible suggestions.
I mean if you are going to challenge the status quo, then do it right. Don't waste my time.
As for statelessness, as of January only 8 percent of this country lacks citizenship. That's down from 12 percent five years ago. So I expect the situation to resolve itself quite soon.
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