On 5 March 1940, members of the Politburo, under the force of Józef Stalin, decided to execution almost 22 1000 Polish citizens. The death conviction afraid prisoners from camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov and Poles from NKVD prisons in Ukraine and western Belarus. Moscow confessed to the execution only half a century later.
Politburo meetings, i.e. the Political Office of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist organization (bolsheviks) [KC WKP(b)] were held in the Kremlin or in Stalin's residence in the Sub-Moscow Kuncev. March 5, 1940 In addition to Józef Stalin, the secretary-general of KC WKP(b), the gathering was attended by: Klimient Woroszylov ( Marshal of the russian Union, Minister of Defence), Wiacheslaw Molotov (chairman of the Council of People's Commissioners, Minister of abroad Affairs) and Anastas Mikojan (president of the Council of People's Commissioners, Minister of abroad Trade). Their signatures were included in the memo – application No 794/5 of Lavrentija Beria to Politburo.
The letter of the head of the NKVD (National Kommissariat of Wnutriennich Dieł – People's interior Affairs Station) and the Home Affairs Minister of March 5, 1940 was marked with a “close secret” clause and number P13/144. It was the signatures submitted on the application of Beeria that approved execution of the death conviction on almost 22 1000 Polish citizens. Mikhail Kalinin (president of the USSR ultimate Council) and Lazar Kaganovich ( Deputy president of the People's Commissioners' Council, Minister of Transport) were besides behind the judgment. At the end of the memo, proposal 794/5 besides included a handwritten note "Item. BeriaIt’s okay. ”
Protocol No 13
The composition of the Political Office of KC WKP(b) was not classified. In 1940, its members were besides Andrei Andreyev, Nikita Khrushchev, and Andrei Żdanov. The signatures of these 3 persons are not on the memo – application 794/5 of the Beria. Politburo's provisions were final decisions. In the USSR, no state authorities had the right to challenge them. Protocol No. 13 was drawn up from the gathering of 5 March 1940, which is at the same time the decision to execute, without the court, Polish prisoners of war and prisoners.
The document, the certified copy of which was given to the Polish government in 1993, ordered Beeria and the NKVD of the USSR to be led by him: “1) Cases of 14 700 erstwhile Polish officers, government officials, territorialists, police officers, intelligence agents, intelligence agents, gendarmes, settlers and prison keepers, 2) as well as cases of 11,000 people arrested and imprisoned in Western prisons of the Ukrainian and Belarusian circuits – members of various counter-revolutional spy and diversional organizations, erstwhile areaists and mill operators, erstwhile Polish officers, civilian servants and fugitives – to consider in a peculiar manner with the application of the highest punishment – shootings.
II. proceed with the investigation without summoning the detainees and without any charges, the decision to end the investigation and the indictment (...).
III. The examination of the cases and the adoption of a resolution commissioned the 3 in the composition of the comrades Mierkulov, Kobulov and Baszkov (chief of the 1st peculiar Division of the NKVD of the USSR)’.
Importantly, the protocol commissioned the conviction of the "trinity", that is, the commission set up under the order of the NKVD of July 1937. Their task was to rapidly identify court cases concerning anti-Soviet and anti-communist actions. The political office of KC WKP(b) to issue death sentences in Poles indicated Wsiołod Mierkulov, Bogdan Kobulov (Deputy of Beria) and Ivan Bastakov.
Protocol No 13 complements the Berii note — application to the Politburo. The chief of the NKVD wrote: “In the NKVD camps of the USSR for prisoners of war and in the prisons of Western Ukraine and Belarus, a large number of erstwhile officers of the Polish army, erstwhile employees of Polish police and intelligence bodies, members of Polish nationalist counter-revolutionary parties, members of exposed counter-revolutionary insurgents, fugitives and others are being held. They are all fierce enemies of russian power, full of hatred for the russian system. Prisoners of war, officers and policemen, while in camps, effort to proceed counter-revolutionary activity and conduct anti-Soviet agitation. Each of them is just waiting to be released to be able to actively engage in the fight against russian power."
Beria besides gave Stalin details of the prisoners of war in the camps. He listed: 295 generals, colonels and lieutenant colonels, 2080 majors and captains, 6049 lieutenants, lieutenants and ensigns, 1030 officers and sub-commissioned officers of the police, border guards and gendarmerie, 5138 private police officers, gendarmes, prison wardens and intelligence agents, and 144 officials, landowners, priests and settlers. The head of the NKVD besides informed Stalin and the Political Office of the KC WKP(b) of the condition of detainees in prisons of western Ukraine and Belarus circuits. He informed about 18,632 arrested, including 10,685 Poles. He noted that among them are: "1207 erstwhile officers, 5141 erstwhile police officers, intelligence agents and gendarmes, 347 spies and diversions, 465 erstwhile areaists, mill workers and officials, 5345 members of various counter-revolutionary and insurgent organizations and various counter-revolutionary elements, 6127 refugees".
Katyn Crime
After the decision of March 5, 1940, the NKWD began to act very quickly. On April 3, 1940, she began the liquidation of the camp in Kozielsk and 2 days later the camps in Starobielsk and Ostashkov. The prisoners were taken out to KatyniaKharkov and Kalinina (now Twer) where executions were carried out. NKVD officers shot officers in the back of the head. During the next six weeks 14 587 Polish prisoners of war were shot and about 7,300 Poles were killed in prisons in pre-war areas of east provinces of the Republic. They were buried in various places, including the Bykownia close Kiev.
Only a fewer officers who were held in POW camps managed to avoid being shot. 1 of them was Colonel Sigmund Berlingwho survived only due to the fact that he agreed to service in russian ranks. Before the liquidation of the camp in Starobielsk, he was taken to Moscow. Historian Norman Davies in his book “The emergence of ’44” stated: “The motives of Berling’s action were surely not simple. They could be utilized for resentment against erstwhile superiors, vanity, opportunism, strategical sense of reality, and fear of their own skin. ...’. He besides mentioned his conversation with Beria: “At the time he was interrogated in Lubianka, Berling most likely did not know about the Katyn massacre. But according to various sources, including his widow's certificate, he was present at a decisive gathering with Beria in October 1940, when, in consequence to the question of missing officers, Beria made a freezing remark in his veins: «we made a large mistake with them».
For the first time in past to this “great mistake” Moscow only admitted in 1990. On the 50th anniversary of the crime, the russian news agency TASS published a communication approved by the Political Office of the Central Committee of the Communist organization of the russian Union. This communication states that the NKWD is liable for the crime on Polish officers. KC KPZR Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev provided Wojciech Jaruzelski with a collection of papers related to the Katyn crime.
47 years before the TASS news agency's announcement of the NKVD crime, 11 April 1943, information about the discovery of graves in Katyn stated German agency Transocean. 2 days later, Radio Berlin informed about the discovery of the bodies of Polish officers. The mass graves in Katyń were discovered during the German business of the USSR by Poles – forced workers of the German Todt Organization, which was active in the construction of military facilities. Information about the discovery made by Poles rapidly reached the Germans, who already started exhuming bodies in April 1943, and brought global observers to the scene of the crime. It was then established that respective 1000 Poles died in the spring of 1940. The Germans tried to prove that Polish officers became victims of Bolshevik atrocities. On the another hand, the Kremlin blamed the Germans for the murders in Poles and did not retreat from these accusations for nearly half a century.
