Katyn And The Soviet Massacre Of 1940 Truth, Justice And Memory

In spring 1940 the NKVD, Stalin's security police, massacred nearly 15,000 prisoners of war captured in September 1939 during the Nazi-Soviet war against Poland. Taken from camps at Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov, they were shot and buried at Katyn, Kharkov and at Mednoe near Tver. Another 7,300 Poles were shot in Ukranian and Belarussian prisons at the same time, brining the total death toll to around 22,000. The Katyn burial site was uncovered and publicized by the Nazis during their spring 1943 advance into the USSR, and Katyn has come to symbolize the entire slaughter. This study is the first to use Soviet documentation released in the early 1990s to explain how acute Polish-Bolshevik rivalry along with the failure of NKVD interrogation and recruitment attempts led the Stalinist leadership to decide on mass murder. In addition to an exploration of the rationale of the Stalinist state, Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940 gives an authoritative case study of the processes used by Stalin through a detailed accounting of the mechanics of the transportation and execution of the victims. The truth about the massacre was suppressed both by the Soviet Union and by their post-war satellite regime in Poland. But the management of the issue by the American and British governments after 1943, examined in the second half of this book, also has major significance. The failure by the Western powers to question the Soviet cover-up stands as an embarrassing part of their wider policy of acceptance of Poland's takeover at the end of the Second World War. While the lingering effects of war continue to haunt Eastern Europe, this study is a vital contribution on the debate over how the memory of atrocities can be assuaged by justice for victims through truth-telling, apologies and reconciliation.Sanford, George is the author of 'Katyn And The Soviet Massacre Of 1940 Truth, Justice And Memory', published 2005 under ISBN 9780415338738 and ISBN 0415338735.