Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk took part in a commemorative ceremoney in Katyn yesterday.
Katyn is a town outside Smolensk where the NKVD secret police shot dead 4,400 imprisoned Polish officers 70 years ago. Katyn has long been a sacred symbol for Poles. The Soviet authorities concealed the truth about the executions, and acknowledged our involvement only in 1990. On the mournful anniversary, Putin invited Tusk to pay joint tribute to the memory of the dead.
Poles crowed at the entrance to the memorial.
Russia's Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said Moscow's admission of the Stalinist regime's responsibility for the deaths is a gesture of repentance.
"This will help us to gradually overcome the legacy of the horrible past", he said.
I asked him whether we should investigate jointly with Warsaw the death of 20,000 Red Army officers and men imprisoned by Poland in 1920. Lukin answered in the affirmative, but the Polish journalists around us objected: "You cannot compare this! None one shot the Russians. They died of hunger and disease".
Clearing away the rubble of the past is hard. It goes without saying that the executions of Poles in Katyn and other places throughout the Soviet Union were a heinous crime. The total death toll is over 24,000. But 600,000 Soviet people also sacrificed their lives for Poland's liberation and the country received almost one-third of its territory as a gift from Stalin.
Renowned political figure, former Polish President Lech Walesa was a member of the Polish delegation. I asked him his thoughts about the event. He wiggled his trademark moustache and replied in Polish – his answer was clear without interpretation – that this was only the first step towards reconciliation. "But with these prime ministers (Putin and Tusk – A.B.), I consider myself an optimist", he said.
In the meantime, the prime ministers walked to a big wall filled with the names of the dead officers – who are buried in the a common grave here – and stood still in mournful silence. Putin laid a wreath to the memorial and bent down on one knee. He then inspected the memorial where not only Poles, but also thousands of Russian citizens purged in the 1930s are buried, as well as Soviet prisoners of war who were executed by the Nazis during World War II. Both prime ministers delivered speeches.
"Paying tribute to the memory of these people is our sacred duty", Putin said. "It is impermissible to conceal the truth about this crime and our assessments of this atrocity are not subject to any revision. But history written in anger and hatred is as false as emasculated history. It is impossible to live in the past alone".
Tusk said the memory of the Katyn tragedy helped Poles to establish independent Poland. He emphasised that no omissions should be left in this case – all archives must be opened.
Natalya Lebedeva, a senior research associate at the Institute of World History at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the Poles have already received Xerox copies of more than a million pages of the Katyn archives.
Meanwhile, Putin told journalists his own version of the Katyn executions.
"There is no rational explanation for this crime", he said. "I have recently spoken with historians and found out, to my shame, that it was Stalin personally who was in charge of the military operation during the Soviet-Polish war in 1920. Soviet Russia lost this war and many of our Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner. Probably, Stalin felt responsible for this failure and ordered the execution of the Polish officers out of revenge".
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Commentaries
Yesterday in Katyn, Putin also commented on the unrest in Kyrgyzstan (see p.4 for more details):
"Bakiyev falls into the same trap"
"I will be honest with you – these events have caught me unawares. There is one thing I can assure you of – neither Russia, nor I personally have anything to do with these events. I recall that when Bakiyev came to power, he strongly criticised his predecessor Askar Akayev for corruption and nepotism. I have the impression that now Bakiyev is falling into the same trap. We are primarily urging the Kyrgyz authorities and opposition representatives – do not allow violence".
Andrei Baranov