Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment. Annals of Communism by Anna M. Cienciala , Natalia S. Lebedeva , Wojciech Materski (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 783 constituent republicoftheUSSR and insists thatthiswas indeedrevolution from above. Bradford andGlasgow Universities JohnHiden Cienciala,AnnaM., Lebedeva,NataliaS. andMaterski, Wojciech(eds).Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment. AnnalsofCommunism. Yale University Press, New Haven,CT and London,2007.xxviii+ 561pp. Notes.Documents. Maps. Aerialand otherphotographs. Documentsources.Biographical sketches. Glossary oforganizations and political parties. Index.£25.00. The reviewby thiswriterof anotherbook on thissame subject(George Sanford,Katynand theSoviet Massacreof1940: Truth, Justice andMemory, SEER, 85,2007,4,pp. 790-92),endedwiththeseprescient words:'a muchbetter one is boundto appearlaterfrom anotherauthor'. That 'better'volumeis thishighly recommended scholarly editionofthe Englishtranslations of 122selecteddocuments fromhitherto closedRussian archives publishedin the1990sand beyondin twoRussianand fourPolish volumesofdocuments co-edited by Dr Natalia S. Lebedeva oftheInstitute of GeneralHistory, RussianAcademyof Sciences,Moscow and Professor WojciechMaterski, DirectoroftheInstitute ofPoliticalStudiesofthePolish Academy of Sciences,Warsaw. It is acknowledgedthat Dr Lebedeva's pioneering efforts withotherRussianhistorians in 1989and 1990,in taking advantageofMikhailGorbachev'spolicyofglasnost'leadingto theopening of some statearchives'had a significant impacton the unravelling of the Katyncover-up' (p.250),and - following theastonishing Russianadmission on 13April1990to thePoles ofSovietresponsibility forthesemurders, and the Soviet documentation releasedto the Poles on 14 October 1992 resulted inthehrst extensively documented book(Lebede on Katynin 1994in Moscow. The volumeis dividedintothreeconvenient parts/sut byan authoritative and scholarly introduction by Profes Prrvfiocenr T7m/=»ritnc nf T^cinccjc T Tniw^rcit-ir 'A/hr» eilen nrf*rïc va sjto be published )jects, each preceded¡sorAnna Cienciala, xrf*r' tVif* aia mphni. -*- X V/iVUUVyX XJXllV^l X tVlU 'SM. .M. A.t4ri.XUi4fU X_^ XX X T %-^X UJ. V Y ft Y Y X X V-r IAXUV/ ft-SX V-/ I^S l*«/X V V-*. VX X V> £-Xj X í^é XXX^s ^.X^^/ K**. louslyresearchednotesbased on information in the Russian and Polish volumesand supplemented withinformation from otherworks. Here in their own damningwordsis the contemporaneous and post-facto storyof the Sovietmassmurderofits14,552Polishofficer and otherprisoners fromthe 'onorili' TVT1í* crvnnnr /~vP 1940(p. 142)at threedifferent sites.Katyn,nearSmolensk, thesiteat which theGermansannouncedin April1943theirshockdiscovery ofsomeofthe mass gravesand theirgruesomecontents, beingtakenas the generic(and shorthand) termand place forall ofthemasskillings involved. PartOne is entitled 'Prisoners ofan UndeclaredWar, 23 August1939-5 March1940'.It documents theharshSoviettreatment ofthePolishprisoners incarcerated inthethree'special'NKVD campsafter theNazi-Soviet division ofPolandinSeptember 1939and theconsequent Sovietoccupation ofeastern Polishterritory, andwheretheprisoners (considered bytheNKVD authorities 784 SEER, 87, 4, OCTOBER 2OOg to be implacable'enemiesoftheSovietsystem') weresubjectedto non-stop NKVD interrogations and investigations. Natalia Lebedeva believeson the basisofdocumentary evidenceincludedhereand elsewhere (p. 137and documents 42,44) thatitwasbetween22 and 26 February 1940thatNKVD chief Lavrentii Beriadiscussed withStalintheformer's proposals thattheprisoners be shoten masse.The upshot was Beria's'resolution' addressed to Stalinand thePolitburo on 5 March 1940(document 47, the'smoking gun' document itself, pp. 118-20), requesting authorization forthe'shooting' solution towhat had bythenbecomea 'problem'tobe resolved in theultimate manner. That 'solution'was duly carriedout, and Part Two, 'Extermination, March-June 1940'(and itsintroduction) documents thatbrutalprocesswith likebureaucrat thoroughness as theNazi authorities documented theirown extermination policies.And,just liketheGerman/Nazibureaucrats, so too Sovietofficials employedtheirown versionsof 'camouflage'or 'disguised' languageso as to avoid (wherepossible)any open mentionof killings or massacres in their documents. AtthatpointAnnaCiencialaraisesa keyquestion whichparallelssomeof thedocumentary lacunaethatstill plaguethesearchfora definitive conclusion on AdolfHitler'srole in the decision-making processof the Nazi 'Final Solution'of theJewishQuestion.She observesthat,publicly, key Soviet documents arestill 'missing' so that'thelackofdocuments on Stalin'smotives forthedecisions to shoottheprisoners leavesthequestionunresolved to this day'(p. 141).Discussing previous theories toexplainwhythese'enemiesofthe Sovietsystem' were(oreven,had tobe) shot,sheplumpsforone thatpostulatesthatStalin 'spointofno return was reachedby March 1940whenthe Finnswerereadyto surrender in their'winter war' withthe SovietUnion andthePolishgovernment-in-exile, farfromindicating readinessto discuss post-war frontiers, had evenagreedto senda brigadewiththeproposedbut abandonedAllied Expeditionary Force to Finland(p. 144). She concludes convincingly: 'WhateverStalin'splans regarding thePolishprisoners might havebeen,hisdecision inearly March1940tohavethemshotmusthavebeen madewhenhe concludedthatthey wereno further use tohim'as a bargainingcounter inpossible negotiations withthePolishgovernment-in-exile on the post-war Soviet-Polish frontier (p. 147). Undoubtedly, manypeoplewillbe keenly interested inthethird partofthe volume,'Katynand Its Echoes, 1940to thePresent', whichunderlines the directcorrelation betweenthedemiseofCommunism in Polandand Russia in 1989andthetruth about'Katyn'coming tolight after morethanfifty years of downright lies and obfuscation by the Soviet authorities in resisting worldwidepressure 'to come clean'. Especiallyinteresting hereis how the decades-long Polishpressures on Moscowfinally borefruit because ofadditionalinternal Russianpoliticalexigencies, and also how thiswas complemented bytheefforts ofRussianhistorians andjournalists whoalsowishedto uncoverthetruth of'Katyn'. This volumeis an...