Seventy years too late: Russia finally admits slaughter of 20,000 Polish officers at Katyn was on Stalin’s orders

After 70 years, Russia has finally acknowledged that Joseph Stalin personally ordered the wartime massacre of thousands of Polish officers.

The historic declaration by the Russian parliament also admitted there had been a

cover-up to avoid blame for the slaughter of 22,000 Poles by Moscow’s secret police in the Katyn forest.

‘The Katyn crime was carried out on the direct orders of Stalin and other Soviet leaders,’ said the statement.

Gruesome discovery: German army soldiers dig up a mass grave in Katyn forest, near Smolensk in the spring of 1943 containing the bodies of Polish reserve officers killed under the order of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in April 1940

The 1940 in western Russia by Soviet secret police has long soured relations between the two countries.

Today's statement, passed by Russia's State Duma, has been hailed by Polish officials who will be hosting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev next month.

Soviet propaganda for decades blamed the 1940 massacre on the Nazis. Post-Soviet Russia previously acknowledged they were carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD - Stalin's much feared secret police - but has never before agreed that Stalin was directly behind the slayings.

Blood on his hands: Soviet dictator Josef Stalin

'This historic document is important not only for Russian-Polish relations - much more it is important for us ourselves,' said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma's foreign relations committee, according to the news agency ITAR-Tass.

Russia has turned over scores of volumes of documents this year about Katyn to the Polish government.

'Published materials, held in secret archives for many years, not only reveal the scale of this awful tragedy but show that the Katyn crime was committed on the direct order of Stalin and other Soviet leaders,' the statement said. It also expressed 'deep sympathy for the victims of this unjustified repression'.

Communist legislators did try to amend the statement to remove the naming of Stalin, but were defeated.

'The falsification of history that we are fighting against in other countries is also taking place in our country, and today we could see it with our own eyes,' Kosachev said of the amendment attempt. Russian officials frequently use the term 'falsification of history' to attack perceived attempts to underplay the importance of the Red Army in the fight against Nazi Germany.

The head of the Polish parliament's foreign affairs committee, Andrzej Halicki, said he considered the Duma's statement to be a breakthrough.

'I am happy that such a process of reconciliation and truth is taking place,' he said.



'It is the first such act that proves that our relations and discussions are sincere.'

Evidence: A document referring to the Katyn killings signed by Josef Stalin

However, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the conservative opposition Law and Justice party, said he still wants Russia to offer a full apology and compensation.

A U.S. historian who wrote a book about Katyn, hailed the Duma decision

'I think this is part of a long process in which ultimately the Russian people will have to come to grips with their past,' Allen Paul, who authored Katyn: Stalin's Massacre And The Triumph of Truth, said.

Some observers have expressed alarm in recent years that Russia may be quietly rehabilitating Stalin. Last year, a quote praising Stalin was restored to the decoration of one of Moscow's busiest subway stations and this year year, Moscow's mayor proposed allowing posters depicting Stalin as part of the annual celebrations of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

But the latest announcement suggests Russia is definitively breaking with its Soviet legacy.

We shall never forget: The Katyn memorial in woodland just outside Warsaw, Poland, honours the 20,000 Poles who died at the hands of Stalin's secret police



