One of the documents made public is a note from Lavrenty Beria, the head of the NKVD, to Stalin about the fate of the Poles. The Poles included military officers, priests, writers, professors and aristocrats. In the note, Beria proposes that the NKVD "quickly examine the use of the highest means of punishment – death by shooting." Stalin's signature and a red stamp reading "Top Secret" are on the first page of the document, which is dated March 1940. Another document, a secret internal Soviet Communist party memo from 1965, refers to "what was formerly Bourgeois Poland" and warns against any public disclosure, arguing that the documents have no historical value.