Katyn: The Untold Story Of Stalin's Polish Massacre
(Allen Paul)
Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin''s Polish Massacre.This is not only powerful examination of Stalin''s infamous World War II campaign against
Poland''s professional and middle classes, exemplified by the 1940
execution (denied by the Soviets until 1990) of most of Poland''s
officer corps in the Katyn Forest and at still-unknown sites. The Katyn
Forest massacre, in which 15,000 Polish officers held by the Bolsheviks
were shot by the NKWD, has become the "complex symbol of Polish
suffering at the hands of Stalin,'''' argues Paul, who began his research
at the Centre for European Studies in Bologna, Italy, under the
auspices of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International
Studies. Using US Congressional testimony released only in 1989,
buttressed by extensive interviews with survivors, Paul claims to
present the most definitive view to date of Katyn, blending historical
reportage with narratives of three families caught up in Stalin''s
crimes. Indeed, for 50 years the story was buried not only by the
Soviets but by Western governments, which concealed knowledge of Soviet
guilt to protect their relationships with the USSR. Paul presents
evidence of Stalin''s one-word written order, "Liquidate,'''' which led
to the murders, then details Soviet attempts to deny knowledge of the
atrocity and, later, to blame the Nazis for it (after the Germans
discovered some of the mass graves, the Nazis sought to propagandise
the crime in order to divide the Allies). According to Paul, Stalin
even manipulated the discovery "to deal the legitimate government of
Poland a lethal blow'''' and set up a puppet regime. Moreover, Paul says,
during the war years, the Soviets deported to Siberia and other harsh
climes more than a million middle-class Poles, many of whom "perished
from starvation, forced labour and neglect.'''' Well researched and ably
written: a fine and harrowing study.
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