The Katyn massacre was a particularly horrible incident in World War II when the Soviet Union by way of the NKVD at the order of Stalin executed 22,000 Polish Officers and buried their bodies. The incident was a major scandal and continues to be a serious point of contention not only between Poland and Russia but also involving Ukraine, Finland, Belarus, and the Baltic nations.
President Putin, who has made no secret of his love of Stalin and is a point that I have continually emphasized at Shoebat.com is modeling his attempt at “reviving” the USSR based on a Stalin’s actions and life. Part of this involves, in true Russian form, attempting to lie about the obvious, on of which in the Katyn massacre. Now according to the Moscow Times, Russian “activists” have taken down memorials to Polish victims of the Katyn massacre, saying they were ‘inaccurate’ and coming at the close of celebrations of World War II victories.
Russian activists on Thursday removed two plaques memorializing the Stalinist executions of thousands of Polish prisoners of war 80 years ago, following orders from local authorities who claimed there is no evidence of the crimes.
Prosecutors in the city of Tver, in an October 2019 order to remove the plaques from the former Soviet secret police building, said their inscriptions were “not based on documented facts.” The Soviet Union in 1990 took responsibility for the 1940 murders of nearly 22,000 Polish officers — including 6,000 in the NKVD secret police building’s basement in Tver northwest of Moscow — in what became known as the Katyn massacre.
“This is a historic event,” Maxim Kormushkin, an activist with the pro-Kremlin National Liberation Movement (NOD) who helped take down the plaques, told local television.
“Common sense has finally prevailed today,” Kormushkin said outside the Tver State Medical University, the site of the former regional NKVD headquarters.
The activist vowed to take “good care” of the plaques (one is dedicated to the memory of those tortured in the NKVD prison in 1930-50; the other issues a “warning to the world” with a dedication to the Polish POWs killed in a nearby village) until its owners or others claim it.
Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, a government agency tasked with investigating crimes against the Polish nation, accused Russia of “a new wave of hypocrisy about the Katyn massacre.”
“Such practices mean that today’s Russian state is following in the footsteps of propaganda manipulation and crimes of Soviet Stalinist totalitarianism,” Poland said in a statement Friday.
Alexander Guryanov, the Polish program coordinator at Russia’s Memorial Human Rights Center which installed the plaques in the early 1990s, said their removals have “no legal basis.” (source)
This is not just removing a small memorial. This is a big event because the tribalistic nature of Europe is such that actions like these can result in provoking a war.
This is one of the genius things of America and the Anglosphere, for while she has committed many crimes and there are plenty of bad things that other countries can talk about, eventually America and the UK will admit their lies and talk about their past. This is not so much an act of forgiveness, but a political response, for by admitting their lies, they prevent them from being used against them in the future.
Russia is a master of bluffing- arguably far better than the UK or USA. However, Russia is horrible at lying. When she lies, she cannot look credible, but just like a deceptive fool, and the more people press her, the more that she tries to obscure reality, which serves only to make her look more dishonest.
Russia can’t lie. She is just terrible at it, but historically tries to deny reality about this, and it always fails.
Katyn was a serious event. The USSR did it. It was big. Instead of leaving the memorials up, Russia’s response to assert herself by taking them down only causes the world to look at her and say “Uh oh, Russia is lying again, she is going to try to do something very bad, warning ahead.” Russia does not improve her image, she only worsens it, and as a result will continue to drive all of Eastern Europe away from supporting her.
Russia is in a situation similar to China right now, but the two will not ally with each other because they hate each other. Russia’s potential allies in Europe, even with Germany, are historically not going to work out because nobody trusts her. If anything, should Russia and Germany work with Russia, the historical trend for centuries is to ally and carve up eastern Europe before massacring each other.
Russia is attempting under Putin to return to her Soviet recent past, but will she survive? That is yet to be seen, but removing monuments to major massacres is not a step towards helping Russia assert herself or get ready, but towards warning her neighbors that something is going to happen so they can prepare.