Global General
Russia posts Katyn massacre documents on Internet
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-04-28 22:58
 |
Large Medium Small |
MOSCOW - Russia's state archives posted documents on the Internet for the first time Wednesday about the Soviet Union's World War II massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens.
The step was a gesture to Poland in a case that looms large in Polish history and has soured relations between the two countries for decades.
|
||||
Relations between Russia and Poland have warmed following the tragic April 10 plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others on a flight to visit the Katyn forest in western Russia for a memorial ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the massacre.
But while Medvedev's order was clearly intended as a positive gesture, the documents posted Wednesday were made public long ago and already have been published in Poland and Russia. Many more documents remain classified, despite dogged Polish appeals for the archives to be opened.
Medvedev later promised that more documents would be released.
"There is some material that has not yet been handed over to our Polish partners. I have given the order to make that happen," he told journalists in Copenhagen.
The Katyn documents would help people learn from history, he said.
"Let everyone know what was done, who made the decisions, who ordered the elimination of the Polish officers," he said. "Everything is written there. With all the signatures."
The documents now on the Internet were made public in 1992 by Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet leader. They include a March 1940 letter by Lavrenty Beria, head of the secret police, recommending the execution of the Polish prisoners of war. The letter bears the signatures of Soviet leader Josef Stalin and three other members of the Politburo.
The documents also include the minutes of a Politburo meeting on March 5, 1940, and a note from the head of the Soviet secret police in 1959 informing Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that the Katyn files had been destroyed.
