Greetings! Please Share & Subcribe.
The World War II Katyn massacre of Polish officers was carried out on the direct order of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Russia's lower house of parliament said Friday.
"The published material which had for many years been kept in classified archives not only unveiled the scale of this horrific tragedy but also showed that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders," the State Duma said in a statement.
The 1940 massacre of around 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens in western Russia by Soviet secret police has long soured relations between the two countries. President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Poland in early December.
Soviet propaganda for decades blamed the killings on the Nazis, but post-Soviet Russia previously acknowledged they were carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD -- Stalin's secret police.
"The official Soviet propaganda attributed responsibility for this atrocity collectively known as the Katyn tragedy to Nazi criminals," the Duma's statement said, "This theory has long remained a subject of covert but nevertheless fierce Soviet public debates and invariably caused anger, resentment and distrust among the Polish people."
Russia has turned over scores of volumes of documents this year about Katyn to the Polish government.
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."
However, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the conservative opposition Law and Justice party, said he still wants Russia to offer a full apology and compensation.
XINHUA
0 Comments