Gorbachev handed over this package containing “Beria’s letter no. 794/B” and other Katyn documents to Boris Yeltsin on December 24, 1991, after having read its contents aloud in the presence of Alexander Yakovlev. The second time these documents “turned up” again was in September 1992. But “Beria’s letter”, that was found in September 1992 had neither the text that was crossed-out by Stalin, nor the note “The Politburo decision” written with a blue pen, which Gorbachev had described. Name signatures there were also written in a different order: “Agree – Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov …”. In addition, Beria’s name on page four was crossed out with a blue pencil, judging from the handwriting by Stalin himself, and instead they put Bashtakov’s name there, who was Deputy Chief of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), under Beria.

It is possible, that Gorbachev had mixed things up in his memoirs, but it can also be so, that he actually saw another “Beria’s letter”. In connection to this, doubts and suspicion arise regarding the authenticity of “Beria’s letter”, that was found in September 1992. These doubts are strengthened by the story, that is usually told about the discovery of those documents. It’s officially considered, that the “closed package no. 1″, which contained “Beria’s letter” and other documents from the Politburo of the CC AUCP(b), was found on September 24, 1992 in the Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation (formerly known as the Archive of the Central Committee) by a commission lead by the Chief of the Presidential Administration Yuri Petrov, Presidential Adviser Dmitry Volkogonov and Director of the Archives Andrey Korotkov.

When the package was opened, the Commission members understood the importance of their discovery and immediately reported about it to the President of Russia. Yeltsin then “gave an order, that Rudolf Pikhoya, in his role as the director of the Russian archives, would fly to Warsaw and hand over those sensational documents to President Walesa” (“Katynskij sindrom v sovetsko-pol’skikh otnosheniyakh”, Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2001, p. 397).

On October 15, 2009, the member of the Russian State Duma Andrey Makarov appeared at the round table meeting “Falsification of history and historical myths as a tool of modern politics” held at the Center for Social Conservative Politics, and told the true story about the discovery of the Katyn documents. These were indeed found in September 1992 during the ongoing trial against the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), although not in any archives, but in Yeltsin’s personal safe. Makarov told that he (most likely together with Sergey Shakhray, Russia’s former Deputy Prime Minister) came to Yeltsin. “And we said: Boris Nikolayevich, the CPSU trial goes rather badly. He opened the safe, in order to clearly show how it all works, took out six folders from there and said: okay, take these ones. In his presence, we looked at what it was. He took two of the folders back and said: no, it’s still too early to talk about this today. Then, by chance, I saw the name, what it was about, which made my hair rise. And no one in the country knew anything about it yet. The problem was that one of the folders, laid before us, was about Katyn” (“Nashe Vremya”, Nr. 139, October 26-November 1, 2009).

There is nothing strange about this story, that could raise any doubts whatsoever, except for the fact that Makarov saw a folder named “Katyn”. This could never happen, since neither the folder nor the “closed package” have any notes on them that would indicate that they contain documents about Katyn. In order to understand, that inside these there were documents about Katyn, they needed to open not only the folder, but also the “closed package” itself. It is obvious that Makarov was present when the “closed package no. 1″ was opened in Yeltsin’s office. But is it really so important to know, who actually found this package and how this discovery was made?

Everyone knows, that people start lying about different things when they want to conceal an inconvenient truth. In our case, the information about the fact, that the “closed package” was stored in Yeltsin’s safe for almost one year, makes it possible to ask an uncomfortable question. Why didn’t Yeltsin hand those documents over to the Polish President Lech Walesa on May 21, 1992, when he was on an official state visit in Moscow?

There cannot be any doubts that Walesa did discuss the Katyn issue during his personal meeting with Boris Yeltsin. For the Poles, this problem has always been an issue of top priority in their relations with Russia. But, apparently, Yeltsin seems to have confined himself to general discussions and kept quiet about the Katyn documents, which were stored in his safe.

But in September 1992 Yeltsin gave orders (“immediately” as they say) to send the Katyn documents to Warsaw. What prevented him from doing exactly the same thing already in May that year? Whether you want it or not, but you start to listen to the researchers, who claim, that these documents were still “under development” at the time and that they were not yet “properly” designed.

The situation cleared somewhat on March 28, 2008, when the well-known Russian historian Yuri Zhukov said in a radio program on the radio station “Serebryannyj dozhd’”, that he in the early 1990s (in 1993 or 1994), in connection with the CPSU trial, requested access to materials from the Presidential Archive of the Russian Federation regarding the “criminal” activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

They brought him a “thin folder”, which contained various documents. Among these Zhukov saw a photocopy of “Beria’s letter to Stalin” written on one page only and with a proposal to execute some 2.000 or 3.000 captured Polish officers, who had been found guilty of war crimes and other crimes too. The now famous “Beria’s letter”, typed on four pages, and which was found in 1992, contains a proposal to shoot 25.700 captured and arrested Poles.

The following day, on March 29, 2008, Yuri Zhukov was also interviewed via telephone by the independent Katyn researcher Sergey Strygin. Zhukov told Strygin an interesting detail: Beria’s signature was present in the document, which he saw in the archives. In the “real” four-page “Beria’s letter” his signature is placed on the last page of the document.

Explanations suggesting that Beria would have sent two successive letters to Stalin proposing to execute the Poles cannot be considered as serious. In the CPSU, and earlier in the AUCP(b), they stuck to an established practice. When it came to issues which were of highest importance to the country and which required a decision “at the highest level”, they always performed a preliminary oral check on the forthcoming decision. Therefore, the proposals and requests that were sent to the Kremlin were thoroughly worked through and formed the final version. In addition, the initiative to the decision-making regarding the execution of the Poles could only come from Stalin. It was he, who gave Beria the order to prepare the letter. Given that, talking about two different letters is absolutely out of the question.

There is no doubt that Yuri Zhukov had held in his hands a copy of the genuine “Beria’s letter” no. 794/B addressed to Stalin, which was dated February 29, 1940. Zhukov’s testimony is confirmed by another source. In December 2007, when Vladislav Shved met Viktor Galkin (the former employee at the General Department of the Central Committee, who had worked with the “closed package no 1″ regarding Katyn), Galkin told him, that he in April 1981, on behalf of Konstantin Chernenko (who at that point was the director of the public sector of the Central Committee) delivered “Beria’s letter” from the “closed package no. 1″ to the then KGB chief Yuri Andropov. There is a note about this on the folder itself, which contained the “closed package no. 1″.

Galkin argued, that “Beria’s letter” which he delivered to Andropov, was written on one page and that it was about the execution of about 2.000-3.000 Polish officers. He saw the letter in Chernenko’s study. After Chernenko had opened the “closed package no. 1″, he gave Galkin instructions to put the letter in an envelope and to seal it. Regarding the four-page “Beria’s letter” (available only as a scanned color copy) Galkin explained, that he had never seen such a document.

At first Vladislav Shved considered Viktor Galkin’s testimony with certain skepticism, and assumed that he had confused this document with the transcript of the Politburo’s decision from March 5, 1940, which is also written on one page. Only later, after Yuri Zhukov had told his story, he understood that Galkin’s story from memory was correct. To say anything more definite about “Beria’s letter no. 794/B” is not possible at this moment, not until we get the opportunity to conduct an independent and objective expert study of it.

To add even more to the many question marks and doubts surrounding the “closed package no. 1″, one should mention what Mikhail Gorbachev wrote in 1995 in his memoirs. There he tells about how he in April 1989, just before Wojciech Jaruzelski’s upcoming visit to the Soviet Union, reviewed the Katyn documents. Gorbachev says there were two Katyn folders (not just one!) and that they “both contained documentation, which confirmed the version of the Commission led by the academian Nikolai Burdenko. There was a collection of various materials, and they all supported that version” (“Zhizn’ i reformy”, book 2, 1995, p. 346).

There is also some real evidence that allow us to have serious thoughts about what the Katyn folder actually contained in December 1991. As already mentioned, Alexander Yakovlev was present during the handing over of the “closed package no. 1″ from Gorbachev to Yeltsin on December 24, 1991. The package was found (according to one of the versions) by the Russian archive workers, who insisted that Gorbachev should be notified about it one day before his retirement from his post as the President of the Soviet Union. On several occasions afterwards (including in his book “Sumerki” (“Twilight”, Materik, Moscow, 2003), and also in a live sent talk show on Russian television called “Kak eto bylo”) Yakovlev claimed, that the Katyn folder also contained a so called “Serov’s letter”. But no such letter has ever been found, neither then nor later, why we may wonder about what kind of a document Yakovlev was relating to. Was he talking about “Beria’s letter”, but happened to say wrong, and did so time and time again?

A clue to that mystery may lie in the recently published draft copies of “Beria’s letter”, presented by Viktor Ilyukhin on November 24, 2010. He received these drafts on May 25, 2010 from an anonymous person, who contacted him and confessed, that he had been involved in a forgery group, that was active during the first half of the 1990s, i.e. during the time when Yeltsin was the President of the Russian Federation. The last page of the draft letter contains a peculiar note: “20). Bashtakov was head of the NKVD secretariat! L.P. Beria would hardly have entrusted him such a task? Replace with Abakumov? K. .. ov? Serov? (check the dates)”. Here Serov is mentioned as a possible substitute to Bashtakov to lead the NKVD troika, which would sentence the Poles to death, but they still didn’t include his name in the “final document” and kept Bashtakov. With that in mind, Yakovlev’s repeated stories about “Serov’s letter” could actually be a Freudian slip of the tongue, i.e. that he unconsciously said too much.

The current Russian government and President Dmitry Medvedev pretend as if nothing special has happened, and call all the critics that has come up, which overthrow their official version of the Katyn events, for the “attempts to whitewash Stalin and his associates”. Such attitude is not very constructive. It would have been much better to let a group of independent experts examine the “closed package no. 1″ and once and for all put an end to all speculations about its authenticity. But as long as they hide these “originals” away from both the public and the scientific community, they continue to confirm the suspicions that the Katyn affair has been falsified. And probably this is the very thing that has happened.

References

Gorbachev, Mikhail, Zhizn’ i reformy (2 books), Novosti, Moscow, 1995
http://gorby.ru/ru/gorbachev/memoirs/

Ilyukhin, Viktor, O rezolyutsii Gosdumy RF “Pamyati zhertv Katynskoi tragedii” (published on November 24, 2010)
(this article contains the five page draft copy of “Beria’s letter”)
http://www.katyn.ru/index.php?go=News&in=view&id=205

Interview with historian Yuri Zhukov on the radio station Serebryanyj dozhd’, 100,1 FM, March 28, 2008, 08:05 MSK/MSD
http://www.moskva.fm/stations/FM_100.1/programs/однажды_на_дожде/2008-03-28_08:05

Istorik Yuri Zhukov na r/s Serebryannyj dozhd’ (28 marta, 2008) (thread from the discussion forum on the website “The Truth About Katyn”)
http://www.katyn.ru/forums/viewtopic.php?id=553

Katyn documents from the “closed package no. 1″ (published on April 28, 2010 on Rosarkhiv’s official website)
http://rusarchives.ru/publication/katyn/spisok.shtml

Makarov, Andrey, Ya videl nazvaniye papki: volosy dybom vstayut…, from Nashe Vremya, Nr. 139, October 26-November 1, 2009
http://www.gazetanv.ru/archive/2009/139/6028/

Shved, Vladislav, Katyn-2010. Novaya stranitsa ili…? (published on April 30, 2010)
http://katyn.ru/index.php?go=Pages&in=view&id=947

Shved, Vladislav, Vnov’ o Katyni ili 70-letiye katynskogo rasstrela, kak lozhka degtya k 65-letiyu Velikoj Pobedy (published on February 14, 2010)
http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2010/shwed70.php

Yakovlev, Alexander, Sumerki, OOO Izdatel’skaya firma Materik, Moscow, 2003
http://www.lebed.com/2005/art4364.htm (excerpt from the book)

Yazhborovskaya I.S., Yablokov A.Yu., Parsadanova V.S., Katynskij sindrom v sovetsko-pol’skikh otnosheniyakh, Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2001
http://katynbooks.narod.ru/syndrome/Docs/intro.html

On December 10, 2010 the grandson of Stalin Ye.I. Dzhugashvili sent a lawsuit to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation against the State Duma of the Russian Federation regarding the protection of honor and dignity of J.V. Stalin. The statement of claim is based on the fact of adoption of a resolution by the State Duma deputies on November 26, 2010 called “About the Katyn Tragedy and its Victims”. Plaintiff requests the Court to declare the statement “…the Katyn crime was committed on Stalin’s direct order” as being untrue and defamatory to the honor and dignity of J.V. Stalin. The plaintiff demands to oblige the State Duma to withdraw its declaration “About the Katyn Tragedy and its Victims” and to pay a compensation of 100 million rubles, and to distribute the collected amount jointly and severally among the 342 deputies of the State Duma, who voted for the adoption of the above resolution.

The full text of the statement of claim (in Russian) is here:

http://www.katyn.ru/index.php?go=News&in=view&id=211

MOSCOW. November 24, 2010. WEBSITE “THE TRUTH ABOUT KATYN”

As it has become known to the editors of “The Truth about Katyn”, there are now plans to discuss and to adopt a political resolution, “In Memory of the Victims of the Katyn Tragedy”, at a meeting in the State Duma of the Russian Federation on November 26, 2010. The draft resolution places responsibility for the Katyn crime, committed by the German occupation authorities in the fall of 1941, on the Soviet Union. The adoption of the anti-Soviet resolution is timed to President of the Russian Federation D.A. Medvedev’s visit to Poland on December 6, 2010. In connection with the scheduled attempt of falsifying history on November 26, which contradicts with the interests of Russia, the deputy of the State Duma V.I. Ilyukhin addressed on November 24, 2010 to the Chairman of Russian State Duma B.V. Gryzlov with the following statement:

To the Chairman of the State Duma
of the Russian Federation
B.V. Gryzlov

Dear Boris Vyacheslavovich!

In connection with the discussion at the plenary meeting in the State Duma, on November 26, 2010, of the draft resolution “About the declaration of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation “In Memory of the Victims of the Katyn Tragedy”, please issue an instruction to reproduce and to distribute among the deputies the draft notes, which formed the basis for the forgery of L. Beria’s letter to J. Stalin about the alleged reviewing of cases of Polish prisoners and applying to them the highest measure of punishment – the shooting. This letter and the forged extract from the decision of the Politburo of the AUCP(b) from March 5, 1940 are being used today by the enemies of Russia, who sacrilegiously present these as the main proof of Stalin’s and the Soviet leadership’s guilt in shooting the Poles near Katyn in the Smolensk region.

The falsification was carried out in the late 80′s – early 90′s of last century and it has been established by expert studies and other evidence.

It can be argued, that distortions of the events related to the Katyn tragedy were originally initiated by the well-known people in our country – A. Yakovlev, D. Volkogonov, V. Falin, R. Pikhoya and others.

Explanations will be given during the discussion of the draft resolution.

Attachment: on 4 pages.

Deputy of the State Duma V.I. Ilyukhin

Source: http://www.katyn.ru/index.php?go=News&in=view&id=205

2010-11-24 14:02
Press office of the CPRF faction – kprf.ru

To the President of the Russian Federation
D.A. Medvedev

Dear Dmitry Anatolyevich!

In early December this year you will pay an official visit to Poland.

There is no doubt, that during the discussions about the interstate relations the Polish side will once again raise the so-called “Katyn issue”, once again re-activated by western politicians in order to discredit the Russian people and to diminish the role of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. In addition, referring to the “Katyn case” has quite a specific task – to create a fertile ground for compensation claims against our country for the shooting of the Polish “elite of the nation.”

Despite the existence of irrefutable facts that disprove the conventional version of the shooting of 22 thousand Polish POWs by members of the NKVD of the USSR, attempts are being made in order to achieve recognition of this crime as genocide, with consequent presentation of claims to Russia about damage compensation to Poland in an amount currently exceeding more than 100 billion euros. There are already more than 70 lawsuits from the relatives of the murdered Poles present in the international court in Strasbourg, and there is no doubt that their numbers will grow.

Given the above, we express our hope, that during the upcoming visit to Poland our delegation will stand firm and will defend itself from being pulled into a discussion of this issue, which once again will be wittingly used in anti-Russian purposes.

As a counterbalance, we consider it possible to raise before the Polish side the question of clarifying the fate of 130,000 Red Army soldiers, who fell into Polish captivity in 1920. According to existing information, more than 80,000 people died from brutal treatment, hunger, mass diseases and executions, something that Poland, as we know, does not want to admit. Russia has the right to request permission to raise on their territory a monument to the victims of Polish terror, similar to the monument, that was raised to the Poles in Katyn.

Sincerely,

On behalf of a group of Russian scientists – members of the Public Commission about Katyn
Vice-chairman of the Committee of the State Duma
for Constitutional Legislation
and State Construction,
Honoured Lawyer of the Russian Federation, Professor
V. I. Ilyukhin.

Source: http://kprf.ru/international/84930.html

2010-10-19 16:14

Press office of the Central Committee of the CPRF

Falsification of history of the Soviet period has become one of the main instruments of ideological warfare, constantly waged against the peoples of Russia by unfriendly foreign and internal forces. We see quite open attempts to revise the results of the Second World War and the Soviet Union’s role in the victory over Nazi Germany and its satellites. Persistant attempts are being made to equate the country, which has made the biggest contribution to the salvation of the humanity from the brown plague, with an aggressor. Communism is persistantly being equated with fascism, and Stalin’s deeds with Hitler’s.

In order to realize malicious goals a large number of counterfeits and forged documents are being used, which distort the role of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin in the history of the twentieth century. Such documents are being made available to the science, they are used in educational books, artistic and documentary works are being created on their basis. Serious attempts have been made in order to transform Russian archives from the “storage of history” into an instrument of ideological struggle. At the same time the most valuable historical documents have been wasted away and openly sold out.

Using the promiscuity and permissiveness of Yeltsin’s rule, the environment of the first Russian president brought out of the country and squandered thousands of important archival materials, including some marked “Classified”, “Top Secret”,”Of Special Importance”. Such barbarity has no analogues in modern domestic and foreign history. These anti-Russian actions of the newly-minted “elite” of the country have caused huge damage to the credibility of the national archival service, discredited the authenticity of the documents held in repositories.

One of the main targets of attacks and falsifications are the events that preceded World War II and the Great Patriotic War. One that stands out considerably among these is the so-called “Katyn affair” about the shooting of Polish officers near Smolensk in the fall of 1941. It has become one of the main themes of the anti-Soviet, and now anti-Russian propaganda, actively used against our country by the most aggressive and hostile circles, including the current ruling circles of Poland.

“Katyn affair” has become one of the greatest political myths of the twentieth century. Russians are increasingly regarded as the guilty ones, while the Poles appear as the “victims of the totalitarian regime”, receiving compassion and unconditional moral and political support from the U.S., Western Europe, and now Eastern European States.

One important argument of the Goebbels version about the shooting of the Poles by the NKVD of the USSR, which is being cherished by the Polish authorities, consists of three documents, which were suddenly discovered in the fall of 1992. The most important among these is “Beria’s letter” to Stalin dated March 1940, containing an alleged proposal to shoot 27,000 Polish officers. At the same time, the contents of the “letter” and the circumstances of its discovery cause legitimate doubts about its authenticity. The same applies to two of the other “evidential” documents: the extract from the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of March 5, 1940, and a letter by the chairman of the KGB Shelepin addressed to Khrushchev in 1959. They are all abound with lots of meaning and spelling errors, and also errors in their execution, inappropriate for this level of documentation. There is enough evidence to claim, that they were made in the early 1990’s on the initiative of Yeltsin’s entourage.

There are irrefutable documented facts and testimonies, as well as direct material evidence, proving that the Polish officers were not executed by the NKVD in the spring of 1940, but by the German occupation authorities in the fall of 1941, after the capture of Smolensk region by the Wehrmacht. However, these facts are deliberately ignored and openly silenced by the Russian presidential and governmental structures.

With the passage of time many of the historical myths and fabrications have been exposed and refuted. Among these there are legends of the German spy V. I. Lenin, the Tsarist secret police agent J. V. Stalin, and the collusion between the Soviet NKVD and the German Gestapo. Despite this the attempts of falsification and distortion of national history continue.

We note with sorrow that the creation in 2009 of the Presidential Commission to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the detriment of Russia did not improve the situation. The intensity of the falsifiers’ work has not decreased.

CPRF intends to continue to oppose the attempts to distort historical truth. To this end, we will continue to use research works by honest historians, publications in party press, opportunities in parliamental work, and propaganda work among the population.

Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPRF considers it necessary to raise before the president of Russian Federation the question about the necessity of carrying out a general and comprehensive check of the preservation status of archival documents. We insist that head of state issues an order to the Main Prosecutor of Russian Federation and the Investigation Committee of Russian Federation to conduct a thorough investigation of the circumstances around the falsification of documents related to the shooting of Polish officers.

Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPRF

G. A. Zyuganov.

October 19, 2010.

Source: http://kprf.ru/party_live/83773.html

2010-09-10 13:14
Press office of the CPRF faction – kprf.ru

V. I. Ilyukhin has turned to the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin with a letter of the following content:

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

I am  sending to you a collection of materials from the ”round table meeting” concerning the subject “Katyn: judicial and political aspects”, which was conducted in the State Duma on April 19, 2010.

In its work participated major Russian scientists, history scholars, lawyers, representatives for the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office, who have been directly involved in the investigation of the criminal justice case regarding the death of Polish POWs.

With the support of collected additional materials regarding the Katyn tragedy, the meeting participants came to the clear conclusion that the Poles were shot in the Autumn of 1941 by the Fascists after their occupation of Smolensk oblast. This opinion has also emerged on the basis of facts testifying of the falsification of historical documents. The investigation of the criminal justice case was bordered by serious violations of procedures, conducted for the benefit of the Poles, thus it is necessary to go on with the preliminary investigation and when it is over all available documents in its possession must be turned over to a court for a public evaluation.

At the same time it has been stated that it would be appropriate to create a Russian government commission in order to establish what happened to the 200 000 Red Guards and civilians (Russians, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Jews), who ended up in Polish captivity during the years 1918-1920.

According to available information over 80 000 people died in Polish camps from the intentional denial of medical care, brutal treatment, lack of food and shootings.

We ask you to look into this.

Attachment: 2 copies of the brochure “The Secrets of the Katyn Tragedy”.

Sincerely,

Vice-chairman of the Committee
for Constitutional Legislation
and State Construction
V. I. Ilyukhin

Source: http://kprf.ru/dep/82378.html

Nyligen kontaktades Iljuchin av en anonym person som berättade om att det under 1990-talet förekom omfattande tillverkning av falska arkivdokument. Den här gången hade Iljuchin med sig i studion en del av de föremål som den anonyme personen hade överlämnat till honom som bevis för sina påståenden.

Den anonyme uppgiftslämnaren deltog själv i förfalskningsarbetet. Alla dokument som förfalskades av honom och den grupp han ingick i rörde sovjettiden och då särskilt sådant som hade med Stalin att göra. Vid förfalskningen av dokument använde man äkta blanketter från 1930- och 1940-talen. Dessa blanketter skall ha funnits hos KGB:s 9:e styrelse. Förfalskningsgruppen fick också tillgång till äkta skrivmaskiner från den tiden.

Man har nu gjort en undersökning av stämplarna som den anonyme uppgiftslämnaren har överlämnat till Iljuchin och slutsatsen blev att dessa är tillverkade tidigast i slutet av 1970-talet eller eventuellt i början av 1980-talet. Innan dess skall det ha varit tekniskt omöjligt att tillverka sådana stämplar.

För undersökningen kontaktades vissa organisationer där det finns högklassiga specialister som arbetar inom MVD:s (inrikesministeriets) kriminallabaratorier. Det är inte helt lätt att hitta någon som vill åta sig den här uppgiften, eftersom det föreligger en risk att resultatet av en sådan undersökning kommer att gå emot presidentens linje. De här specialisterna har alla nödvändiga certifikat och har kriminalistiska undersökningar som sitt ordinarie arbete. Enligt Iljuchin har man fullt förtroende för dem. Till vardags gör de sådana här underökningar i civila mål och andra rättsliga sammanhang, men praktiserar det även hemma. Deras expertundersökningar har också presenterats för vissa tjänstemän inom den ryska säkerhetstjänsten, som håller med om att dessa experters slutsatser är riktiga.

I början av 1990-talet rådde det total oordning i de ryska arkiven. Det var då som man hittade många spridda dokument från förr som man försökte bringa i ordning. Vid tillverkningen av förfalskade dokument använde man också en del äkta stämplar från sovjettiden.

Iljuchin visade nu upp ”Specialärende nr. 29” (ryska: ”Spetsfond, delo 29, tom 7”). Det är en mapp på 202 sidor som innehåller NKVD:s och NKGB:s brevväxling med Stalin från 1941, där många av dokumenten rör den sovjetiska säkerhetstjänstens arbete. Bland annat handlar det om spionernas intriger, om läget vid gränsen och illegala gränsövergångar, om de ukrainska banditernas och OUN:s verksamhet i västra Ukraina och den sovjetiska säkerhetstjänstens åtgärder för att motverka den verksamheten.

I denna mapp har man också planterat två stora falska brev. Det första brevet är undertecknat av Timosjenko, Zjukov och Vasilevskij, och skall ha tillverkats av förfalskningaspecialister vid det ryska militärinstitutet. Syftet med förfalskningen är okänt, men den anonyme uppgiftslämnaren tror att det kan ha varit för att höja säkerhetstjänstens auktoritet. Det var tydligen meningen att skapa en bild av att man varnade Stalin för ett kommande tyskt anfall men att han trots det inte vidtog några åtgärder för att stoppa det.

Det andra falska dokumentet, som finns på sidan 109 i den här mappen, är även det ”undertecknat” av samma personer, d.v.s. Timosjenko, Zjukov och Vasilevskij. Det innehåller mycket detaljerade och exakta uppgifter om tyska truppkoncentrationer längs den sovjetiska gränsen. Enligt dokumentet föreslog man i april 1941 att Stalin borde inleda en mobilisering och att man borde slå till först. Syftet skall ha varit att visa att Stalin var ute efter att starta ett krig i Europa och att Hitler förekom honom genom sitt ”preventiva” anfall på Sovjetunionen. Det var tänkt att Stalin skulle befria Polen från tyskarna, och sedan inta Tjeckoslovakien, Rumänien och Jugoslavien, d.v.s. hela sydöstra Europa. Därefter skulle han enligt det falska brevet ställa ett ultimatum till Hitler om att acceptera den nya gränsen i Europa, i annat fall skulle det bli fortsatt krig länderna emellan.

Det tråkiga enligt Iljuchin är att båda de här förfalskningarna redan har blivit publicerade, t.ex. så skall det första brevet finnas i en dokumentsamling som har givits ut av den ryska federala säkerhetstjänsten.

Iljuchin säger att han har rådgjort med olika specialister och man har kommit fram till att de flesta av dokumenten i mappen ”Specialärende nr. 29” är äkta, har ett historiskt värde och borde förvaras i arkiv. Ur denna mapp skall man ha tillverkats tre kopior på order av Dmitrij Volkogonov och dessa kopior skall ha spridits runt i Ryssland och Europa.

Dionis Kaptar konstaterade att det ser ut som att det inte handlar enbart om Katyn och intresserade sig för vad mer man hade kommit fram till.

Iljuchin sade att flera ryska medborgare på höga poster har hållit på med sådana här diversioner, t.ex. Dmitrij Volkogonov. På hans initiativ överlämnades många topphemliga ryska dokument till det amerikanska kongressbiblioteket. Volkogonov, som var president Jeltsins rådgivare under 1990-talet brydde sig inte ens om att avhemlighålla dessa dokument som sedermera fördes ut ur landet. Enligt Iljuchin var även Aleksandr Jakovlev inblandad i liknande verksamhet. Jakovlev skall en gång ha sagt  att ”vi måste göra allt vi kan för att väst skall ta avstånd från Sovjetunionen”.

Dagens slag riktas annars inte längre mot Sovjetunionen, utan mot Ryssland. Polackerna kräver kompensation för Katynmassakern i storleksordningen 100 miljarder dollar, en summa som kommer att lägga sig som en tung börda på den unga ryska generationens axlar.

Iljuchin menar att det polska institutet för nationellt minne (IPN) arbetar väldigt hårt med just Katyn-frågan och att de förvränger historiska fakta. Institutet har många proffs till sitt förfogande och får varje år 70 miljoner dollar (pengar tagna ur Polens statskassa) för att finansiera sitt arbete. I Polen finns även den s.k. Katyn-kommittén, som jobbar i samma anda som IPN. Dessa två organisationer ”vrider alla pilar” mot Ryssland och formerar den polska positionen, säger Iljuchin.

En del släktingar till de som dödads i Katyn har vänt sig till Europadomstolen och krävt kompensation. Det rör sig om 70 ärenden som så småningom kommer att godkännas. Detta kommer i sin tur att skapa ett prejudikat och leda till att större gemensamma krav kan följa på det. Den siffra som har nämnts på sistone är över 100 miljarder dollar. De motiverar sina kompensationskrav med att det var NKVD som sköt polackerna. Man menar att NKVD tog livet av Polens elit och vill klassa det som ett folkmord. Om man lyckas med det innebär det att brottet inte har någon preskriptionstid.

Iljuchin sade att han och flera av hans kollegor arbetar tillsammans med en grupp ryska historiker på att avslöja de här osanningarna.

Dinonis Kaptar undrade om någon i Polen har reagerat över den senaste tidens utveckling i Ryssland i Katyn-frågan. Iljuchin sade att den polska pressen har skrivit om att de ryska kritikerna har krävt en förnyad utredning av fallet, en utredning som bör kontrollera alla versioner och alla fakta. Men annars har polackerna varit upptagna med Kaczynskis flygplanskrasch samt det nyligen avslutade presidentvalet. Men den polska reaktionen lär komma och den kommer att bli hård.

Vårt lands ledning tror tyvärr att man kan blidka polackerna och få dem att bli snälla, t.ex. genom att vi nu har lämnat över 67 mappar med utredningsmaterial kring Katyn-fallet. Och nu har Polen också fått Komorowski som ny president. Men man ska inte vara naiv och tro att allt detta kommer att betyda något. Det är fortfarande IPN och Katyn-kommittén som styr den polska agendan, de vill se resultat av sitt arbete och alla sina satsningar. De har upprepat samma sak i 30 års tid och vill verkligen inte tillåta att någon ändar på det.

Det är inte omöjligt att dagens politiska ledning i Ryssland är beredd att erkänna att man har begått ett fel genom den förhastade bikten inför polackerna, säger Iljuchin. Gorbatjov var en ytlig man. Vad gäller Jeltsin, så var han endast kapabel att läsa texterna på etiketterna på spritflaskorna. Putin fortsatte alltför lättvindingt i samma spår. Han befinner sig under svår press med alla motstridande fakta i Katyn-fallet, men har redan hunnit erkänna den sovjetiska skulden.

Vi borde säga till polackerna att om de verkligen är intresserade av sanningen så borde de ta och se tillbaka på det som hände 1920. Då hamnade 120.000 rödgardister plus nästan lika många civila från västra Ukraina och västra Vitryssland i polsk fångenskap. Det fanns riktiga koncentrationsläger i Polen där fångarna behandlades illa. Efter två år skrev Tjitjerin att 60.000 ryssar hade dött i de polska lägren. Fångarna utsattes för hård bestraffning, mord, de fick ingen mat o.s.v. Dessa läger var föregångare till de tyska koncentrationslägren. Man kunde skjuta en rysk fånge bara för att denne hade stulit en höna. En gång sköts 240 personer på en gång. En annan gång dog några tiotal personer under en fyra dagar lång transport som genomfördes i svår hetta. Fångarna fick då varken mat eller vatten. Allt sådant finns beskrivet i polska dokument.

Varför är Putin och Medvedev så likgiltiga inför sitt eget lands historia, varför respekterar de den inte? – undrade Iljuchin. De har bett Polen om ursäkt, men varför besöker de inte något av de kors som finns uppsatta i Polen över de döda ryska soldaterna från 1920 års krig? De skulle kunna besöka dem först och lägga ner en blomma där innan de reser vidare för att delta i de polska Katyn-minneshögtiderna.

Den sovjetiska perioden i vårt lands historia ignoreras helt av många ledare idag, man uppfattar den perioden som något främmande, man hatar den, man spottar på sina egna rötter. Om de inte har respekt för det som har varit tidigare då kan man undra vilken respekt de själva kommer att ha om 20-30 år i folks ögon. Det handlar trots allt om vårt eget stora land, och i vårt lands historia fanns det allt från tragedier till stort hjältemod. Så varför skall man bespotta allt?

Dionis Kaptar undrade om Iljuchin har stöd av andra i sin kamp eller om han agerar ensam. Iljuchin svarade först med att tacka Kaptar för att ha fått möjligheten att framträda i ”KM TV”. Enligt Iljuchin så håller man på att bryta igenom den informationsblockad som de officiella ryska myndigheterna ligger bakom, och genombrottet har nu skett bl.a. ”tack vare er”. Dagen innan TV-programmet kom det ut en stor intervju med Viktor Iljuchin i tidningen ”Literaturnaja gazeta”. I intervjun berättade han om hur historien förfalskas. Om ”Literaturnaja gazeta” skriver något, så betyder det att deras redaktör Jurij Poljakov helt eller delvis delar vår åsikt, säger Iljuchin.

Vissa andra material publiceras lokalt. En film om Katyn som vi har producerat (”Polskij krest Rossii”) finns tillgänglig på KPRF:s sajt. Numera vet många i Ryssland om det här. Iljuchin får många brev från olika personer som intresserar sig för det här och vilka t.o.m. ger honom råd om hur han ska agera. Ett kommersiellt bolag har också laddat ner den här filmen och sålt 90.000 exemplar av den i framför allt de tre stora städerna Sankt Petersburg, Moskva och Sverdlovsk. Man kan säga att de tjänar pengar på saningen, inflikade Kaptar. Iljuchin sade sig inte vara emot det. Det viktigaste är att folket får veta hur barbariskt man behandlar historia i Ryssland.

Just nu är det politisk lågsäsong i Ryssland, många är på semester, 12 juli genomförs det sista plenummötet i Duman innan den också stänger för semester. Iljuchin kommer senare att ta upp frågan om en parlamentarisk undersökning kring det här.

Iljuchin sade att det finns andra falska dokument förutom ”Berijas brev” och två andra Katyn-dokument som Kaptar hittills har fått se. Han visade upp ett dokument om påstått samarbete mellan NKVD och Gestapo ”undertecknat 1939”. Många har hävdat att det dokumentet är falskt, men ingen har kunnat kontrollera det. Men Iljuchin har bett sina experter titta på det. De undersökte Berijas faximile-signatur och en tysk Gestapo-stämpel. Berijas namnteckning har visat sig vara falsk. Dokumentet är annars ”påskrivet” av Berija och Müller, men eftersom Berijas namnteckning är falsk så finns det inte längre något behov av att kontrollera Müllers signatur.

I ett annat dokument, ett intyg, skriver ”Berija” om den nationella sammansättningen inom NKVD:s och Gulags ledning. Det är ett känt faktum att andelen judar i de organisationerna var väldigt hög. I sitt intyg föreslår ”Berija” att man måste få in fler ukrainare, vitryssar och ryssar. Det dokumentet har undersökts av experter och också det visat sig vara falskt. ”Berijas” namnteckning i det har framställts genom att man har använt ”hans” facsimile-signaturer (Iljuchin har tre stycken sådana) och ”tryckt dit namnet i flera skikt”.

Enligt den anonyme personen har hundratals och tusentals falska dokument stoppats in i ryska arkiv. Iljuchin sade att han hade nog inte varit så här modig om han inte var säker på sin sak. Hans uppfattning delas av sådana ansedda historiker som Jurij Zjukov (känd för sina böcker inte bara i Ryssland utan också utomlands), Aleksandr Kolesnik och Aleksej Plotnikov. Iljuchin och hans team har i år skrivit en omfattande recension om huvudåklagarämbetets slutsatser från 1993 gällande Katyn-fallet, enligt dem är de slutsatserna helt utan värde.

Tyvärr skriver andra historiker sina böcker mot betalning som de får från exempelvis Polen eller USA. Volkogonov har fört ut en mängd ryska arkivdokument, han tog vilka dokument han ville i arkiven, packade ner dem i resväskor och förde ut allt. Dessa dokument ställs numera ut i montrar på det amerikanska kongressbiblioteket. Vi har själva ingen möjlighet att få se dessa dokument här hos oss, men i väst är det helt fritt. En del andra dokument har förts ut till länder som Sverige och Finland där de nu förvaras i olika arkiv och där de nu ”tolkar” vår historia på deras ”eget” sätt.

Idag vet man helt säkert att Lenins testamente är ett förfalskat dokument. Det tråkiga är att det redan har kommit ut och blivit publicerat. Det finns också falska dokument som handlar om Lenins sjukdom, som vill framställa Lenin som sjukare än vad han var i verkligheten. Det finns papper som sägs vara ifyllda av hans läkare.

Idag har man fastställt att dokument om Stalins samarbete med tsarens hemliga polis (Ochranka) också är falska. Stalin har aldrig varit Ochankas agent. Stalin var en genialisk person, även om hans person var mycket motsägelsefull. Han gjorde mycket för landet, han initierade många omfattande program, sådana som DneproGES (vattenkraftverket vid Dnepr) och stålverket i Magnitogorsk. Alla personer kan svartmålas på olika sätt eller framställas som idioter, det räcker med att man exempelvis ”avslöjar” att Stalin var agent för Ochranka. ”Jag är säker på att om vi hade tillgång till arkiven idag, så skulle vi kunna uppdaga många förfalskningar”, säger Iljuchin.

Kaptar inflikade att trots att informationsblockaden nu håller på att brytas så är det ändå inte det man går och väntar på. Man väntar på att någonting skall börja hända uppe på högsta nivån. Han undrade om Iljuchin har några administrativa metoder som han kan ta till för att påverka händelseutvecklingen i egenskap av dumaledamot.

Iljuchin svarade att han har exakt samma rättigheter och befogenheter som alla andra ledamöter i Duman. Det är visserligen inte svårt att boka ett möte hos några av landets höga tjänstemän, sådana som Gryzlov, eller att diskutera saken med folk på ryska justitieministeriet, men den nya informationen har redan visats i direktsändning när Iljuchin framträdde inför Duman i juni månad. De TV-bilderna sänds nämligen automatiskt till regeringen i Kreml, ministerrådet och hela Duman.

19 april höll dumaledamöterna och historikerna ett rundabordsmöte angående de senaste rönen kring Katyn-fallet, man har också skickat tre brev till Medvedev, bl.a. ett långt brev ”för cirka en vecka sedan”. I brevet uppmanas presidenten at ta del av den nya informationen och vidta nödvändiga åtgärder. Men det har gått för kort tid sedan brevet skickades till honom. Iljuchin sa också att han skall försöka få till ett möte med Narysjkin, som är ordförande i den ryska kommissionen mot historieförfalskning och som tillhör presidentens administration.

Iljuchin vill just nu inte lämna över sina nya bevismaterial till huvudåklagarämbetet, det stället är en enda röra och det är direkt farligt att lämna över dokument till dem. Han säger sig vara rädd för en provokation, att dessa material förvinner och aldrig kommer tillbaka. Han tror inte på de officiella experternas slutsatser. Han tvivlar dock inte på deras professionella kompetens, men om de utsätts för tryck uppifrån finns det inga garantier att deras slutsatser kommer att bli objektiva.

Iljuchin sade att man just nu vill jobba med de här dokumenten själva, först senare kommer frågan att väckas inför huvudåklagaren. Enligt Iljuchin står Rysslands anseende på spel. För vem vill samarbeta med ett land som föfalskar sin egen historia? Ingen. Sådana föraktar man. Våra pseudo-patrioter blir klappade på axeln och huvudet av andra, som föraktar dem innerst inne. Tyskarna, amerikanerna och polackerna är sanna patrioter, som vårdar varje historisk fråga. Se bara hur ihärdigt polackerna driver Katyn-frågan. Och hur är det hos oss?

Ju mer man sätter sig in i alla dessa frågor desto mer lär man sig, och det är verkligen avskyvärt allt det som sker. Förfalskningarna har förekommit i alla tider, både under monarkin och även mot monarkin. Det finns exempel på förfalskade dokument även utomlands. I Storbritannien tillverkade man ett falskt Komintern-dokument i en hög Komintern-ledares namn och planterade förfalskningen i de engelska arkiven. Tanken var att påvisa att Komintern genomförde ett omfattande arbete vars syfte var att få till ett maktskifte i Storbritannien. Dokumentet togs sedan fram ur arkiven och med det som grund ställde man frågan hur det var möjligt att samarbeta med Sovjetunionen ”när sovjeterna höll på som de gjorde”.

Och hur började kriget mot Irak? Jo, genom ett informationskrig. Först spred man en massa dokument med desinformation om att Irak hade kärnvapen och kemiska vapen som skulle vara farliga för hela mänskligheten. Det var så man motiverade den amerikanska invasonen i Irak – och nu vet man inte hur man ska ta sig ut därifrån.

Enligt Iljuchin sätts många falska dokument in i mappar som är hemligstämplade, som är märkta med texten ”Får ej avhemlighållas”, ”Topphemligt” eller ”Av särskild vikt”. Sedan dyker dessa dokument upp och börjar spridas runt. Dokument som inte är hemligstämplade är svårare att förfalska, eftersom de är tillgängliga för alla.

Ryska arkivledare hävdar att Iljuchin har fel, att Katyn-dokumenten förvarades i en ”särskild mapp” på en säker plats inom centralkommittén. Och sedan avslöjar de sig själva. Efter rundabordsmötet om Katyn den 19 april och andra presskonferenser, där nya fakta lades fram som visade att NKVD inte var inblandade i Katynmassakern, gav Medvedev order till Rosarchiv om att lägga ut Katyn-dokumenten på arkivets hemsida. Där lade man sedan ut Politbyråns beslut om att avrätta över 20.000 polacker, men ingen av kopiorna är underskriven och det saknas stämplar. De har piskat sig själva med det.

Om det verkligen är så som alla säger att de är intresserade av sanningen så bör man avhemlighålla alla dokument som förvaras hos FSB eller inom försvarsministeriet. Där finns det bl.a. ett dokument i vilket en tysk berättar om tyskarnas inblandning i Katynmassakern, att det var hans grupp som sköt polackerna. Och det finns många sådana dokument i dessa arkiv.

Putin och Medvedev är tydligen rädda för att erkänna sitt eget fel och förhastat handlande. Det är alltid bättre att erkänna ett fel direkt, för då slipper man ännu svårare konsekvenser. Man borde erkänna att Iljuchin och hans grupp har nya fakta som måste kontrolleras, fortsätta förundersökningen av Katyn-fallet och avhemlighålla alla dokument. Det finns tydligen inga hemligheter för polackerna, så varför är det då så hemligt vår oss?

Iljuchin avslutade med att säga att ”det gör ont för mitt eget fosterland” och tillade att han inte förföljer några egna mål i det här fallet.

Ilyukhin was recently contacted by an anonymous person who told him that during the 1990s there was an extensive manufacturing of false archive documents. This time Ilyukhin brought to the studio some of the objects that the anonymous person had forwarded to him as evidence for his claims.

The anonymous informant participated himself in the forgery work. All documents that was forged by him and the group he was part of, was about the Soviet era and particularly such things that dealt with Stalin. In the forgery of the documents they used genuine forms from the 1930s and 1940s. These forms must have been preserved at the 9^th Directorate of the KGB. The forgery group also got access to genuine typewriters from that period.

They have now made an examination of the stamps that the anonymous informant had forwarded to Ilyukhin and the conclusion was that they were made in late 1970s at the earliest or maybe in early 1980s. Before that it wasn’t technically possible to make such stamps.

In conducting this examination contact was made with certain organizations with highly qualified specialists at their disposal, experts who are working within the forensic laboratories of the MVD (The Ministry of Interior). It is not so easy to find someone who would dare to undertake such a task since there is a risk that the result of such an examination would go against the President’s line. These specialists have all the necessary certificates and have forensic examinations as their ordinary job. According to Ilyukhin they have full confidence in them. In daily work they are doing this kind of examinations in civil cases and other judicial contexts, but they also do it at home. Their expert examinations have also been presented to certain officials at the Russian security service who agree that the conclusions made by these experts are correct.

In the early 1990s there was total disorder in the Russian archives. It was then that they found many scattered documents from the past that they tried to bring in order. In the manufacturing of forged documents they also used some genuine stamps from the Soviet era.

Ilyukhin then showed ”Special case no. 29” (Russian: “Spetsfond, delo 29, tom 7”). It is a file consisting of 202 pages which contains the correspondence between the NKVD and NKGB with Stalin from 1941, where many of the documents concern the work of the Soviet security service. For instance it is about the intrigues of the spies, about the situation at the border and illegal border crossings, about the activities of the Ukrainian bandits and the OUN in Western Ukraine and the counteractions against them from the Soviet security service.

In this file they have planted two large fake letters. The first letter is signed by Timoshenko, Zhukov and Vasilevsky, and must have been produced by forgery specialists at the Russian military institute. The purpose of the forgery is unknown but the anonymous informant believes that it could have been done in order to raise the authority of the security service. Obviously the purpose of this was to create an image that they warned Stalin of a coming German attack but that he despite of that did not take any actions in order to stop it.

The second fake document, which appears on page 109 in this folder, is also “signed” by the same individuals, i.e. Timoshenko, Zhukov and Vasilevsky. It contains very detailed and exact information about the concentration of German forces along the Soviet border. According to the document it was suggested to Stalin in April 1941 to begin a mobilization and to strike first. The purpose must have been to show that Stalin wanted to start a war in Europe and that Hitler forestalled him by his “preventive” strike against the Soviet Union. It was meant that Stalin should liberate Poland from the Germans and then capture Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, i.e. the whole of Southeastern Europe. After that he would, according to the fake letter, present an ultimatum to Hitler to accept the new border in Europe, otherwise it would be a continued war between the countries.

The sad thing, according to Ilyukhin, is that both these forgeries have already been published, e.g. the first letter is said to be found in a document collection released by the Federal Russian Security Service.

Ilyukhin says that he has consulted different specialists and that they have reached the conclusion that most of the documents in the file “Special case no. 29” are genuine, have a historical value and ought to be stored in archives. From this file they must have made three copies at the order of Dmitri Volkogonov and that these copies must have been spread around in Russia and in Europe.

Dionis Kaptar said that it looks like this is not only about Katyn and was interested in what more they have reached conclusions about.

Ilyukhin said that several Russian citizens on the highest levels have been practicing this kind of diversions, e.g. Dmitri Volkogonov. On his initiative several top secret Russian documents were forwarded to the American Library of Congress. Volkogonov, who was President Yeltsin’s advisor during the 1990s, did not even bother to de-classify these documents that were later transferred out of the country. Alexander Yakovlev was also, according to Ilyukhin, involved in similar activities. Yakovlev is to have said once that “we must do everything in order for the Western world to renounce the Soviet Union”.

The blow of today is no longer directed against the Soviet Union, but also to Russia. The Poles are demanding compensation for the Katyn massacre in the magnitude of 100 billion dollar, a sum that will put an enormous burden on the shoulders of Russia’s young generation.

Ilyukhin says that the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) is working very hard with the Katyn question in particular and that they are distorting historical facts. The Institute has a lot of professionals at its disposal and receive an annual 70 million dollar (money from the Polish treasurer) in order to finance its work. In Poland there is also the so-called Katyn committee which is working in the same spirit as the IPN. These two organizations are “pointing all their darts” against Russia and are forming the Polish position, says Ilyukhin.

Some of the relatives of those killed in Katyn have turned to the European Court and demanded compensation. There are about 70 cases that will eventually be approved. This will in turn create a precedent and followed by greater common demands. The figure that has been mentioned recently is more than 100 billion dollar. They are motivating that their demand of compensation is because that the NKVD shot the Poles. They mean that the NKVD killed the elite of Poland and want to classify it as genocide. If they succeed in this then it means that the crime has no limitation.

Ilyukhin said that he and several of his colleagues are now working with a group of Russian history scholars in order to reveal these falsehoods.

Dionis Kaptar wondered if anyone in Poland has reacted over the latest development in Russia regarding the Katyn issue. Ilyukhin said that the Polish press has written that the Russian critics are demanding a renewed investigation of this case, an investigation which ought to check all the versions and all the facts. But otherwise the Poles have been occupied with Kaczynski’s plane crash and the recently concluded presidential election. But the Polish reaction will probably come and it will be harsh.

The leadership of our country unfortunately believe that they can appease the Poles and get them to be nice, e.g. that we have now forwarded more than 67 files with investigative materials around the Katyn case. And now Poland has also gotten Komorowski as new president. But one shall not be naïve and believe that all this will change anything. It is still the IPN and the Katyn Committee who are steering the Polish agenda. They want to see results from their work and all their efforts. They have repeated the same thing for 30 years and certainly do not want to allow anyone to change that.

It is not impossible that today’s leadership in Russia is prepared to admit that they have made a mistake by the hasty confession to the Poles, says Ilyukhin. Gorbachev was a superficial man. With regard to Yeltsin, and forgive me for being maybe not so polite here, he was only capable of reading the text on the labels of the liquor bottles. Putin continued too lightly on the same track. He is under severe pressure with all the contradicting facts in the Katyn case, but has already admitted the Soviet guilt.

We should tell the Poles that if they are really genuinely interested in the truth they should take a look back at what happened in 1920. At that time 120 000 Red Guards plus almost as many civilians from the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia ended up in Polish captivity. There were some real concentration camps in Poland where the prisoners were treated badly. Chicherin wrote after two years that 60 000 Russians had died in the Polish camps. The prisoners were subjected to harsh punishment; they did not get any food and so on. These camps were a precursor to the German concentration camps. They could shoot a Russian prisoner only because he had stolen a hen. At one time 240 individuals were shot at the same time. Another time some tens of people died during a four day long transport that was carried out in severe heat. The prisoners then got neither food nor water. All that is described in Polish documents.

Why are Putin and Medvedev so indifferent to their own country’s history? Why don’t they respect it? – wondered Ilyukhin. They have apologized to Poland, but why don’t they visit any of the crosses that are exhibited in Poland over the dead Russian soldiers from the war of 1920? They could visit them first and lay down a flower there before they go further to participate in the Polish Katyn commemorations.

The Soviet period in our country’s history is completely ignored today by many leaders; they think of that period as something frightening, they hate it, they spit on their own roots. If they don’t have respect for our history then one might wonder what respect they will have themselves in people’s eyes in 20-30 years from now. After all it is all about our own great country and in our country’s history there was everything from tragedies to great heroism. So why should everything be spitted on?

Dionis Kaptar wondered if Ilyukhin is supported by others in his struggle or if he is acting alone. Ilyukhin replied by first of all thanking Kaptar for being given the opportunity to appear on “KM TV”. According to Ilyukhin they are beginning to break through the information blockade which the official Russian authorities are behind, and the breakthrough has now been accomplished, i.e. “because of you”. The day before the TV program a big interview with Ilyukhin was done by the newspaper “Literaturnaya gazeta”. In that interview he told about how the history is being falsified. If something is written in “Literaturnaya gazeta” then it means that their Editor Yuri Polyakov completely or partially is sharing our view, Ilyukhin says.

Certain other materials are being published locally. A film about Katyn that we have produced (“Polskiy krest Rossii”) is available on the KPRF site. Today many people in Russia know about this. Ilyukhin receives many letters from different persons who are interested in this and who even give him advice on how he should act. A commercial company have also downloaded this film and sold 90 000 copies of it, mainly in the three big cities St. Petersburg, Moscow and Sverdlovsk. One can say that they earn money on the truth, adds Kaptar. Ilyukhin said that he had nothing against it. The most important thing is that people will know how barbarically they treat history in Russia.

At this moment it’s a political off-season in Russia. A lot of people are on holidays; on July 12 the last plenary meeting in the Duma is taken place before it also goes on holiday. Ilyukhin will later bring up the question of a parliamentary investigation around this.

Ilyukhin said that there are other false documents apart from “Beria’s letter” and two other Katyn documents that Kaptar so far has been allowed to see. He showed a document of a claimed co-operation between the NKVD and the Gestapo “signed in 1939”. Many people have claimed that the document is false, but no one has been able to verify it. But Ilyukhin has asked his experts to take a look at it. They examined Beria’s facsimile signature and a German Gestapo stamp. Beria’s signature has been proven false. The document is otherwise “signed” by Beria and Müller, but since Beria’s signature is false it is no longer any need in examining Müller’s signature.

In another document, a certificate, “Beria” writes about the national composition inside the leadership of the NKVD and Gulag. It is a known fact that the number of Jews in these organizations was very large. In his certificate “Beria” suggests that they must get more Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russian in these organizations. This document has been examined by experts and has been proven false. “Beria’s” signature in that document has been made by using “his” facsimile signatures (Ilyukhin has three of them) and “printed the name in several layers”.

According to the anonymous informant hundreds and thousands of false documents have been inserted in the Russian archives. Ilyukhin said that he probably would not have been so brave if he wasn’t sure of the facts. His view is also shared by such distinguished scholars as Yuri Zhukov (known for his books not only in Russia but also abroad), Alexander Kolesnik and Alexei Plotnikov. Ilyukhin and his team have this year written a comprehensive review of the Main Prosecution’s conclusions regarding the Katyn case from 1993; according to them these conclusions are completely without value.

Unfortunately other scholars are writing their books on payment from e.g. Poland and USA. Volkogonov has brought forth a variety of Russian archive documents. He took any documents he wanted in the archives, packed them down in suitcases and brought it all out of the country. These documents are now displayed in stands at the American Library of Congress. We have ourselves no possibility to see these documents here with us, but in the West it is completely free. Some other documents have been forwarded to countries like Finland and Sweden where they are now stored in different archives and where they now “interpret” our history in their “own” way.

Today they know for sure that Lenin’s will is a falsified document. The sad thing is that it has already been released and published. There are also other fake documents which deal with Lenin’s illness and wants to show Lenin as more ill than he really was. There are papers which is said to have been completed by his doctors.

Today it is established that documents regarding Stalin’s claimed co-operation with the Czar’s secret police (Okhranka) are also false. Stalin was never an Okhranka agent. Stalin was a genius person, although his person was very contradictory. He did a lot for the country; he initiated many large-scale programs like DnieproGES (the hydroelectric power at Dniepr) and the steel mill in Magnitogorsk. Everyone can be black-painted in different ways or represented as idiots; it is enough that you “reveal” that Stalin was an agent for the Okhranka. “I am certain that if we had access to the archives today, we would be able to expose many forgeries”, says Ilyukhin.

Kaptar chimed in that despite that the information blockade is now being cracked, it is not that they are waiting for. They are waiting for something to happen on the highest level. He wondered if Ilyukhin has any administrative methods that he can use in order to influence events in his capacity of Member of the Duma.

Ilyukhin replied that he has exactly the same rights and powers as all other members of the Duma. It is indeed not so difficult to book a meeting with some of the country’s highest officials, such as Gryzlov, or to discuss the matter with people at the Russian Ministry of Justice, but the new information has already been shown live when Ilyukhin appeared in the Duma in June. Those TV pictures were broadcasted automatically to the government in the Kremlin, the Minister Council and the whole of the Duma.

On April 19 the members of the Duma and history scholars held a round-table meeting concerning the latest findings around the Katyn case. They have also sent three letters to Medvedev; i.e. a long letter “about a week ago”. In this letter the President is invited to share the new information and to take necessary measures. But the time that has passed since the letter was sent to him is too short. Ilyukhin also said that he will try to get a meeting with Naryshkin, who is chairman of the Russian Commission Against Historical Falsification and who belongs to the President’s administration.

At the moment Ilyukhin does not want to forward his new evidence to the Main Prosecution. That place is a mess and it is straight away dangerous to forward documents to them. He says that he is afraid of a provocation, that these materials will disappear and never surface again. He does not believe in the conclusions made by the official experts. However, he does not doubt their professional competence, but if they are submitted to pressure from above there are no guarantees that their conclusions will be objective.

Ilyukhin said that at the moment they want to work with these documents themselves, only later the issue will be raised to the Main Prosecutor. According to Ilyukhin the reputation of Russia is at stake. Because who wants to co-operate with a country which falsifies its own history? Nobody. Such people are despised. Our pseudo patriots are tapped on their shoulders and heads by people, who deep down despise them. The Germans, the Americans and the Poles are true patriots who nurse every historical question. Just look at how persistently the Poles are pushing the Katyn issue. And how is it with us?

The more you familiarize yourself in all these questions the more you learn, and it is indeed abominable all that is happening. Forgeries have occurred in all times, both during the monarchy and also against the monarchy. There are examples of forged documents also abroad. In Great Britain they manufactured a false Comintern document in the name of a high positioned Comintern leader and planted the forgery in the English archives. The idea was to show that the Comintern carried out extensive work whose aim was to achieve a power shift in Great Britain. The document was then taken from the archives and based on it they asked the question how it was possible to co-operate with the Soviet Union “when the Soviets were doing what they did”.

And how did the war against Iraq begin? Well, by an information war. At first they spread a lot of documents with disinformation that Iraq had nuclear and chemical weapons that would be dangerous for the whole mankind. This was how they motivated the American invasion of Iraq – and now they do not know how to get out of there.

According to Ilyukhin many false documents are inserted in files that are classified, marked with the text “Must not be de-classified”, “Top secret” or “Of particular importance”. Then these documents surface and begin to spread around. Documents that are not classified are more difficult to forge, since they are available to everybody.

Russian archive leaders claim that Ilyukhin is wrong, that the Katyn documents were stored in a “particular file” in a safe place at the Central Committee. And then they reveal themselves. After the round-table meeting about Katyn on April 19 and other press conferences, where new facts were presented which showed that the NKVD was not involved in the Katyn massacre, Medvedev ordered the Rosarkhiv to post the Katyn documents on the web page of the archive. There they posted the decision of the Politburo to execute more than 20 000 Poles, but none of the copies is signed and stamps are missing. They have whipped themselves with it.

If it really is the case that everybody is interested in the truth they should de-classify all documents stored at the FSB or at the Ministry of Defense. There is, among other things, a document where a German tells of the German involvement in the Katyn massacre, that it was his group that shot the Poles. And there are a lot of such documents in these archives. Putin and Medvedev are obviously afraid to admit their own errors and hasty action. It is always better to admit an error immediately, because then you avoid even graver consequences. They should admit that Ilyukhin and his group have new facts which must be verified, continue the investigation of the Katyn case and de-classify all documents. There are obviously no secrets for the Poles, so why is it so secret for us?

Ilyukhin concluded by saying that “it hurts for my own native land” and added that he is not having any agenda of his own in this case.

1. It is unknown where the ”Closed package no. 1” was stored before December 1991. The circumstances around the “miraculous discovery” of these documents, which was made by the employees at the Soviet Presidential Archive, are also shrouded in mystery.

M. S. Gorbachev claimed that he, until December 1991 had not seen these documents, while in the two “Closed packages” of the Politburo regarding Katyn, were stored all other documents, which were dealing with the guilt of the German side in the Katyn massacre. Only a few days before Gorbachev’s resignation from office as the president of the Soviet Union, the archive employees delivered on December 24, 1991 (as implied at their own initiative) through Gorbachev’s chief of staff Grigory Revenko the package with the found documents (“Zhizn’ i reformy” (“The Life and the Reforms”), book 2, Moscow 1995, pp. 348-349).

A. N. Yakovlev claimed both in his book ”Sumerki” (”The Dawn”) and in several articles and appearances, that he up to December 24, 1991 had never seen these documents. In addition Yakovlev revealed an important detail, namely that in the package with the Katyn documents that was delivered to Gorbachev on that day also was a certain “Serov’s letter”. But in the archive list for the “Closed package no. 1” that was delivered from Gorbachev to Yeltsin that letter is missing.

A. Yu. Yablokov claims in his book ”Katynskij sindrom …” (“The Katyn syndrome”) on p. 386: ”In July 1992 the then head of the President’s Administration Yu. V. Petrov, the President adviser D. A. Volkogonov, the head of the Main Archives R. G. Pichoya and the manager of the Archive A. V. Korotkov went through the most secret materials in the Russian President Archive. On September 24, 1992 they opened the “Closed package no. 1”.

This means that somebody is lying – either Gorbachev and Yakovlev, who claim that these documents were stored by Gorbachev and that they in early winter of 1991 were delivered to Yeltsin in Yakovlev’s presence, or the archive employees who claim that they found this package themselves first in the fall of 1992. In this case, however, it is clear that both the former and the latter are lying. Those documents have not been found in any archives or packages. They have been forged but they have not been able to fabricate a coherent story and force everyone who is featured in this case to learn it by heart, especially not the senior managers, why each one has been forced to lie based on what he managed to remember.

2. The documents in question were made public for the first time in fall of 1992 during the meeting of the Constitution Court as evidence of the guilt of the Soviet Communist Party for the Katyn massacre, but already a cursory examination by the judges revealed their falseness, which resulted in the fact that the Constitution Court in its final verdict did not even mention these accusations.

3. That these are forgeries is attested by the fact that these indeed sensational ”documents” were not presented to the Russian public immediately after they have been discovered, despite the fact that the press had been filled with quotes from them. After the fiasco in the Constitution Court the text from some of these documents was published only after two years and then not in any known historical magazines but in so called “periodical edition”, the magazine “Voyennye arkhivy Rossii” (“Russia’s Military Archive”). After the release of no. 1 of the magazine, in which some of these forgeries were published along with other genuine documents from Russian archives, the magazine and its Editorial disappeared without a trace.

4. In this the first publishing of these ”documents” the publishers did not indicate the peculiarities of these documents from a case management point of view, which directly testified about their falseness, i.e. the publishers themselves realized that they were publishing forgeries.

5. In the magazine ”Voprosy istorii” (”Historical questions”) no. 1/1993, where these “documents” were described for the first time in Russia, they only described three of the five documents, but even despite such a shortening this issue was not sent to the subscribers and the libraries until 1995.

6. In Russia they have up to this day not yet officially published the most prominent (when it comes to the degree of falseness) documents from the “Closed package no. 1” – the so-called “print-out for Shelepin” (not to be confused with “Shelepin’s letter”!). This confirms once again that the publishers themselves were well aware of, and still are, the fact that these by them published documents are forged.

Part II. Information that does not go with real historical facts

7. In the documents from the ”Closed package no. 1” it talks about the formation of a certain “special NKVD troika”, which, as it says, had sentenced the Poles to execution. But in the large amount of real genuine archive documents from that period there is not the slightest hint of either the formation of any “troika” (as claimed in these documents) or that any Poles whatsoever had been executed in the Soviet Union in 1940 by any extrajudicial process. To use the words of the specialist in archive system, A. P. Kozlov, “these documents stand out because they run counter to other real indisputable facts from this time which are known from genuine sources”.

8. The real court troikas were provided during these years to sentence the accused, dependant on their guilt, and to acquit the innocent. In “Beria’s letter” the troika is not assigned any judicial rights, but provides to execute all Poles, i.e. the “troika” is not assigned any defined judicial work. Such a “troika” is directly embarrassing for the individual who made it up. The real Beria would never have suggested to the Politburo that they should pull up three senior NKVD employees (including him) from their usual work, in order to sit down and sign 22 000 pieces of paper, which no one other than themselves would read.

9. In the creation of the “troika” the key principle for the establishment of the court troikas which would consist of the top people from the NKVD (the Ministry of Interior) and the AUCP(b) (the Communist Party) and with the mandatory participation of a prosecutor.

10. In this “troika” they violated the principle of the members’ equal responsibility – to the two top NKVD officials (the People’s Commissar and his first deputy) they had added a third rank chief. In the real court troikas it was inconceivable with the participation of the subordinates to any of the members of the troika.

11. Beria could not suggest that they should create a “troika”, since all court troikas recently had been abolished by a joint decision of the Soviet government (Sovnarkom) and the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CC AUCP(b)), i.e. no “troika” was now possible seen from the legal law. After the joint decision had been made no decision executable could neither execute nor even arrest anyone at the orders from such an illegal “troika”, which had been officially forbidden in the Soviet Union by the government and the party.

12. If you assume that these documents from the “Closed package no. 1” are genuine, then it means that the Politburo at the Communist Party’s Central Committee had exceeded its powers – the Politburo took a decision to establish a “troika” despite the fact that the party’s leading agency – the Central Committee (CC) – had abolished them. Such is simply inconceivable. In a decision of November 17, 1938 from the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR (Sovnarkom, i.e. the government of the Soviet Union) and the CC AUCP (b) – the party’s leading agency, which is superior to the Politburo, ordered the following: “Liquidate the court troikas which have been created in accordance with orders from the NKVD of the USSR and the troikas at the militia’s oblast-, krai- and republic boards. From now on all cases shall in accordance with the prevailing legislation be forwarded for investigation to the courts or to the Special Council of the NKVD of the USSR.”

13. In the documents from the “Closed package no. 1” they have in no way included those 395 captured officers, policemen, and border guards, who – while the other POWs were sent to the correction- and labor camps at GUZhDS – were sent to the POW camps in Yukhnov and then to Gryazovets.

14. The “Politburo decision”, which was put into these “documents”, was impracticable for Beria: in pure self-preservation his surroundings would have found a way how to avoid to carry out such a criminal order from the People’s Commissar. It was a similar performance of their chief’s criminal orders that during 1937-38 had led to the execution of the closest collaborators to one of Beria’s predecessors Yagoda (who held the post as People’s Commissar of the NKVD until September 1936). And not long before these events, on February 4, 1940, they had for the same reason executed deputy assistants to Yezhov (who was succeeded by Beria as People’s Commissar and who was also executed on February 4, 1940). The whole world knew that the Poles were in captivity in the Soviet Union and no one in the top management of the NKVD would dare to take any risks by carrying out an illegal order of their execution issued by Beria, who had been working in the NKVD for only a year and a half and of which he had held the post as People’s Commissar only a little bit more than fifteen months.

Part III. Internal contradictions

15. ”Beria’s letter” contains a suggestion to execute 25 700 citizens from former Poland, while ”Shelepin’s letter” says that only 21 857 were actually executed. No explanations are given to on what ground another 3 843 Poles, who obviously were sentenced to execution, avoided being shot.

16. In “Beria’s letter” 14 736 officers and 18 632 inmates are declared as being “inveterate enemies of the Soviet power”, but it is suggested that they execute 14 700 of the former and 11 000 of the latter; this without any explanation about what to do with the remaining “inveterate” enemies and how they should separate the former from the latter. By such a decision the powers of the “troika” were delegated to the direct decision enforcers at spot and they were forced to decide themselves who should be sentenced to execution, which is inconceivable and something that could never exist in a real decision by Beria.

17. According to the notes at the back of the “print-out copy for Beria” they have during the period of March 5, 1940 to November 15, 1956 printed two extra copies of the “print-out copy for Beria” and that they had destroyed two copies on November 15, 1956. Given the strict confidentiality that surrounded the documents in the “Closed package no. 1” such manipulations with the print-out copies, which is unknown whom they were meant for, cannot be explained in a rational way.

Part IV. “Beria’s letter” no. 794/B (N. 794/Б)

18. Seen purely from a formal and legal point of view, “Beria’s letter” no. 794/B is a forgery because of the elementary fact that its key attributes – the date and the number – do not correspond to each other. Because according to the official registration the letter 794/b, which was sent to Stalin from the NKVD, was dated February 29, but in the archives they have found an entirely different letter with the same number – 794/B from the same March 1940 – but without a date indication. In order to understand the absurdity in the situation, imagine a person whose passport is full of errors and as date for its issuing is stated March but that later after a control of the Ministry of Interior it is found that this passport has been issued in February!

19. In “Beria’s letter” the resolution and the signatures of the Politburo members are written in a way that the lines of the “letter” during the signing must have been in a vertical position. No real right-handed leader signs that way. However, a specialist in forged signatures could write just like that – if he wanted to leave a hidden hint in the document that it was forged.

20. “Beria’s letter” has a number but no date. In a genuine document that is impossible since they are the one and the same note in the registration record, and then the date is more important than the number.

21. In “Beria’s letter” generals have been written on the same line as the lieutenant colonels, which was impossible for a genuine NKVD document. In all genuine NKVD documents the generals were written on a separate line and were never mixed even with the colonels.

22. According to a certificate from the Archive Board of the FSS, letter no. 794/b had been registered at the NKVD secretariat on February 29, 1940. In a genuine Beria letter from February 29 there could be no records from Soprunenko’s information from March 3, which appear in “Beria’s letter” from the “Closed package no. 1”. Consequently “Beria’s letter” no. 794/B with this information is a forgery.

23. The first three pages in “Beria’s letter” are not written on the same typewriter as page four (there is even an expert opinion available that proves that). A court would understand that such a thing was impossible for a genuine NKVD letter, because if you change the beginning of a document after the People’s Commissar has signed it, then it is the same thing as committing a crime.

24. Page four is written on a typewriter that has been used to type other recognized genuine Beria letters, while the three first pages are written on a typewriter whose font they still have not been able to trace in any of the fifteen Beria letters covering the period December 1939 to September 1940 that have been found in the archives and which they have up to date investigated.

This reveals the most probable way around the forgery of the letter.

The forgers probably took from the archive Beria’s genuine letter no. 794/b dated February 29, 1940 which contained a suggestion that the Poles would be sentenced by the Special Council of the NKVD (SC) to various fixed-penalties in prisons or labor camps. The forgers destroyed the first pages and instead printed three new ones which were converted in a way that it would like Beria was suggesting that the POWs should be shot. After that they added to these three forged pages a fourth one (the genuine) in which Beria suggested a quantitative (“troika”) and a personal (Beria, Merkulov, Bashtakov) composition for the Special Council. According to the “Regulation for the Special Council” its qualitative and personal composition would differ depending on the kind of matters that would be investigated. If the event occurred inside the borders of a union republic, then one of the members would be that republic’s People’s Commissar of the NKVD, if the matter was strictly criminal law then also the head of the militia’s (i.e. the police) board would be in it. In this particular case Beria suggested a special council with reduced staffing – consisting of three people – a troika. He suggested himself as chairman (he was the chairman of the SC according to the Regulation), his first deputy (also a member of the SC according to the Regulation) and the head of the department who prepared all cases regarding the POWs for the investigation in the Special Council – for the convenience of the organization and the implementation of meetings. Beria’s suggestion was logical, but still relinquished from what was provided in the “Regulation for the Special Council” – the head of the First Special Department, as a member of the SC, was not named which was the reason why Beria coordinated his suggestion with the Politburo.

But the Politburo did not share Beria’s view. They felt that they could not allow the People’s Commissar himself in this case to waste his time on a routine screening of up to 20 000 criminal law cases. That is why Stalin deleted Beria from the list and instead of him kept the Premier Deputy People’s Commissar of the NKVD Merkulov, as chairman of the Special Council and supplemented with Kobulov who was the head of the NKVD:s Main Department for Economy and by his employment dealt with investigation matters concerning the POWs and their use for labor. Worth noting is that Stalin did not write Kobulov’s last name above Beria’s deleted name (which would have meant that Kobulov had been appointed chairman) but wrote his name after Merkulov and before Bashtakov. That is, if you assume that the first three pages in “Beria’s letter” are forgeries and that the genuine letter was about the Special Council, then such a letter is completely consistent with all known historical facts.

Part V. The “print-out copy from the Politburo protocol” no. 1 (addressed to Beria)

25. The printed form begins with a warning: ”Must be returned within 24 hours to the 2nd Department at the Special Sector of the Central Committee”, and to the left there is another warning vertically written in the form: “The comrade who has received these documents do not have the right to forward them, nor to show them to anyone else, unless it is particularly admitted by the CC. Duplication of the said documents and production of prints from them is categorically forbidden. The note and the date for the superscription are to be made on each document personally by the comrade to whom it is addressed and shall contain his personal signature. Based on: the decision at the plenary meeting of the CC AUCP(b) on August 18, 1924.”

The “print-out copy for Beria” is the first copy (the original) unlike the “print-out copy for Shelepin” which is a re-print. It was precisely the original that in accordance with the delivery would be sent to Beria for superscription. This is witnessed, among other things, by the notes on the back, among them a hand-written note about another mailing to Beria which is supposed to have been done on December 4, 1941. But in the “print-out copy for Beria” there are no notes or signatures whatsoever from L. P. Beria that would confirm that he would have noted the print-out copy in 1940 and 1941.

26. In the “print-out copy for Beria” the for the genuine print-out copies mandatory facsimile signature from the Secretary of the Central Committee J. Stalin and the stamp with a relief of the CC AUCP(b) are missing.

27. The “print-out copy for Beria” is printed on a form that was not the standard form used by the Politburo in its case management. To date there are only two known copies of such a form – both are from the “Closed package no. 1” regarding Katyn.

28. On the form for the “print-out copy for Beria” the absolutely mandatory element for all official documents from the CC AUCP(b) is missing, namely the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” All the forms meant for documents that were sent to other agencies, always began with the Communist’s most important slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!”

Part VI. The “print-out copy from the Politburo protocol” no. 2 (addressed to Shelepin)

29. The document on this AUCP(b)-form is attested with a CPSU stamp. This constitutes such a climax of the forgers’ senile dementia that this one thing only was enough for the Constitution Court to realize that it was dealing with forged documents and not associate the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with the murder of the Polish officers.

30. In the “print-out copy for Shelepin” Stalin’s signature, the mailing date and the last name of the addressee have been typed with another typewriter.

31. The print-out copy is dated February 27, 1959 which would mean that the Poles continued to be in camps up to that date and that not before 1959 it was decided to shoot them.

32. The Politburo addressed the directive of the troika’s foundation and the execution to Shelepin but of the ”troika’s” original members, only Bashtakov was still alive.

33. In order to attest the signature Stalin in 1959 returned from the grave and arrived at the meeting of the Politburo.

34. Outwardly the ”print-out copy for Shelepin” is designed as an attested copy but is in reality not attested by any official at all at the CC CPSU. The forgers were not aware of the elementary, namely that the round stamp at any institution was stamped on top a signature. The purpose with the signature is to certify the genuineness of the signature.

35. On the front of the print-out copy there is a signature made with ink “Return. 27/II-59” which is a gross violation of the elementary rules for storing of documents under which it is strictly forbidden for the archive employees to make any notes whatsoever in the documents with the exception of cases when they are allowed to write a new page number with an ordinary pencil in the upper right corner when a case is being hardcovered again.

36. In the print-out copy they have erased the previous addressee’s name “Com. Beria” and the date “March 5, 1940”. Instead of them they have written a new surname “Com. Shelepin” and a new date “February 27, 1959”. Such changes in the text were also categorically forbidden according to the rules for archiving of documents.

37. In the same way as the ”print-out copy for Beria” the ”print-out copy for Shelepin” is printed on a form that was not used in the Politburo’s normal work and misses the mandatory slogan ”Workers of the world, unite!”.

Part VII. “Shelepin’s letter” N-632-sh (Н-632-ш)

38. “Shelepin’s letter” was sent to the CC CPSU through the KGB office since it has a mailing number (N-632-sh; Russian Н-632-ш) and the mailing date March 3, 1959 and from that follows that the absence of an inward registration at the CP CPSU in March 1959 is a sign of a forgery.

39. In the “letter” there are no notes or directives whatsoever from a single secretary at the CC CPSU – the forgers were unable to think of any, but then it seems that none of the secretaries at the Central Committee had ever seen Shelepin’s letter which is impossible when it comes to a letter from the chairman of the KGB.

40. When describing the “decision of the Politburo” which should have been in front of the person who issued “Shelepin’s letter”, that person wrote “decision of the CC” which could not occur – Shelepin did definitely know the difference between the Central Committee (CC) and the Politburo (PB).

41. When describing the ”decision of the Politburo at AUCP(b)”, someone wrote ”CC CPSU”. But neither Shelepin nor the person who issued the authentic letter that was addressed to the supreme leader of the country could have confused the name of the party in such an important document.

42. Already in the second sentence of “Shelepin’s letter” it says: “Altogether 21 857 people were executed after a decision from a special troika at the NKVD USSR, of them: in the Katyn forest (Smolensk oblast) 4 421 people, in the Starobelsk camp near Kharkov 3 820 people, in the Ostashkov camp (Kalinin oblast) 6 311 people and 7 305 people were executed in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.”

But with the help of thousands of documents they have identified, and also made it an integrated part of the version which condemns Russia, the fact that in April-May 1940 they had transported the Polish POWs from the camps in Starobelsk and Ostashkov and that they at that time were still alive! How could the real Shelepin, at the same time has he was looking at genuine documents, write that the Poles were shot in the Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps?

43. The real Shelepin could not have written that the Starobelsk camp is located “near Kharkov” at the same time he looked at genuine documents. Because in the genuine documents the real address to the Starobelsk was stated; it was certainly not located in the Kharkov oblast, but in the Voroshilovgrad oblast – almost 250 kilometers from Kharkov!

These are far from all signs that prove that the documents in the “Closed package no. 1” were forged.

The forged documents in the “Closed package no. 1” are all tightly linked to each other by their contents. This means that all signs of forgery in one of them constitute evidence that also the others are forged. This was the reason why the Constitution Court not only chose not to rely on this evidence but also chose not to publish these for Russia embarrassing documents in the final compilation.

The forgery specialist Kozlov claims that 7 signs of forgery are more than enough to reveal a false document. In this case we are dealing with three interrelated historical texts which contain at least 43 signs of forgery!

One can expand this list and add more signs of forgery, namely as follows:

44. The forgeries were introduced for the first time during one of the meetings of the Constitution Court in the “CPSU case” (an investigation of the past activities of the Soviet Communist Party) and in the first versions “Beria’s letter” not only contained the number 794/B but also the date “March 5”. During the meeting on October 16, 1992, Yu. M. Slobodkin (from the CPSU defense) was discussing this date with the chairman of the Constitution Court Zorkin and called the court’s attention to the fact that Beria’s letter was dated March 5 and that the Politburo meeting had also taken place on March 5. It had never happened before that a letter was treated on the same day as it was written. The discussion around that date remains in the protocols of the Constitution Court and the fact that the date has disappeared in later versions of the forgeries is another sign that indicates that these are false.

45. No official would have stamped “Shelepin’s letter” that was sent in 1959 with an ingoing registration number from 1965. Because from that follows that the office employee at the Public Sector of the Central Committee had withheld a top secret letter from the Secretary General of the Central Committee for 6 years and 6 days! And that office employee who had stamped it in that way would have been held responsible for illegally storing a secret letter in an unknown place. Who could guarantee that he had not delivered the letter to the American embassy in order to be photographed? For example, Voznesensky, chairman of the Gosplan and one of the highest deputies in the Soviet government, had been executed in 1950, accused of having both wasted documents and to have delivered them to other hostile states. Did really the office employee at the Central Committee have to induce such a charge against himself?

46. Even more amusing seems the fact that the letter contains another stamp with the date March 20, 1965. This means that the letter from the former and since long resigned KGB head Shelepin, really had been forwarded to the now retired Krushchev, who then would have read the letter and sent it to another department at the Central Committee, where the letter was received and registered.

Those who forged these documents, believed that the stamps in the letters were nothing more than decorations, but the forgers did not realize that these are notes from people that they have received the letters for storage from a person, from whom they are obligated to receive them, and that they bear the highest responsibility for these letters not being read by any outsiders.

47. The letter is handwritten, but not by Shelepin, and is registered in the KGB office and thus sent by ordinary mail. If one believes that the letter is genuine, then it means that in 1959 there was only one typewriter throughout the whole of KGB and also that one had broken before then.

48. In “Shelepin’s letter” it is said that the “case files for the POWs” from the Starobelsk camp still remain in 1959 and that they are stored in the archive, but these case files had been burned already on October 25, 1940 about which Inspector Pismennyj and the sergeant for state security, Gaydidey, had compiled a document which still today is stored in archives.

49. “Shelepin’s letter” is written with a thick Polish accent. Only foreigners could look at it in a way that if there was a state named the Soviet Union then there should also have been the “Soviet power agencies”. Inside the Soviet Union nobody would have said it in that way, since the word “Soviet” absolutely clearly and firmly belonged to the legislative branch of power inside the Soviet Union – Supreme Soviet (Verkhovnyj sovet), the Oblast council (oblastnoy sovet), the District council (rayonnyj sovet). But then it was not called the “Soviet power agencies” but the “agencies for the Soviet power”, and only that since “Soviet” in the latter case meant that it is not about the belonging to a state but is a proper name for a specific power agency. (By the way these “agencies for the Soviet power” had nothing at all to do with the Katyn case). And the names of these agencies were never confused even by the average citizens, even less by the KGB employees! Therefore it really sounds bad when it says in “Shelepin’s letter”: “For the Soviet agencies … at the initiative from the Soviet power agencies”. The words seem to have their origins from abroad much the same way as “mine, yours, not understand” (a Russian jocularity when describing someone who is not very knowledgeable in the Russian language).

Kozlov said that one of the signs of forgery in one of the documents that he had looked at was the full name “Central Committee of the Communist Party” instead of “CC CPSU”.  Indeed, who inside the CC CPSU would have misunderstood what the CC CPSU meant? So also in this case: the real Shelepin or the KGB employee would never had written “Soviet power agencies”, in a similar case they would rather have used a more exact term like “party-state agencies” (partiyno-gosudarstvennyje organy).

Abbreviations:

AUCP(b) (All Union Communist Party (bolsheviks), Russian VKP(b) Vsesoyuznaya kommunisticheskaya partiya (bol’shevikov)) – the name of the Soviet Communist Party, the name AUCP(b) was used 1925-1952

CC (Central Committee, Russian: Tsentral’nyj komitet) – The Central Committee (i.e. the leading agency of the Communist Party)

CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Russian: KPSS, Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza) – The Soviet Communist Party (the name CPSU were used 1952-1991)

FSS (Federal Security Service, Russian: Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti) – The Russian security service today

Gosplan (or Gosplan USSR, Russian: Gosudarstvennyj planovyj komitet soveta ministrov) – The State Plan Committee of the Soviet Ministerial Council (a central Soviet plan agency which among other things developed the so-called  Five Year Plans)

GUZhDS (or GUZhDS NKVD USSR, Russian: Glavnoye upravleniye zheleznodorozhnogo stroitel’stva NKVD SSSR) – The main directory for the rail road building at the NKVD (formed in 1940, renamed GULZhDS NKVD USSR in February 1941)

KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti) – The Committee for State Security (KGB, earlier NKVD, nowadays FSS)

NKVD (Narodnyj komissariat vnutrennikh del) – The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (then the name of the Soviet Ministry of Interior)

Sovnarkom (Sovet narodnykh komissarov) – The Council of the People’s Commissars (the government of the Soviet Union)

Troika (Russian: Troika, also Osobaya troika NKVD) – NKDV troika (an extrajudicial body which imposed sentences 1935-1938, usually on oblast level. The troikas consisted of the senior NKVD chief of the oblast in question, a secretary of the oblast committee and a prosecutor.)

USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Russian: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) – the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, i.e. the Soviet Union.

It appeared that he knew the anonymous informant already during his time as employee at the Main Prosecution, however this man knew him better than vice versa. The person in question is closely related to the Russian intelligence. Ilyukhin said that it seemed easy to talk to him since they speak the same professional language.

Ilyukhin said that already before this man came forward and talked about the forgeries, there were strong doubts regarding the authenticity of the Katyn documents. He showed Beria’s four-paged letter no. 794/B and told that they have done an expert examination of it. It has been shown that the pages of the letter are written on two different typewriters.

According to Ilyukhin such a thing was inconceivable in the production of top secret documents. It happened sometimes that they, for confidentiality, even destroyed the typewriters that had been used to write secret documents. For that reason, Ilyukhin said, it was not so difficult to feel confidence in the anonymous informant’s information.

According to this man the forgery group was created during President Yeltsin’s time. The informant and Ilyukhin do not, however, exclude that the forgery of archive documents may have begun even earlier than that. Among other things it has been talked and is still talked a lot about the so-called “secret protocols” to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact from 1939. Ilyukhin believes that they are also forged and manufactured on the initiative of Alexander Yakovlev. However, this should be investigated more, Ilyukhin says. He says that the originals of the secret protocols are missing and have never been shown. They do not exist neither in Germany nor in the USA. Copies of these protocols first surfaced in the USA and eventually also in Russia during Gorbachev’s time.

The informant said that he must talk to his former forgery colleagues about these protocols because as he says: ”We may have manufactured them also.” He came in contact with the forgery group in early 1990s. The forgers worked exactly during the time when a government commission was de-classifying documents from the Central Committée of the Soviet Communist Party.

The group was located in Nagornoye outside of Moscow and had the technical design of the forged documents as their task (i.e. to put in signatures, stamps etc.). The texts themselves were already written (they contained dates and everything) and were delivered to the group for the final work. They also received real typewriters from the 1930s and 1940s that were to be used in typing the forged documents. According to Ilyukhin the former 9^th Board at the KGB still had left many typewriters and other materials from that time. In making the forgeries they always used old forms and typewriters. Some of these forms the informant has brought with him and forwarded to Ilyukhin.

Some of the stamps they had, however, manufactured themselves. Apart from the signatures of Beria and Stalin they have also used forged signatures of Voroshilov and Molotov. Some of the stamps where else genuine and were delivered to them after the building where the Central Committee was located had been taken under control.

The man said that it was precisely his forgery group that manufactured the ”Beria letter” which contained a request to execute 21 857 Polish prisoners. According to him the “Politburo print-outs” for Beria and Shelepin are also false. One of them, the “print-out for Beria” ends with the “secretary of the Central Committee” but without any name and any stamp. In the “print-out for Shelepin” it says the “secretary of the Central Committee J. Stalin” (where Stalin’s name has been entered afterwards) and on top of that they have put a stamp from the Central Committee where the name of the party is CPSU instead of VKP(b). In 1940 the name of the party was VKP(b) and a CPSU stamp from that time was therefore totally impossible.

Ilyukhin says that since the heaviest documents are false one must ask if there are any other evidence in this case that makes it justifiable to claim that everything happened after a decision of the Politburo, i.e. the country’s top management.

According to Ilyukhin it seems that the anonymous informant still has not said everything and sits on more details. The meetings between the two of them continue.

Source: http://tv.km.ru/viktor_ilyuxin_kto_sfalsificziro

http://tv.km.ru/viktor_ilyuxin_kto_sfalsificziro/textversion