For a good cause. JAROSŁAW KRAWCZYK and TOMASZ BOHUN interview NATALIA LEBEDEVA, a Russian historian who has been researching the Katyń massacre for years

How did the Katyń massacre happen?

Natalia Lebedeva: The intentions of the Soviet leadership towards the Poles held in NKVD special camps were not clear. At the beginning of December 1939, a decision was made to submit the files of the Ostashkov policemen to the Special Collegium of the NKVD for consideration. For this purpose, Piotr Soprunienko himself, head of the NKVD Prisoner of War Board, came to the camp. The documents were sent and on 22 February 1940, 600 people were sentenced to exile to camps in Kamchatka for three to six years.

Earlier, on 20 February, Soprunienko wrote a letter to his superior, People's Commissar of the Internal Affairs, Beria, offering to hand over the documentation of the captives held at Kozelsk and Starobelsk, including Polish intelligence officers and military settlers, to the Special Collegium. He also suggested that a group of around 700 doctors, engineers and lawyers who had not been proven to have engaged in anti-Soviet activities should be released. On this document Beria made a note: Comrade Merkulov, I would like to talk to you. As soon as 22 February, Merkulov, Beria's deputy, signed a directive in which he entrusted the investigation of Polish prisoners of war to the regional NKVD authorities. There is one more document which includes a question about the implementation of the plan to deport the prisoners of war sentenced to exile. This plan is on hold, as is the processing of the Poles' cases by the Special Collegium. At that time, Beria is drawing up a request to Stalin and other members of the politburo to execute them. It was written between 2 and 5 March, most likely on 3 March, which I determined based on the number of prisoners of war in the camps at the time, which coincided with the number placed in the application. The preliminary draft was created up to 29 February. It is possible that Stalin made an adjustment to it. The document was rewritten until 3 March and was finally approved by the politburo on 5 March.

Then what happened between 20 February and 5 March that led to the decision to shoot the Poles? I think it was Beria who suggested that they should be murdered, and the final decision was made by Stalin. Please note the sentence inserted in the document by Beria: Each of them [captives] expects to be set free so that they can actively join the resistance against the Soviet rule. How could they do this while they were stuck in camps and prisons? The only way they could be dangerous was if the USSR went to war with Britain and France. At the time, the Soviet-Finnish war was underway and the Western Allies were planning to send an expeditionary corps to Finland, in which Poles were also supposed to fight, as well as bombing oil fields in Baku and the Caucasus. This could deprive the USSR of its only sources of oil at the time and could greatly weaken the German army, which was using Soviet oil. These plans were blocked by Sweden, which did not agree to share its territory, and by Turkey, which did not share its airspace. Had it happened otherwise, an armed conflict with the Western powers would have become inevitable. Stalin did not want that. He ordered to stop the offensive in Finland and sign a ceasefire. At the same time, he ordered the extermination of the Polish officers.

Why does Russia keep denying its responsibility for the Katyń massacre, although there are so many documents that have been released confirming it?

Natalia Lebedeva: We have tons of documents that prove that Polish officers and political prisoners were executed by the NKVD. The documentation on the Ostashkov camp contains information on executions. A friend of mine who worked in the archives of the Federal Security Service told me that these documents include reports made to Merkulov about the number of officers executed in Tver, then Kalinin, on particular days. A total of 6,000 people are referred to in them. Yet the Germans had not reached Kalinin, so they could not kill the captives. Nevertheless, there are still people who claim that it is all just a made-up story. Viktor Ilyukhin, a late member of the State Duma, and Plotnikov, who considers himself an expert of the State Duma, published an article on the Nuremberg trials and Katyń, in which they argued that the massacre was committed by the Germans.

The same Plotnikov presented a lecture at a conference held a year and a half ago at the Armed Forces Museum, promoting the claim that the Germans were to blame for Katyń. It was chaired by General Vasily Christoforov, head of the Federal Security Service archives, who told him after the proceedings: How can you be an expert of the State Duma when you talk such nonsense. After all, the Duma ruled that it was one of the gravest crimes of the Stalinist period. When Plotnikov's supporters still tried to discuss, they were told: Gen. Christoforov knows all the FSB documents on the subject - the disclosed ones and the ones that have never been published. Had there been any document confirming the German story, the Duma would not have recognised the Katyń massacre as a Stalinist crime.

Although the Russian Federation authorities have officially acknowledged this, the television airs programmes that present the false version. When President Dmitry Medvedev went to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Polish President Lech Kaczyński in Smolensk in 2011, I was invited on state television. Among the guests invited at the studio was Kurginian, editor-in-chief of the nationalist magazine Sut' Vremieni. I brought with me the book White Spots, Black Spots. Difficult Matters in Polish-Russian Relations and when I declared that it proved that it was possible to cooperate with Polish historians and that our ideas were aligned, he snatched it away from me. He came across my article 'The Katyń Massacre' and exclaimed: What massacre are you talking about?! How can you write like that!

It was a nightmare. I defended myself as much as I could, although the journalist running the show kept interrupting me. Everyone was allowed to speak at the end of the programme and I was the only one who was denied this opportunity. Also participating were Polish directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, who was muted so that he could not be heard. It felt like I had been rolled in mud.

People who support democracy cannot watch manipulation of this kind. But this sort of programmes appeals to nationalists and people who think with stereotypes like: 'Poles have always been and are always hostile to us' or 'Katyń is just a story'. This is unfortunately still a significant part of our society.

What did the beginnings of your research into the Katyń massacre look like?

Natalia Lebedeva: This was a matter of coincidence. The journalist Vladimir Abarinov, who was one of the first to cover this subject back in the Soviet era, showed me a letter that was in polemics with his article. It was written by an officer serving in a battalion of NKVD convoy troops who guarded prisoners from the Kozelsk camp. There was nothing interesting in this letter except the number of this battalion. I advised Abarinov to look for information about this unit in the Central Archive of the Red Army or in the archives of the NKVD. He went there, but he wrote that he was asking for documentation on Katyń. He didn't get anything - he was told that the word 'Katyń' doesn't appear in any document. Then, I went to the archives myself and found documentation of the battalion guarding the Kozelsk camp. He was receiving orders from the Main Board of the NKVD Convoy Troops, so I traced these files and obtained much more information. I learned that the convoys were transporting prisoners to the village of Gnezdovo, located near the Katyń Forest. I immediately realised that I had come upon the correct lead. 

The director of the Central Archive of the Red Army, who was very wary of the subject, said: Why are you sitting there? You can find a separate Prisoner of War Archive in the building next door. I told this to historian Yuri Zorii and he was able to secure a pass for himself and for me. I was busy at the time, so he went there first. He immediately ran to the Central Committee, to the Ministry of Archives, and informed them about these documents, as a result of which the archive was closed for six months. I was able to get into it later. Based on the research, I wrote an article and submitted it for publication in the monthly magazine Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn. Photocopies of around 70 documents I extracted from the archives reached the very powerful CPSU Central Committee secretary and politburo member Alexander Yakovlev through Sergei Stankevich. The former showed them to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, who even wanted them published, but was blocked by the Politburo.

Stankevich also informed the newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti that such documents had been found. I was just about to leave for the UK when journalist Gennady Zhavoronkov came to see me about it. I agreed to publish the material, but only if Yakovlev agrees. Not only did he agree, but he even forced the publication on the editor-in-chief of Moskovskiye Novosti. This resulted in an enormous turmoil. The chief was called in to see the deputy head of the International Affairs Department of the CPSU Central Committee, Falin, who, I was told, was stomping and shouting that I would never again be given a pass to any archive, go anywhere or publish anything. I spent three weeks in England living in anxiety, I had no idea what was going to happen to me. My and Zhavoronkov's article 'Katinskaya tragiediya' was published on 25 March 1990. On 13 April, TASS announced that the Katyń crime was committed by the NKVD. I felt proud that I had forced the authorities to recognise this fact. Sometimes it is worth putting everything on the line for a good cause.

Thank you for the interview

translated by: Maria Góralczyk

The interview was made in 2014.

Natalia Lebedeva, a Russian historian, works at the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and specialises in international relations and the history of the Second World War. She has been investigating the Katyń massacre for many years, having made a huge contribution to its documentation and the fight against the Katyń lie in the USSR and Russia. For this she was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, and the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University of Łódź awarded her the title of PhD. She is a member of the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Matters. Her book Katyń. A Crime Against Humanity (Warsaw 2007) has been published in Poland, she also participated in the preparation of the four-volume source edition Katyń. Documents of the Crime.