THE PRL AND THE MEMORY OF KATYŃ

The Katyń lie was a 'founding lie' of the People's Republic of Poland (I refer here to the entire 1944-1989 period, although this name was not introduced until the Stalinist constitution of 1952). The authorities did everything in their powers to prevent the truth about Soviet responsibility for Katyń from breaking through into the general awareness of Poles. The rebels were faced with repressions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Given the scale of the victims of Soviet communism, which runs in millions, the figure of 21,857 killed by the decision of 5 March 1940 is not overly exorbitant. However, the very word 'Katyń' has become a symbol for a number of reasons. This was influenced by the nature of the crimes committed against prisoners of war, universally regarded as protected by international conventions. Many of the victims were reserve officers and belonged to the nation's intellectual elite - for a country where, in 1938, only 1.2 per cent of the population had a university degree, a loss like this was particularly palpable. In addition, the Germans gave extensive publicity to the discovery of Katyń mass graves of Polish officers previously held in the Kozelsk camp. By contrast, the whereabouts of the Starobelsk and Ostashkov prisoners were not known, which gave rise to speculation and hope. Therefore, for most Poles, Katyń has become the pars pro toto of the Soviet genocide in general.

The ideologically and politically justified need for an alliance with the Soviet Union was an important element in the legitimacy of the communist system. While Marxism as an ideological legitimisation has always been weak in our country, this alliance has often been justified by appealing to much more expressive categories - the national interest and the raison d'état. In the propaganda narrative, the Soviet Union has always had the best possible intentions towards Poland. The Katyń massacre illustrating the true nature of Moscow, demystified the ideology and reduced PRL-Soviet relations to their proper dimension - that of a conquered servant versus the sovereign, and the ruling elite in the PRL - to the role of personnel representing the interests of the sovereign. Perhaps this is why the Katyń lie was defended by the communists almost to the end, including the time when they had already given up on many others.

 

1944 TO 1956: FORCED BELIEF IN THE SOVIET VERSION

 

The Soviet authorities consistently refused to acknowledge the crime until 1990 and blamed the Germans for it. They also spread this version externally and imposed it on Poland through the PRL authorities. The Katyń lie was spread by both the censored and controlled press in the People's Republic of Poland and by Soviet publications in Polish language. As early as 1944, the report of the Soviet Burdenko Commission was issued and sent to Katyń to substantiate the Kremlin's version.

In addition to propaganda, censorship, the Security Office and the criminal policy of the communist state with its disposable judges and prosecutors stood guard over the lie. Dating back to that era, the words of one justice official: We, the judges, are not from God. We must convict, we will convict, illustrate the logic of their actions in this case as well.

Anyone who questioned the German guilt for the massacre was most often convicted under Article 22 of the decree of 13 June 1946 (the so-called Little Penal Code): Whoever spreads false news likely to cause substantial damage to the interests of the Polish State or to diminish the dignity of its supreme organs shall be punished by imprisonment for up to 5 years or by arrest. There was therefore a legal basis to imprison anyone who shared doubts about the Soviet version in a private conversation with their neighbours - and one of the neighbours was an informer who wrote the denunciation. Occasionally, a case like this was also ruled on by the Special Commission for Combating Abuse and Speculation (which could imprison the defendant in a labour camp), the verdicts of which were independent of the court's verdict.

For Poles residing in the country, western radio stations (apart from the Radio Free Europe and the BBC's Polish programme, also Radio Madrid, which was popular in the 1950s), as well as family messages, were the source of real information about Katyń and many other topics. However, the families of the Katyń victims were, in view of the general atmosphere of terror during the Stalinist period and the harassment they faced, often very cautious in sharing information, especially with their children, who might have passed the word around in the wrong company. The families themselves sometimes destroyed keepsakes, such as correspondence from NKVD camps, fearing that these would be used as evidence against them - or such items were taken by the Security Office during searches.

 

1956 TO 1980: LYING IN SILENCE

 

The widely known anecdote about Wladyslaw Gomułka's comment, when asked at an officers' school in 1956 about the perpetrators of the Katyń massacre, captures the change of attitude of the ruling party. Gomułka replied that, according to one version, the Germans were to blame, according to another, the Soviets were, but he had his own version: that it was against the Polish raison d'état to talk about this matter. Even if this is only a rumour, it shows clearly that while the Soviet version was loudly defended earlier, it was after the breakthrough of Polish October 1956 that the authorities were keen to silence the Katyń issue. The aim was to forget it, not to perpetuate it - including in the false version.

This was followed by the penal policy: if sentences for telling the truth were still passed, people were usually given suspended sentences. There were also conditional discontinuations due to negligible social harm - the defendant was often ordered to pay court costs. That was also intended to silence the case - harsh sentences would stir emotions so that the case could become high-profile again.

The Security Services conducted so-called 'warning talks' with people who publicly challenged the official version (e.g. in conversations with work colleagues) - with the aim to scare people (by demonstrating the alleged omniscience of the Security Service) and discourage such behaviour.

Various informal measures have also been used against people and circles that publicly cultivated the memory. This is well illustrated by the history of the so-called Katyń Valley, a place next to the AK 'Gloria Victis' monument at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. Since the late 1950s, candles have been lit there to honour the victims of the Katyń massacre. This was going unnoticed until November 1978, when Mrs Janina Dawidowska-Borowa brought an image of the Virgin Mary of Kozelsk there, with white and red flags. This decoration, later supplemented, attracted crowds of interested people, which prompted the author of the idea to repeat it regularly. Since then, similar decorations have been placed there in April, on 1 August (the anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising), on 1 and 17 September (to commemorate the German and Soviet aggression in 1939) and on 1 November. SB functionaries attempted to prevent this. They stole the candles and crosses, checked IDs and detained people suspected of trying to commemorate the Katyń massacre at the cemetery gates. The organisers therefore threw the decorations over the cemetery fence and entered the cemetery through an unused gate. When a group of members of the Confederation of Independent Poland headed by Leszek Moczulski placed a basket of flowers there, with a red-and-white banner, on 13 April 1979, it was set on fire by the secret police once they had left. Similar activities continued at the site until the end of the communist era. An informal and much less known memorial to the victims of the Katyń massacre has also appeared at the Bródno Cemetery in Warsaw.

Occasionally, the PRL authorities would accuse those who demanded the truth of being mentally ill. This was the case of former AK soldier Walenty Badylak, who, in protest against the Katyń lie, the demoralisation of youth and the destruction of crafts, committed self-immolation on the Main Square in Kraków on 21 March 1980, just before the communist parliamentary elections. At that time, the Polish Press Agency gave false information about his illness.

 

PRE-AUGUST OPPOSITION - REKINDLED MEMORY

 

The development of open and permanent opposition structures since 1976 (KOR, ROPCiO, KPN, WZZ) represents yet another stage in the fight against the communist lie. With them, an independent publishing movement developed (the so-called 'second circulation' or 'non-debit' prints, which were not approved for printing by the censorship of the People's Republic of Poland). The subject of the martyrdom of Poles in the East, including Katyń, found a prominent place in it.

Katyń, a brochure published in 1977 by the underground Polish Publishing House, signed with the pseudonyms J. Abramski and R. Żywiecki (these were the first and last names from the Katyń List compiled by Adam Moszyński - the section on the Kozielsk camp), was followed by five underground editions and one emigrant edition (Stockholm 1979). The History of the Katyń Case, a brochure by Jerzy Łojek (Leopold Jerzewski), published by "Głos" in 1980, is probably the best-known study on the subject produced in Poland uncensored. By 1989, five underground editions had been published, with one more - no longer illegal - in 1989, as well as an English-language edition and an expatriate edition in New York. Katyń themes also appeared on underground postcards and stamps.

Circles dedicated to the commemoration of Katyń and its victims have emerged. In 1978, a Katyń Institute was established in Kraków (its main activists included Andrzej Kostrzewski, Adam Macedoński and Stanisław Tor) and began publishing the ‘Katyń Bulletin’. In 1979, the committee's activists decided to expose Adam Macedoński as the official representative, which resulted in repressions from the SB, which, however, did not stop the institute from functioning. A Katyń Committee was established in Warsaw in 1979 on the initiative of Father Wacław Karłowicz and Stefan Melak (who became chairman).

 

1980 TO 1989: THE KATYŃ LIE IN THE MIDST OF REBELLION

 

August 1980 also marked a breakthrough for the consolidation of the memory of Polish martyrology in the USSR, of which Katyń was a symbol. The legalisation of 'Solidarity' trade union (and later also of the Independent Self-Governing Farmers' Union and the Independent Students' Union) meant that trade union publications could be printed - in addition to the officially distributed, and therefore censored, 'Solidarity Weekly', a number of publications for 'internal use' were issued uncensored. The existence of trade union structures facilitated the distribution, and the atmosphere of a freedom carnival, as the 16 months of Solidarity's overt activity were called (until 13 December 1981), helped lower the barrier of fear that would always follow a person in a totalitarian system, upon encountering manifestations of resistance, even in the form of a leaflet.

On the initiative of the Katyń Committee, the first monument in Poland to commemorate the victims of the crime - the Katyń Cross - was set up in the Katyń Valley on 31 July 1981. Crafted secretly in the garage of Arkadiusz Melak, brother and collaborator of Stefan Melak, it was driven to the cemetery site using... a rubbish truck. The very next night it disappeared, taken away by 'unknown perpetrators', namely the Security Services. In July 1989, it was dumped at night at the Powązki military cemetery, and re-erected in the Katyń Valley in 1995.

The martial law meant that such initiatives were once again pushed underground, but this did not mean that they disappeared. Although the fairly efficient breakdown of open resistance in December 1981 was a success for General Jaruzelski's regime, the development of underground structures on a scale unparalleled in any other country in the Soviet bloc has produced a state of continuous, albeit dormant, rebellion.

The subject of Polish martyrology in the East was regularly covered in the underground press and publications, as well as foreign radio stations broadcasting in Polish language. The credibility of the state propaganda has weakened. It can be assumed that not even the MO and SB officers believed in the official version of German involvement in the Katyń crime, and defended it out of pure cynicism.

Between the censored official life and the political underground, there was a 'grey zone' of independent but overt cultural initiatives, benefiting from the patronage of parishes or academic clubs. The authorities, having trouble breaking up underground structures, interfered with these activities much less, generally being satisfied with limiting them to church or academic areas and possibly with agent control.

The Katyń Committee, which continued to operate after the martial law, organised lectures to popularise the subject in church halls.

In 1984, Father Stefan Niedzielak, then parish priest of St. Charles Borromeo parish in Powązki cemetery, created a memorial to the victims murdered in the East at the outer wall of his church, with a cross funded by independence opposition activist Wojciech Ziembiński. The families of the victims funded memorial plaques on the wall - over time, the site became a Sanctuary for those who died and were murdered in the East. For political reasons, the authorities did not react directly, but the SB used informal measures against the parish priest (threats, beating by 'unknown perpetrators', spreading rumours with the aid of agents). However, he was not intimidated and lent his parish for the first meeting of the Warsaw Katyń Family in October 1988.

 

THE BREAKTHROUGH OF 1989

 

On the night of 20-21 January 1989, Rev. Niedzielak was murdered, and his death - unexplained to this day - is also interpreted as revenge from the communists (possibly a certain faction of them or the Soviets) for his activity on the Katyń subject. If this was the case, it was the last event of this kind.

The political breakthrough of 1989 was also a breakthrough for the memory of Katyń in Poland. The ruling Communist Party decided to remove censorship controls on the case, probably well aware that, in view of the planned compromise, further defence of the lie would be pointless from the political perspective. In January 1989, Jędrzej Tucholski published an excerpt from the list of Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk victims in the Zorza Catholic weekly, published by the PAX Association, as well as an appeal to the families of the victims to submit relevant information and corrections. He shared his call with around 40 press offices, most of which reprinted it. It was also publicised by the Polish Radio and TVP. This text was followed by quite a lot of material on various aspects of the Katyń case, in particular in the concessioned Catholic press ("Kierunki", "Ład"). In June 1989, Czesław Madajczyk's work, 'The Katyń Tragedy' was published by Książka i Wiedza publishing house. It was the first publication in the official historiography of the People's Republic of Poland to use some documents from the German archives.

If 4 June 1989, when the so-called contractual elections to the Sejm and Senate took place, is the symbolic end of the People's Republic of Poland, the Katyń lie began to fade away even before that date.

 

Tomasz Szczepański, historian, writer, publicist, employee of the Katyń Museum, branch of the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw