War and the last years
Spring 1940
Katyn
The Politburo approved the shooting of about 22,000 Polish prisoners, then blamed Germany.
After the partition of Poland, the NKVD held thousands of Polish officers, police, and intellectuals. On 5 March 1940 the Politburo, on a proposal from Beria, ordered that they be tried by an NKVD troika and shot. The killings took place at Katyn forest, at Kalinin (Tver), at Kharkiv, and at other sites.
When the German army found graves in 1943, Moscow said the Nazis had done it. That lie was official Soviet history until 1990. The order itself is now a published archival document. It is one of the cleanest examples of a mass murder decided in a short meeting and denied for half a century.
Where to check it ยท Politburo decision of 5 March 1940; Russian investigation of the 1990s; Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski, Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment.