Russia Publishes Infamous Katyn Massacre Files

Relations between Russia and Poland have warmed since the Polish president and others were killed in a plane crash on their way to a Katyn commemoration. Photo by thephoenix.com

Russia has published once-secret files on the 1940 Katyn massacre, in which some 22,000 members of the Polish elite were killed by Soviet forces.

The state archive said the "Packet No. 1" documents had until now only been available to specialist researchers.

The Soviet Union denied its role in the massacre for decades, the BBC reported.

Relations between Russia and Poland have warmed since the Polish president and others were killed in a plane crash on their way to a Katyn commemoration.

The documents that the state archive published were declassified in the 1990s though only specialist researchers had access to them, reports said.

They were published online on the orders of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

One of the documents is a 5 March, 1940 letter from the then-head of the Soviet secret police or NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, recommending the execution of Polish prisoners of war.

Beria refers to them as "steadfast, incorrigible enemies of Soviet power". The letter bears Stalin's signature in blue pencil, with the comment "In favor".

The April 1940 killings were carried out by the NKVD on Stalin's orders.

Members of the Polish elite, including officers, politicians and artists, were shot in the back of the head and their bodies dumped in mass graves.

The killings took place at various sites, but the western Russian forest of Katyn has become their chief symbol.

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