Katyn Massacre: Soviet Crime or Nazi Propaganda

[Althusser]

I'm just wondering what your opinions on the Katyn Massacre are. I know you guys don't take the CPGB-ML seriously, but they put out a pamphlet claiming that the massacre of all those Polish prisoners of war wasn't by the NKVD in 1940, but rather the Nazis in 1941. They claim the Nazis massacred them and used it to weaken any form of Polish military resistance (since the victims were military) but mostly to damage the Soviet Union. They claim German bullets are still in the bodies. They use this quote from Joseph Goebbels' diary to reinforce this claim:

Unfortunately, German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn … It is essential that this incident remains top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped. (dated May 8th, 1943)

Here's the pamphlet: http://www.cpgb-ml.org/download/leaflets/katyn_20090623.pdf

Opinions?

[Os Cangaceiros]

There seems to be three opinions on this:

1) the Nazis did it.
2) the Soviets did it, and it was wrong.
3) the Soviets did it, but who cares as the "victims" were Polish officers and do not deserve sympathy.

In any case there was a thread about this not that long ago, and Invader Zim made a pretty persuasive case that the massacre was perpetrated by the Soviets.

[Althusser]

There seems to be three opinions on this:

1) the Nazis did it.
2) the Soviets did it, and it was wrong.
3) the Soviets did it, but who cares as the "victims" were Polish officers and do not deserve sympathy.

In any case there was a thread about this not that long ago, and Invader Zim made a pretty persuasive case that the massacre was perpetrated by the Soviets.

I looked for one on search with the keyword "Katyn." I couldn't find it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/us-hushed-up-t174946/index.html?highlight=katyn

[LOLseph Stalin]

The CPGB-ML seems like massive tankies. I think that'll give you your answer.

Nah, seriously. I don't know enough info about this.

[Rafiq]

Sorry, but had the Soviets gone to war and killed 100,000 Polish reactionaries through battle or whatever, or, even had each officer been tried and killed, no one would have given a shit. The fact that these officers - these strongmen of the polish state, the same one that went to war with the bolsheviks some twenty years earlier, were condensed and promptly executed all at once with few civilian deaths or the horrors of war, strikes everyone as exceedingly horrific. But the officers were not killed for no reason, it was strategic for the soviet state. They just happened to be total reactionaries (as in, I am not implying the Soviets executed them for purposes other than for filling Soviet strategic-military interests, it was not an act done on behalf of the proletariat), therefore I could care less.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Old Bolshie]

The Russian Government already presented official documents proving the soviet authorship of the massacre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UkRB3wsj2E

[l'Enfermé]

Barbarossa lead to the deaths of 30,000,000 people and some people still obsesses over the death of 20,000 Polish army officers, intelligence agents, cops, landowners, and the like? Really? Personally I couldn't care less about the liquidation of two dozen thousand Polish national elites and I don't understand why any leftist would. It's not even in the top 100 of the list of things that made the Soviet Union so awful.

[goalkeeper]

They are wilfully quoted the Goebbels diary out of context. He is not admitting to German guilt.

[The Idler]

Ask the CPGB-ML what level of evidence would convince them of the identity of the perpetrators of mass killings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is there that you will find their double standards.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Gorby admitted it, and, as much as I depsise Stalin, it's hardly the worst thing Stalin did (the murdering of Polish intellectuals after the war is something different all together).

[kasama-rl]

Anyone who thinks it is ok to massacre 20,000 people -- without specific cause, without trials, without a public explanation -- I think such people should speak up loudly, so the rest of us know to keep them far away from political influence and power.

I don't know for sure who killed the prisoners of Katyn Forest -- but i do know that whoever did it committed a war crime (of the most cynical and reactionary kind).

And people who (today) think such mass murder is not big deal.... well, we should just step away from them, and make a mental note that they are amoral and disturbed.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Anyone who thinks it is ok to massacre 20,000 people -- without specific cause, without trials, without a public explanation -- I think such people should speak up loudly, so the rest of us know to keep them far away from political influence and power.

I don't know for sure who killed the prisoners of Katyn Forest -- but i do know that whoever did it committed a war crime (of the most cynical and reactionary kind).

And people who (today) think such mass murder is not big deal.... well, we should just step away from them, and make a mental note that they are amoral and disturbed.

So about that Great Leap Forward...

Who gives a shit about some fucking officer scum? Officer's aren't bloody civilians. I don't give two shits about them.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

So about that Great Leap Forward...

Who gives a shit about some fucking officer scum? Officer's aren't bloody civilians. I don't give two shits about them.

Yea, not to rain on your parade Mike, but we've got an imperfect heritage in our ideology as well. The class elimination line was a real thing and it lead to the murder of alot of people that shouldn't have been killed. We should indeed treat these incidents as significant mistakes as you've said, but having a dismissive attitude towards the failings of other people's ideologies only highlights the failings of our tendency.

But to comment on the topic, due process is ideally applicable in this situation. However this is a war, no it isn't morally acceptable but it is neither morally exceptional either. Any other state, whether it be a capitalist state, a pre-capitalist state, a "deformed workers state" or a socialist state, would have probably done the same thing. This is because the context nesecitated it to a degree. So to use this as an argument against Stalin is faulty because it could also be used as an argument against Abraham Lincon, William Churchill, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and anyone else who exists in a pre-communist society.

[Delenda Carthago]

Anyone who thinks it is ok to massacre 20,000 people, I think such people should speak up loudly
.
http://community.ashworthcollege.edu/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-20930-27892/best_kid_raising_hand.jpg

[kasama-rl]

Yea, not to rain on your parade Mike, but we've got an imperfect heritage in our ideology as well.

I'm not sure what that means.

First, i'm not arguing for perfection. I'm arguing for communist morality.

The Soviet Union of the 1940s IS part of our heritage and ideology. This was a socialist country. We should criticize the errors, and not uphold them. If we uphold them, we are more likely to repeat them.


"The class elimination line was a real thing and it lead to the murder of alot of people that shouldn't have been killed. We should indeed treat these incidents as significant mistakes as you've said;.."

Yes, that is my point.


... having a dismissive attitude towards the failings of other people's ideologies only highlights the failings of our tendency."

help me understand what you are saying here. I'm not discussing "other people's ideology" -- i'm talking about communists in the Soviet Union's socialist period (if they did it.)

But more precisely, I'm arguing against the (forgive me) fools in THE CURRENT TIME (including right here on this thread apparently) who choose to defend or pooh-pooh rather grievous actions from the past.

Again, if someone thinks that mass murder of thousands of defenseless unarmed people (without trials or specific indictments or public explanation) is OK... we should politely take our distance from them.

No popular political audience in the world will support a political movement that callously supports mass murder.


"But to comment on the topic, due process is ideally applicable in this situation. However this is a war, no it isn't morally acceptable but it is neither morally exceptional either. Any other state, whether it be a capitalist state, a pre-capitalist state, a "deformed workers state" or a socialist state, would have probably done the same thing. This is because the context nesecitated it to a degree. So to use this as an argument against Stalin is faulty because it could also be used as an argument against Abraham Lincon, William Churchill, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and anyone else who exists in a pre-communist society.

I don't understand this argument. Perhaps the problem is mine.

In a war, you kill those armed against you. That is moral and necessary. If tens of thousands of prisoners come into your hands it is wrong to just kill them in a massacre. Is this a controversial point?

In China there was a struggle over this too: Were Japanese prisoners to be killed, or were they to be struggled with and transformed?

Mao's line was to take prisoners and win them over (and this approach produced great fruits during the civil war with KMT prisoners, and during the Korean war with some American POWs, some of whom "came over.")

As for the rest of your argument: Did Lenin, or Trotsky, or Lincoln commit the mass murder of thousands of defenseless prisoners? Not that I know of.

Lincoln had several dozen Sioux people executed (the largest mass execution in American hisotry) after the uprising of the Santee Sioux in Minnesota -- and we should (correctly) condemn him for that.

But in the katyn Forest massacre we are talking about a very large and very cold-blooded massacre of prisoners. How is that a necessity? How is that justified?

Again, I don't know who did it. This is one of those events in history that is hard to know from afar. But IF this was done by our side, then we should still condemn it, and make clear that we (if we ever have power over human lives) would never so callously or cynically massacre large numbers of people (even if we suspect most of them are reactionary).

The same goes for the rape that happened at the end of World War 2. We all can guess why such things happened. We can try to imagine the horror and hatreds of that war. But (as communists) we can never uphold rape, or excuse it. (And the Soviet leadership did, on several occasions, basically say boys will be boys). By contrast the Chinese peoples army was very strict about its rules against rape -- and we should uphold that.

Again, if we form a movement that in an infantile or cynical way justifies the mass murder of defenseless people, who in their right minds would support our struggle for power. People will (correctly) think that major crimes and atrocities could come from such attitudes.

Someone wrote (in a flippant way) about "what about the Great Leap Forward.." I have read a lot about the GLF... but I have never heard anyone claim that Mao approved mass murder of thousands of innocent people. do you?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Socialism is humanism guys.As much as I despise the bourgeois no one should advocate their elimination through mass execution.They should and must be eliminated though a change in the mode of production.

Besides what exactly did this heroic feat of Socialist Mass Murder accomplish? Poland is capitalist today.Reactionary forces have not been eliminated and capitalist property relations have been restored. I've traveled though Poland. Russia is intensely unpopular and there is a great deal of racism against Russian people in Poland today.

Anyone who advocates, justifies or dismisses mass murder and/or rape is a sociopath.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Socialism is humanism guys..

Not really. Humanism is useless moralism.


As much as I despise the bourgeois no one should advocate their elimination through mass execution.They should and must be eliminated though a change in the mode of production.Not because of their oh-so-triumphant human value, but because it doesn't work that way.


Besides what exactly did this heroic feat of Socialist Mass Murder accomplish? Poland is capitalist today.Reactionary forces have not been eliminated and capitalist property relations have been restored. I've traveled though Poland. Russia is intensely unpopular and there is a great deal of racism against Russian people in Poland today.That isn't what anyone has been saying, and you're constructing this argument out of assumptions which are gravely mistaken. I have not read anyone in this thread saying this was victory of socialism, nor have I made that argument, but rather, the point is that the Katyn killing was largely irrelevant. The killing of however many officers is an act of war, and this is part of the World War where the Soviets were faced with a perilous political situation in already rabidly nationalist Poland, in particularly its revolting aristocratic officer corps, and this was an attempt to quell top-level dissidence (IIRC Soviet records number the executed at 8,000 something, and the Nazis also killed a few people at the site, maybe 3,000), and though yes, this was an inter-imperialist war like any other, this was not one of its many true tragedies, like merciless killings of civilians all around, pointless though it was from a socialist standpoint, and focusing on this is stupid. I want to further add that I actually think that Soviet treatment of non-officer POW's in the war was more to be offended by.


Someone wrote (in a flippant way) about "what about the Great Leap Forward.." I have read a lot about the GLF... but I have never heard anyone claim that Mao approved mass murder of thousands of innocent people. do you? Ol' Rummel would disagree with you. I'm not saying I agree with him. I just don't like moralism.


Anyone who advocates, justifies or dismisses mass murder and/or rape is a sociopath. When does it become mass-murder? When more than ten cops die?

[Orange Juche]

http://community.ashworthcollege.edu/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-20930-27892/best_kid_raising_hand.jpg

That's more fucked up than being a Ron Paul supporter, seriously.

[Orange Juche]

Socialism is humanism guys.As much as I despise the bourgeois no one should advocate their elimination through mass execution.They should and must be eliminated though a change in the mode of production.

Besides what exactly did this heroic feat of Socialist Mass Murder accomplish? Poland is capitalist today.Reactionary forces have not been eliminated and capitalist property relations have been restored. I've traveled though Poland. Russia is intensely unpopular and there is a great deal of racism against Russian people in Poland today.

Anyone who advocates, justifies or dismisses mass murder and/or rape is a sociopath.

It's usually followed by angst against the oppressors, rather than any line of real logic or reason. Or desire for justice.

[Questionable]

These people were officers in the Polish military dictatorship, correct? If so, their crimes probably outweighed the Soviet Union's.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

If so, their crimes probably outweighed the Soviet Union's.

So brave!

[Delenda Carthago]

These people were officers in the Polish military dictatorship, correct? If so, their crimes probably outweighed the Soviet Union's.
Not only, but a dictatorship that massacred the polish communists. Not trying to be disrepsectful, but its irrelevant whether people who consider posting on revleft the peak of their weekly revolutionary action if they find it suitable for their morals. The question is:

Should the upper military personel(not even the soldiers), responsible for murdering of tens of thousands of communists, on the rise of WWII be executed or not? Maybe should they be let free? Cause neither jailing someone is moraly right or humanistic. But life is always putting issues that you ll never probably find on the perfect world of Ideas. Revolutionary is he who knows how to manage the situation, not the one that runs away from it.




PS. I am not saying that Katyn was actually done by USSR. I dont know. And I wipe my ass with Russia's "claim" on behalf of its class enemy state that just so happen to existed before it.

[Questionable]

So brave!

Thanks man, I really try to be brave for all my comrades on Revleft but it's hard sometimes ya know?

[DarkPast]

OK, first of all the Katyn Massacre may not have targeted only army and police officers, like some posters here claim. While the source may not be reliable, the only actual list of victims by occupation I've found is in N. Lebedeva's article "The Katyn Tragedy". Note that term "Katyn massacre" actually covers a series of mass executions that occured on at least four different sites, and the aforementioned article only covers the massacre in the Katyn forest itself.

The list includes, aside from around all the landowners, officers etc., over 3400 non-commissioned officers, 300 doctors, 200 pilots, 100 lawyers, 100 writers and journalists as well as a several dozen teachers and professors and some 80 ordinary soldiers. In other words, most of them weren't bourgeois.

And whether true or not, the fact remains that these people were killed without trial, when the USSR was still at peace with the Third Reich. Maybe I'm a liberal idealist or something, but I consider the right to a fair trial a basic human right.

Of course, there's also the matter of the Soviet and, later ("communist") Polish government trying their utmost to cover the incident up. Why would they do that if they only killed some quasi-fascist officers whom everybody hated?

The issue of who ordered the executions has been covered in the previous Katyn thread: http://www.revleft.com/vb/us-hushed-up-t174946/index.html

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Maybe I'm a liberal idealist or something, but I consider the right to a fair trial a basic human right.

╔═════════════════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ════════════════╗
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Repost this if ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

What I never understand about actions like this is why are they championed by emotionally stunted neckbeards decades later, while the 'communists' who ordered and committed the acts were apparently too ashamed to take credit for them at the time?

[Old Bolshie]

PS. I am not saying that Katyn was actually done by USSR. I dont know.

As I said earlier the Russian Government released recently documents proving the Soviet authorship of the massacre. Those documents contain Stalin's order and signature. That is no doubt anymore.

[Rurkel]

I am feeling strangely poetic right now. Maybe there's something in this thread's air...

--------
Browsing this site, I feel disgusted:
Reformists pop up on every thread.
What is this? I think that's an invasion!
They should go to cappie sites instead!

Times are changing for the worse, comrades:
Humanists are swarming this web site,
Whining every time some bourgie poofers
Catch a fast, lead bullet in their side.

How many times we've told you whiners:
Towards revolution we aspire.
We are not afraid of killing people,
If it furthers, or keeps up, the fire.

Is it good or bad for revolution?
Will it carry workers' struggle on?
These are questions leftists should consider -
Only these! And no asking more!

If it furthers our goals - fine!
We'll do what it takes to make it right,
With no doubt and no hesitation!
Lib'rul scum, disperse before our might!

If it harms, prevents emancipation
Of the working, of the toiling class,
We'll oppose it fiercely, like a tiger,
We shall kick reaction's sorry ass!

It does neither? Our response is simple:
No condemnation, no praise.
That's the line which always should be taken -
Spread the revolutionary blaze!

Liberals can't stand these simple maxims,
"Killing people bad", - they whine and cry, -
"Decent people should condemn all murder".
And they think that's what makes them "good guys".

Humanists consider us "too ruthless",
"Human beings!" - they exclaim in passion.
But you either help the revolution,
Or your life is worth precisely nothing.

Working people - yes, they have some value.
Proles can't rule if they are being killed.
But who cares about bourgie classes?
Doesn't matter if their blood is spilled.

Those who cry about that massacre
Are opposing every revolution,
Even though they make a lot of speeches
How "Communism's the solution".

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

And whether true or not, the fact remains that these people were killed without trial, when the USSR was still at peace with the Third Reich. Maybe I'm a liberal idealist or something, but I consider the right to a fair trial a basic human right.


Yeah, stick to them maaaan, bourgeois legalism is the way to go. GO AMNESTY, GO HUMAN RIGHTS!!!11

:rolleyes:

[Prof. Oblivion]

Sorry, but had the Soviets gone to war and killed 100,000 Polish reactionaries through battle or whatever, or, even had each officer been tried and killed, no one would have given a shit. The fact that these officers - these strongmen of the polish state, the same one that went to war with the bolsheviks some twenty years earlier, were condensed and promptly executed all at once with few civilian deaths or the horrors of war, strikes everyone as exceedingly horrific. But the officers were not killed for no reason, it was strategic for the soviet state. They just happened to be total reactionaries (as in, I am not implying the Soviets executed them for purposes other than for filling Soviet strategic-military interests, it was not an act done on behalf of the proletariat), therefore I could care less.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2



So about that Great Leap Forward...

Who gives a shit about some fucking officer scum? Officer's aren't bloody civilians. I don't give two shits about them.


These people were officers in the Polish military dictatorship, correct? If so, their crimes probably outweighed the Soviet Union's.

DarkPast responded rather well to all of the above claims:


OK, first of all the Katyn Massacre may not have targeted only army and police officers, like some posters here claim. While the source may not be reliable, the only actual list of victims by occupation I've found is in N. Lebedeva's article "The Katyn Tragedy". Note that term "Katyn massacre" actually covers a series of mass executions that occured on at least four different sites, and the aforementioned article only covers the massacre in the Katyn forest itself.

The list includes, aside from around all the landowners, officers etc., over 3400 non-commissioned officers, 300 doctors, 200 pilots, 100 lawyers, 100 writers and journalists as well as a several dozen teachers and professors and some 80 ordinary soldiers. In other words, most of them weren't bourgeois.

And whether true or not, the fact remains that these people were killed without trial, when the USSR was still at peace with the Third Reich. Maybe I'm a liberal idealist or something, but I consider the right to a fair trial a basic human right.

Of course, there's also the matter of the Soviet and, later ("communist") Polish government trying their utmost to cover the incident up. Why would they do that if they only killed some quasi-fascist officers whom everybody hated?

The issue of who ordered the executions has been covered in the previous Katyn thread: http://www.revleft.com/vb/us-hushed-up-t174946/index.html

The whole "they were all officers and therefore reactionary scum fuck them" attitude is pretty gross. Even if every single one of them was a commissioned officer involved in the massacre of civilians or some such bullshit, how does that justify executing them, especially given that they were already prisoners of the USSR? It's not like they could do anything anymore, and they probably would have been kept in the camp system anyways.

This sort of historical minimization:


Barbarossa lead to the deaths of 30,000,000 people and some people still obsesses over the death of 20,000 Polish army officers, intelligence agents, cops, landowners, and the like? Really? Personally I couldn't care less about the liquidation of two dozen thousand Polish national elites and I don't understand why any leftist would. It's not even in the top 100 of the list of things that made the Soviet Union so awful.


Not only, but a dictatorship that massacred the polish communists. Not trying to be disrepsectful, but its irrelevant whether people who consider posting on revleft the peak of their weekly revolutionary action if they find it suitable for their morals. The question is:

Should the upper military personel(not even the soldiers), responsible for murdering of tens of thousands of communists, on the rise of WWII be executed or not? Maybe should they be let free? Cause neither jailing someone is moraly right or humanistic. But life is always putting issues that you ll never probably find on the perfect world of Ideas. Revolutionary is he who knows how to manage the situation, not the one that runs away from it.

PS. I am not saying that Katyn was actually done by USSR. I dont know. And I wipe my ass with Russia's "claim" on behalf of its class enemy state that just so happen to existed before it.

Is pretty gross. Since we know for a fact that Katyn was done by the USSR, the only thing left for apologists to do is justify it through rationalization and minimization.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Is pretty gross. Since we know for a fact that Katyn was done by the USSR, the only thing left for apologists to do is justify it through rationalization and minimization

The same mentality as holocaust denialists.

[Questionable]

DarkPast responded rather well to all of the above claims

Not really. He cited a list that he himself admitted may not be true, and then he said some lame stuff about right to trial.


...how does that justify executing them, especially given that they were already prisoners of the USSR?

Mike Ely raised a good point about China's attempts at re-education of prisoners, however, there is a difference between a common foot soldier who may not have any personal stake in the war and a commissioned officer who is thoroughly indoctrinated in his country's reactionary ideology. What is the point in keeping those kinds of people alive?

[Fourth Internationalist]

Why do leftists still care about atrocities committed by a clearly non-socialist and tyrannical regime?

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

and then he said some lame stuff about right to trial.Oh grow up! If it was Hitler killing Thalmann, fascists murdering trade unionists without a trial, or Maoists being indefinitely detained without a trial in Amerikkka you'd be up in arms and hysterically screaming about their rights, but as soon as it involves someone who's political belifs differ from yours, you take on the persona of an edgy fifteen year old who equates murder as a mundane occurence.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Why do leftists still care about atrocities committed by a clearly non-socialist and tyrannical regime?

Because they're not socialists, they're state capitalist sociopaths, or maybe they just want a strong Hoxha or Ceaușescu to hold their hand and show them some real loving.

[l'Enfermé]

Socialism is humanism guys.As much as I despise the bourgeois no one should advocate their elimination through mass execution.They should and must be eliminated though a change in the mode of production.

Besides what exactly did this heroic feat of Socialist Mass Murder accomplish? Poland is capitalist today.Reactionary forces have not been eliminated and capitalist property relations have been restored. I've traveled though Poland. Russia is intensely unpopular and there is a great deal of racism against Russian people in Poland today.

Anyone who advocates, justifies or dismisses mass murder and/or rape is a sociopath.
Humanism is a current of bourgeois-capitalist ideology. So no.

But I'll play devil's advocate here. How is the fact that not enough people were shot to eliminate "reactionary forces" an argument in favour of not shooting anyone? It's quite the opposite, actually.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Humanism is a current of bourgeois-capitalist ideology.Demonstrably untrue, if anything its origins lie in personalist interpretations of Roman Catholicism, or further back we can find in in the works of the pre-Socratics and Seneca.

[Captain Ahab]

But I'll play devil's advocate here. How is the fact that not enough people were shot to eliminate "reactionary forces" an argument in favour of not shooting anyone? It's quite the opposite, actually.

:confused: Where did Lenina argue for this in the post you quoted?

[Fourth Internationalist]

Humanism is a current of bourgeois-capitalist ideology.*

Not really. Capitalism is quite anti-humanist.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I have no doubt that much of the Polish ruling class was reactionary.If Hitler had given them half a chance, Poland would have been an ally of Germany.

On the other Poland had long had political and cultural ties with bourgeous France. Perhaps "liberalism" would have been popular among some of these layers. Pre-war Poland did have a large liberal intellegensia, who were largely exterminated in 1940.

The Katyn massacres occurred after Poland had been militarily defeated by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1940 Poland was not a military threat to anyone.

Its important to eliminate the bourgeous. I'm not a pacifist and I am certain a working class revolution will be very bloody. I am also certain that most of the bloodletting will be initiated and perpetrated by the forces of reaction.If its necessary to destroy the class enemy which I'm all for, believe me, there are more productive ways to do this than by firing squad.

The Katyn massacres were not done by the Soviet working class. They were carried out by the NKVD in the service of the Soviet bureaucracy. Again Poland was not and materially could not have been a military threat. Hitler regarded the Poles as an inferior race and there wasn't much chance of the Nazis cultivating an alliance with the former ruling class.

Obviously the massacre was carried out to destroy a potential nucleus of Polish patriotic-nationalism, safeguarding the traditional invasion route.This is great power geopolitics, something more worthy of the czars, Tallyrand or Metternich. It had nothing to do with class struggle politics.

So today Poland is a full member of NATO, the enemy alliance is on the doorstep of Mother Russia.


For ten years of membership in NATO, Poland has proven to be a reliable ally. In addition to increased security and political benefits, NATO membership has also brought investments of the Alliance in Poland's defensive infrastructure. Polish soldiers take part in numerous missions of the Alliance, often paying the highest price. At the end of this January 2009, nearly two thousand Polish soldiers participated in various NATO operations.

People on this thread say "f___" the Polish officer corps, pre-war intellegensia and ruling class". Fine, I don't disagree but I also say "f___Mother Russia." I'm for working class politics. both internally and internationally. This does not involve mass murder.If the USSR had pursued principle class based politics the enemy alliance wouldn't be on the doorstep of Russia today.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Marxism is a humanism. Read Engel's funeral eulogy for Marx.

If Jean Paul Sartre is too borgy for you here's Althusser.


Ten years ago socialist humanism only existed in one form: that of class humanism. Today it exists in two forms: class humanism, where the dictatorship of the proletariat is still in force (China, etc.), and (socialist) personal humanism where it has been superseded (the U.S.S.R.). Two forms corresponding to two necessary historical phases. In ‘personal’ humanism, ‘class’ humanism contemplates its own future, realized.

This transformation in history casts light on certain transformations in the mind. The dictatorship of the proletariat, rejected by Social-Democrats in the name of (bourgeois) personal ‘humanism’, and which bitterly opposes them to Communists, has been superseded in the U.S.S.R. Even better, it is foreseeable that it might take peaceful and short-lived forms in the West. From here we can see in outline a sort of meeting between two personal ‘humanisms’, socialist humanism and Christian or bourgeois liberal humanism. The ‘liberalization’ of the U.S.S.R. reassures the latter. As for socialist humanism, it can see itself not only as a critique of the contradictions of bourgeois humanism, but also and above all as the consummation of its ‘noblest’ aspirations. Humanity’s millenarian dreams, prefigured in the drafts of past humanisms, Christian and bourgeois, will at last find realization in it: in man and between men, the reign of Man will at last begin.

[Prof. Oblivion]

Mike Ely raised a good point about China's attempts at re-education of prisoners, however, there is a difference between a common foot soldier who may not have any personal stake in the war and a commissioned officer who is thoroughly indoctrinated in his country's reactionary ideology. What is the point in keeping those kinds of people alive?

These people were already prisoners in the camp system. They likely would have stayed in the camp system, probably for the rest of their lives. They were taken from the camps and executed en masse.

To make this argument is to put into question keeping anyone in the camp system for life, which was already happening, particularly with prisoners of war.

It also is coming from the perspective that execution should be the status quo and that any exception should be justified. It runs completely contrary to what should be the real question, i.e. the justification for the execution itself. You are now no longer even attempting to argue that these people should have been killed, but rather saying that there was no reason to let them live.

That's pretty fucked up.

[Tenka]

The same mentality as holocaust denialists.

Oh yes, the decision to kill a few thousand officers on political grounds, leaving aside whether it was really the best course of action, is just like systematically torturing and killing millions of jews and communists and other undesirables for a fucked ideology. And since when do holocaust denialists "rationalise and minimise" the holocaust, rather than just, you know, deny it?


Oh grow up! If it was Hitler killing Thalmann, fascists murdering trade unionists without a trial, or Maoists being indefinitely detained without a trial in Amerikkka you'd be up in arms and hysterically screaming about their rights,

I can't speak for the person you're addressing, but for my part, I would not be screaming about "rights". It would be abominable, of course, and frightening--but there would be an element of excitement in the bourgeois state dropping the democratic charade in such a manner as to have its true nature understood by an unprecedented number of people.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Not really. Capitalism is quite anti-humanist.

Humanism is vague enough that anyone can lay claims to defending it; to uphold some mystic notion of the human spirit or whatever. "Look, people have it better now than they did in Feudal times, we're humanist"; to some, that would be enough.


Oh grow up! If it was Hitler killing Thalmann, fascists murdering trade unionists without a trial, or Maoists being indefinitely detained without a trial in Amerikkka you'd be up in arms and hysterically screaming about their rights, but as soon as it involves someone who's political belifs differ from yours, you take on the persona of an edgy fifteen year old who equates murder as a mundane occurence.

Nope. I would not raise the issue of rights, as I reject the entire concept wholly; thus the issue becomes one of why and what it is that is being done, and who does it. It's not that it is violating the rights of anyone that is the crux of the matter, it is that it is done by the class-enemy and is against communism (and this includes many things the Soviet Union were responsible for or involved in.)

[Drosophila]

I'm not a humanist or a pacifist or anything, but I think it's pretty disturbing to see people apologizing for the Katyn massacre, especially considering it was committed by a reactionary nation-state in the interest of capital. This absurd notion that it's completely excusable because everyone killed "was bourgeois" really creeps me out.

[l'Enfermé]

I'm not a humanist or a pacifist or anything, but I think it's pretty disturbing to see people apologizing for the Katyn massacre, especially considering it was committed by a reactionary nation-state in the interest of capital. This absurd notion that it's completely excusable because everyone killed "was bourgeois" really creeps me out.
Nazi war-criminals were hung following the Nuremburg trials by reactionary nation-states in the interest of capital too. Complain about that as well.

Yes, Godwin's law.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Oh yes, the decision to kill a few thousand officers on political grounds, leaving aside whether it was really the best course of action, is just like systematically torturing and killing millions of jews and communists and other undesirables for a fucked ideology. And since when to holocaust denialists "rationalise and minimise" the holocaust, rather than just, you know, deny it?I divide this mentality into two stages:

1. The Stalinist used the same ad hoc, question begging, and character assassination methods to attack their opponent (one that they would rightly call their opponent out for doing if the shoe was on the other foot), the holocaust denialist will reject evidence because the historian is Jewish, and so must be part of the zionist conspiracy, that Stalinist rejects the evidence because the historian is supposedly bourgoise, or has capitalist sympathies, and so that is the reason they don't recognise the merits of the great Soviet experiment and try so hard to slander it.
2. When called out they resort to the most surreal and vile ad hoc rationalisations, "they were enemeis of the people and needed to be killed, the revolution demanded it, away with your liberal morality", pretty similar to "the Jews had been plotting against the German people since the beggining of time, national rebirth requires a racially pure nation, it had to be done".

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Nazi war-criminals were hung following the Nuremburg trials by reactionary nation-states in the interest of capital too. Complain about that as well.

Yes, Godwin's law.

Hmm somethings different between these two situations, I can't quite put my finger on it though..

[Prof. Oblivion]

Nazi war-criminals were hung following the Nuremburg trials by reactionary nation-states in the interest of capital too. Complain about that as well.

Yes, Godwin's law.

Nazi war criminals...were war criminals. So were the NKVD members that executed all of these prisoners.

Does anyone supporting and/or apologizing for this massacre even know who the victims were and what they did?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Oh grow up! If it was Hitler killing Thalmann, fascists murdering trade unionists without a trial, or Maoists being indefinitely detained without a trial in Amerikkka you'd be up in arms and hysterically screaming about their rights, but as soon as it involves someone who's political belifs differ from yours, you take on the persona of an edgy fifteen year old who equates murder as a mundane occurence.

Class morality, when it happens to our class it is a tragedy, when it happens to the other class it is a source of comedy.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Class morality, when it happens to our class it is a tragedy, when it happens to the other class it is a source of comedy.

The neo-nazi would just switch 'class' for 'race', would that still be a valid argument. No. It would be disgusting. We can't negate the invidual essence down to crude external factors, and then construct a morality around these fluid identities (I am in no way neglecting the importance of class, or the class struggle in the political arena though).

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

The neo-nazi would just switch 'class' for 'race', would that still be a valid argument. No. It would be disgusting. We can't negate the invidual essence down to crude external factors, and then construct a morality around these fluid identities (I am in no way neglecting the importance of class, or the class struggle in the political arena though).

With the difference being that the Jewish people have never oppressed anyone, while the bourgeois is responsible for every war, famine, genocide, and despotism world wide. That's like comparing Apples and Ricin laced Oranges.

Socialism is not democracy, it is a dictatorship of the proletariat where the working class enforces it's collective power over other classes. It's times like this that I appreciate Borgidism, even if Bordiga took Proletarian Dictatorship a bit too literally.

[Prof. Oblivion]

Many of the generals, those whose murders are easiest to defend by the apologists here, were retired and of old age. Most were 60-70 years old. I'm not sure what murdering a bunch of old men who aren't even in active service has to do with class struggle. Then again, the Katyn massacre doesn't have anything to do with class struggle, so...

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

With the difference being that the Jewish people have never oppressed anyone

Not true, we can go back to the OT, or the actions of certain Jewish communites in the Caliphates or Rhineland areas to find naughty Jewish happenings. Though I don't dispute your analysis of the capitalist system (as Wilde points out rather nicely in The Soul of man under Socialism (http://libcom.org/library/soul-of-man-under-socialism-oscar-wilde), that the charitable actions of capitalists, no matter how pure the intention, tend to cause more harm than good).


Socialism is not democracy, it is a dictatorship of the proletariat where the working class enforces it's collective power over other classes.

I've always interpreted DOTP as a form of direct democracy, best espoused by the likes of Luxemburg and Dunayevskaya.

[Prof. Oblivion]

I think a better argument would be that the defense of the executions at Katyn, even for generals and other officers active in the Polish military fighting against the Soviet invasion, sets a precedent for any country holding prisoners of war that human rights need not apply and that they have free reign over how they treat POW's. That is essentially an implicit justification of all kinds of historic war crimes and something that is blatantly anti-socialist.

[Questionable]

To make this argument is to put into question keeping anyone in the camp system for life, which was already happening, particularly with prisoners of war.

No it doesn't, unless you totally ignore what I was saying about the difference between common soldiers and indoctrinated officers. Which you did. Officers =/= everybody in the army. I never made this argument that you're characterizing me as holding.

[DarkPast]

We can't negate the invidual essence down to crude external factors, and then construct a morality around these fluid identities (I am in no way neglecting the importance of class, or the class struggle in the political arena though).

Indeed, but many here would disagree it seems. Also, there's apparently a worrying tendency among the revolutionary left to justify mass killings by basically presuming guilt, i.e. "it is better that ten innocent men suffer than one guilty man escape". This is, ironically, another typically right-wing position.


The Katyn massacres were not done by the Soviet working class. They were carried out by the NKVD in the service of the Soviet bureaucracy. Again Poland was not and materially could not have been a military threat. Hitler regarded the Poles as an inferior race and there wasn't much chance of the Nazis cultivating an alliance with the former ruling class.

Obviously the massacre was carried out to destroy a potential nucleus of Polish patriotic-nationalism, safeguarding the traditional invasion route.This is great power geopolitics, something more worthy of the czars, Tallyrand or Metternich. It had nothing to do with class struggle politics.

This is probably the most important point to make here. Alas, many people seem to assume that anyone waving a red flag represents the interests of the proletariat.

[Bronco]

Always find it a bit strange how leftists can sometimes be so desperate to show indifference to thousands of people being slaughtered

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

This is probably the most important point to make here. Alas, many people seem to assume that anyone waving a red flag represents the interests of the proletariat.

You guys really have zero reading comprehension. This is just ridiculous, the way you construct your own imagined arguments and argue against them.

Let us try this one more time:
1. The actual killing was ultimately not something that forwarded the cause of revolution. It was a geopolitical strategy as regarded Soviet influence in Poland during the Cold War.
2. Ultimately the actual killing is of little relevance, because of the fact that there were actual terrible atrocities committed against civilians, in comparison which this move appear as a fart in space; most of the people here involved were actual class-enemies and reactionaries, whose departure is, though perhaps sad from a personal standpoint, of little relevance otherwise;

Thus we establish that neither of what you're saying is actually true. The problem is that the Katyn shit is almost universally used as a source of whine from liberals and right-wing anti-communist (organisations like MEMORIAL anyone?) who prefer this hurting of Nationalist pride in Poland to bringing up much more relevant and serious things. This was a relative insignificant event in a war riddled with much more serious and terrible atrocities.

Some of you keep on babbling on about excuses, but this isn't about excuses. It's about understanding what and why it happened, and why it is not actually much relevant, either in a positive or negative sense, to the realisation of socialism.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Ultimately the actual killing is of little relevance

22,000 people murdered without a trial, for no good reason, Geneva convention thrown out of the window, yeah, not important what so ever.

[LOLseph Stalin]

22,000 people murdered without a trial, for no good reason, Geneva convention thrown out of the window, yeah, not important what so ever.

Well to put it into perspective it's still minor compared to the number of innocent people killed by the fascist regimes without a trial.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Well to put it into perspective it's still minor compared to the number of innocent people killed by the fascist regimes without a trial.

I don't value quantity over quality, human lives, with deeply intrinsic value, were unjustly extinguished, this would be a travesty no matter what political ideology the perpetuators claimed to adhere to. More people died in Kolyma than Auschwitz, that doesn't allow the Nazi regime to escape the reality of their crime.

[Captain Ahab]

I don't value quantity over quality, human lives, with deeply intrinsic value, were unjustly extinguished, this would be a travesty no matter what political ideology the perpetuators claimed to adhere to. More people died in Kolyma than Auschwitz, that doesn't allow the Nazi regime to escape the reality of their crime.
Wait, I thought that Auschwitz had an estimated 1.1 million deaths and Kolyma 500,000?

[DarkPast]

You guys really have zero reading comprehension. This is just ridiculous, the way you construct your own imagined arguments and argue against them.

Let us try this one more time:
1. The actual killing was ultimately not something that forwarded the cause of revolution. It was a geopolitical strategy as regarded Soviet influence in Poland during the Cold War.

This is what Lenina said, and I agreed with her. Maybe it's you who should brush up on reading comprehension?


2. Ultimately the actual killing is of little relevance, because of the fact that there were actual terrible atrocities committed against civilians, in comparison which this move appear as a fart in space;most of the people here involved were actual class-enemies and reactionaries, whose departure is, though perhaps sad from a personal standpoint, of little relevance otherwise;

The problem is that the Katyn shit is almost universally used as a source of whine from liberals and right-wing anti-communist (organisations like MEMORIAL anyone?) who prefer this hurting of Nationalist pride in Poland to bringing up much more relevant and serious things. This was a relative insignificant event in a war riddled with much more serious and terrible atrocities.

Insignificant for you maybe, but many, many people lost their family members there for no real reason. And then they were lied to by a government that called itself socialist for decades before the truth came out. Is it any wonder why there is such strong anti-communist sentiment in Poland? That "personal standpoint" you so casually dismiss can be quite important when we're dealing with an event that directly affected the lives tens of thousands of people.

And what's up with the "civilians" thing? Civilians were killed at Katyn, too. How are disarmed, defeated soldiers any different from civilians? And "civilian" status has nothing to do with one's class. So how is that even relevant?


Some of you keep on babbling on about excuses, but this isn't about excuses. It's about understanding what and why it happened, and why it is not actually much relevant, either in a positive or negative sense, to the realisation of socialism.

Unfortunately, many people on the revolutionary left (I don't mean you) do continue to deny or justify the massacre and this doesn't help our cause. Further, as I've said above, you could argue that it does have a negative effect on the development of class consciousness in Poland.

[Rurkel]

This is what Lenina said, and I agreed with her. Maybe it's you who should brush up on reading comprehension?Takayuki's position seems to be that it was a case of "scum killing scum", so to speak, and therefore, is to be neither condemned, nor praised.


human lives, with deeply intrinsic value, I suggest you read my Glorious and Admirable Poem on True Revolutionary Ethics as Opposed to the Bourgeios-Liberal-Reformist-Humanist Scum, which I posted earlier in the thread.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Wait, I thought that Auschwitz had an estimated 1.1 million deaths and Kolyma 500,000?

I've heard everything from conservative estimates of 500,000 to the wild CIA claims of 3,000,000, though the current figure agreed upon by recent historians being 900,000. Anyway, I stand corrected.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

I suggest you read my Glorious and Admirable Poem on True Revolutionary Ethics as Opposed to the Bourgeios-Liberal-Reformist-Humanist Scum, which I posted earlier in the thread.

Yeah, I did, almost cut myself on it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd9OhYroLN0), bro.

[Delenda Carthago]

I don't value quantity over quality, human lives, with deeply intrinsic value, were unjustly extinguished, this would be a travesty no matter what political ideology the perpetuators claimed to adhere to. More people died in Kolyma than Auschwitz, that doesn't allow the Nazi regime to escape the reality of their crime.
Stop it! You gon make me lose my sleep from guilt. Human lives were lost, you say. It brings to my mind another human life that was lost at that time(more or less).

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J_ergy9YdqQ/Te-jN_WIElI/AAAAAAAAAKw/lqJXyYTBsRc/s1600/Execution+of+Mussolini.jpg


Without a trial!:drool:

[Delenda Carthago]

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJDqdlTcp9_HnuhVZp1UKRuDTT8iSBR oBoiaTW-UXNsSDzSZhDTA

"Man I want my skulps. But we should trial them nazis first. Because some people on revleft that never ever have faced the 1/100 the horror fascism and dictatorship brings are gonna think bad of us. And we cant have that."

[Delenda Carthago]

And btw, since I m on a roll, fuck anyone that puts at the same position a crime like Holocaust, targeted against civilians that did nothing wrong but being born with a different identity or struggling against the system that exploits the working class, in the same place with the execution of people that did exactly the same kind of crimes. If I wanted that kind of apolitical crap I would join a neoliberal forum. The murder of a worker that struggles against his class exploitation is not the same with the murder of a tyrrant. At least not for a communist.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Stop it! You gon make me lose my sleep from guilt. Human lives were lost, you say. It brings to my mind another human life that was lost at that time(more or less)

While we could get into a lenghty discussion about legality and general with Bourgoise-pluralistic-rule of law-democracy vs. fascistic totalitarianism, and the areas where power is invested et cetera and whether that negates the need for a trial, I still think that Mussolini had the right to a trial (and more importantly, the people had a right to force him to stand trial).

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

"Man I want my skulps. But we should trial them nazis first. Because some people on revleft that never ever have faced the 1/100 the horror fascism and dictatorship brings are gonna think bad of us. And we cant have that."

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...

[Delenda Carthago]

While we could get into a lenghty discussion about legality and general with Bourgoise-pluralistic-rule of law-democracy vs. fascistic totalitarianism, and the areas where power is invested et cetera and whether that negates the need for a trial, I still think that Mussolini had the right to a trial (and more importantly, the people had a right to force him to stand trial).
It was a bad example of me to bring Mussolini on the table. Because when Mussolini died, it was already a situation that was clear the defeat of the fascists in Italy. Trialing him would be a better choice perhaps, but i m not gonna judge the people that killed him without it for being undemocratic or whatever.

Whereas in Katyn occasion, if we take as granted that the soviets did it, there are factors much more vital to the situation. For example, maybe the scenario of jailing them would be technicly imposible. I dont know. All I know is that there was a dictatorship in Poland, there was a World War right around the corner, and in that situation a lotta things can happen. And given the facts A. the amount of bs the bourgeois are feeding us about USSR and "stalinism" and B. that in USSR we didnt had in general any incident of unjustified killing, I think I will side with the option of the story that tells us that if that was actually done by the soviets(NKVD I think), there must have been a hell of a good reason, and it was not about "ideological differences" or that they were bored to bring them to trial in Moscow.

[Invader Zim]

Without question, or doubt, the NKVD did it. Denial of the reality at this stage, when the evidence is so conclusive, requires a degree of historical relativity beyond even that required to entertain holocaust denial. The evidence, which includes Soviet, Polish, Nazi and British sources, is vast and indisputable. At least the holocaust deniers can legitimately note that Hitler never signed the death warrants. In the case of Katyn, we have Stalin's signature on the very document.


These people were officers in the Polish military dictatorship, correct? If so, their crimes probably outweighed the Soviet Union's.

This is, of course as admitted by yourself, an ignorant post. The victims of Katyn were not only officers, but also included enlisted men albeit mostly non-commissioned officers. But even among the officers, a majority were relatively junior. Suggestion that all officers are inherently the same is to fundamentally misunderstand and depreciate the hierarchical dynamics of an army and the concept of rank. You seem to buy into a notion of collective guilt, this is unscientific, but, worse still, ahistorical.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

For example, maybe the scenario of jailing them would be technicly imposible. I dont know. All I know is that there was a dictatorship in Poland, there was a World War right around the corner, and in that situation a lotta things can happen.

Could have just let them go, the country was defeated, even the Germans allowed Polish and French PoW's out of the camps when their respective nations were defeated, rather than a cold, and calculated, systematic killing of them.


in USSR we didnt had in general any incident of unjustified killing

The purges ring any bells, the massacre of Soviet-Koreans also?


there must have been a hell of a good reason, and it was not about "ideological differences" or that they were bored to bring them to trial in Moscow

We're dealing with Stalin here, a certified paranoid nutcase, a guy who would randomly just state that there was an arbitrary number of traitors in the party, and then just give the NKVD orders to execute that arbitrary amount of people, randomly selected. Then we have the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Koreans in the Soviet Union before the war, and then had Jewish populations ethnically targetted after the war because they were supposed US spies.

[Delenda Carthago]

Could have just let them go, the country was defeated, even the Germans allowed Polish and French PoW's out of the camps when their respective nations were defeated, rather than a cold, and calculated, systematic killing of them.

.

You do realise that we are talking about the upper officers of a christiano-fascist dictatorship that had massacred tens of thousands of communist the years before right? And you do realise that there was a war coming up against the Anti Commintern Pact, right? And you propose that they should just "let them be". Hey, why not also give them weapons right away ? They would be ideal for the situation coming up.



The purges ring any bells, the massacre of Soviet-Koreans also?Yes. They do ring a bell. The "I m sick of capitalist propaganda, you right winger" bell.




We're dealing with Stalin here, a certified paranoid nutcase, a guy who would randomly just state that there was an arbitrary number of traitors in the party, and then just give the NKVD orders to execute that arbitrary amount of people, randomly selected. Then we have the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Koreans in the Soviet Union before the war, and then had Jewish populations ethnically targetted after the war because they were supposed US spies :scared:

Stalin?! OMG! Where, what? WOW!

Seriously, Im enourmously BORED to answer to that crap again. If I would be interested, I would post on BBC's website. At least there I would know that I m in hostile enirontment. The fact that you propose that these fascist monsters to "be and let be" while at the same time you reproduce all the anticommunist propaganda, tells a lot. Bye bye.



(btw, cause my sister lives in Zlin, I know the amount of anticommunist propaganda your country produces, so I dont hold it against you personally. I m just not interested right now to get in all that.)

[Invader Zim]

You do realise that we are talking about the upper officers of a christiano-fascist dictatorship that had massacred tens of thousands of communist the years before right? And you do realise that there was a war coming up against the Anti Commintern Pact, right? And you propose that they should just "let them be". Hey, why not also give them weapons right away ? They would be ideal for the situation coming up.


Yes. They do ring a bell. The "I m sick of capitalist propaganda, you right winger" bell.


:scared:

Stalin?! OMG! Where, what? WOW!

Seriously, Im enourmously BORED to answer to that crap again. If I would be interested, I would post on BBC's website. At least there I would know that I m in hostile enirontment. The fact that you propose that these fascist monsters to "be and let be" while at the same time you reproduce all the anticommunist propaganda, tells a lot. Bye bye.



(btw, cause my sister lives in Zlin, I know the amount of anticommunist propaganda your country produces, so I dont hold it against you personally. I m just not interested right now to get in all that.)

Do you ever write posts worth reading?


You do realise that we are talking about the upper officers of a christiano-fascist dictatorship that had massacred tens of thousands of communist the years before right?

This is false. Of the military personnel murdered, the vast majority were enlisted men of various ranks, mostly NCOs. Of the actual officers murdered, some thousand or so, only a hundred or so were "upper officers", the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel (i.e. in command of a regiment) or above. So in reality, the vast, vast majority military people murdered were junior officers and enlisted men.

And, of course, plenty more were not military personnel at all. The massacres included civilians: doctors, teachers, academics, lawyers, writers, journalists, refugees, etc.


And you do realise that there was a war coming up against the Anti Commintern Pact, right?

In April 1940? Not as far as Stalin was concerned. Or do you forget that the Anti-Commintern Pact was signed in 1936, and that Stalin and Hitler arranged the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939? Actually, I doubt you even know what I'm talking about.


Yes. They do ring a bell. The "I m sick of capitalist propaganda, you right winger" bell.

The fact that the Soviet Regime, under Stalin, murdered, worked or starved to death 7-10 million people is "capitalist propaganda"? You're a disgrace, a liar and an apologist for mass murder of workers. We all know which side of the barricades scabs like you will be on.

[Delenda Carthago]

You're a disgrace, a liar and an apologist for mass murder of workers. We all know which side of the barricades scabs like you will be on.
You are the guy that defended snitching to the FEDs as long as its against "stalinists", if my memory serves me well, right?

[Rurkel]

The fact that the Soviet Regime, under Stalin, murdered, worked or starved to death 7-10 million people is "capitalist propaganda"?
Only c. 1 million is actual direct repression, so it's OK.

[Invader Zim]

Only c. 1 million is actual direct repression, so it's OK.

Actually, this is false. 900,000 is the number executed according to NKVD records during the Great Purges according to an early survey of a small portion of the archival material conducted in the 1990s. That doesn't include those individuals murdered in other camps, in prisons, by other authorities, worked to death, deliberately starved to death, or simply do not appear in the files examined by Getty et. al at that time.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Yes. They do ring a bell. The "I m sick of capitalist propaganda, you right winger" bell.

Everthing that contradicts one of my deeply held beliefs is capitalist propoganda, Stalin was wonderful man, LEAVE UNCLE JOE ALONE!


(btw, cause my sister lives in Zlin, I know the amount of anticommunist propaganda your country produces, so I dont hold it against you personally. I m just not interested right now to get in all that.)

Funny, neo nazis would accuse the Czech Republic of churning out anti-fascist and holocaust propoaganda, but let me guess, since you have no ideological investment in nazism or the holocaust not happening, that you have in Stalinism, you could accept this evidence at face value? You people make me sick.

[Invader Zim]

You do realise that we are talking about the upper officers of a christiano-fascist dictatorship that had massacred tens of thousands of communist the years before right?

As i noted earlier, this is in fact, false. But the argument is a despicable one - justifying guilt-by-association collective punishment, comprised of mass murder, for the crimes committed the Polish government. I wonder how far you extend this logic you use to defend the Stalinist regime. What do you think about the regime's tacit support of the Red Army raping its way through Germany in 1945? These were Nazi women, whose government had murdered thousands of communists and millions of other. How do you defend the Stalinist regime on this issue?

[Delenda Carthago]

Funny, neo nazis would accuse the Czech Republic of churning out anti-fascist and holocaust propoaganda, but let me guess, since you have no ideological investment in nazism or the holocaust not happening, that you have in Stalinism, you could accept this evidence at face value? You people make me sick.
The funny thing is that my sister is an anarchist and someone that more or less has not-the-best opinion on the socialism of the 20th century. And she still throws up with the level of anticommunist propaganda that your dear capitalist State serves its people for breakfast. On the other hand, you defend it.

Nuff said.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

The funny thing is that my sister is an anarchist and someone that more or less has not-the-best opinion on the socialism of the 20th century. And she still throws up with the level of anticommunist propaganda that your dear capitalist State serves its people for breakfast. On the other hand, you defend it.

Wow, so your sister taking issue with the evidence presented, an anarchist of all people, means that the current historical conscensus on on the crimes commited by the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia is all naughty and wrong anti-communist propoganda?! Iron cast argument, soudruh.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Wow, so your sister taking issue with the evidence presented, an anarchist of all people, means that the current historical conscensus on on the crimes commited by the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia is all naughty and wrong anti-communist propoganda?! Iron cast argument, soudruh.
Comrade, and I use the term loosely, I don't know why you persist on this forum. You are not a revolutionary -- you are an anti-communist. In every thread I find you echoing mostly empty bourgeois propaganda. Of course you are interested in the Katyn forest incident. It allows you to fulminate against the USSR. That is precisely what you stand for. I'm sure during WWI and WWII you would have lined up with your own bourgeoisie as they waged imperialist war. What happened in Katyn is a legitimate source of discussion. But not with you.

[DarkPast]

Takayuki's position seems to be that it was a case of "scum killing scum", so to speak, and therefore, is to be neither condemned, nor praised.

My point still stands: like it or not, one of those groups of scum identified themselves as socialists and continues to be praised by a significant part of the radical left to this day.


Stop it! You gon make me lose my sleep from guilt. Human lives were lost, you say. It brings to my mind another human life that was lost at that time(more or less).

<snip>

Without a trial!:drool:

Nice try, but the conditions in which these events took place aren't even remotely identical. Mussolini was killed by a mob of those very people he oppressed; there is plenty of evidence he is responsible for countless crimes against the working class; there was still a guerrilla war going on at the time. Those at Katyn were secretly killed by the NKVD, a state organ; a large number of them were not class enemies; most were innocent of any crime that would warrant the death penalty. Even from a purely Realpolitik point of view, the massacre was pointless: in the long term, it only caused ethnic tensions between Poland and the USSR/Russia.

[Rurkel]

deliberately starved to deathDo you consider the famine at Ukraine to be deliberate (or at least, reasonably likely to be so), or do you refer to something else? Because if you are referring to the Ukrainian famine, then charges of "bourgeois propaganda" have some validity.


My point still stands: like it or not, one of those groups of scum identified themselves as socialists and continues to be praised by a significant part of the radical left to this day.I don't see how it's a counter-argument for condemning the specific act we're discussing, though. Admittedly, some people did provide specific arguments in defence of the victims.

[Fourth Internationalist]

I don't know why you persist on this forum. You are not a revolutionary -- you are an anti-communist. In every thread I find you echoing mostly empty bourgeois propaganda. Wow. Very mature! :D


Of course you are interested in the Katyn forest incident. It allows you to fulminate against the USSR. That is precisely what you stand for. I'm sure during WWI and WWII you would have lined up with your own bourgeoisie as they waged imperialist war. What happened in Katyn is a legitimate source of discussion. But not with you.I know, right? How could anyone be against the USSR? They waved a red flag! Clearly, that would make any atrocity they commit justified! Didn't you know that, AConfusedSocialDemocrat? Of course not, you anti-communist! :laugh:

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Wow. Very mature! :D

I know, right? How could anyone be against the USSR? They waved a red flag! Clearly, that would make any atrocity they commit justified! Didn't you know that, AConfusedSocialDemocrat? Of course not, you anti-communist! :laugh:
Not defending the USSR while it existed even in its extended phase as a degenerated workers state is only part of it. If you don't defend it when there was a revolutionary leadership (Before 1923) then you are on the wrong side of the class line, consistently. Perhaps I'm wrong, but you seem to have no interest in a serious discussion of the history of the USSR. Of course I don't mindlessly defend the USSR. The persecution of the LO was brutal. The purges were violent atrocities against socialism. But why should anyone here have a comradely discussion with Confused?

[Invader Zim]

Do you consider the famine at Ukraine to be deliberate (or at least, reasonably likely to be so), or do you refer to something else? Because if you are referring to the Ukrainian famine, then charges of "bourgeois propaganda" have some validity.


I was referring to those individuals who were starved and worked to death in slave labour camps, penal colonies and prisons. Though, of course, while the regime did not create the poor weather conditions which contributed to the Ukrainian famine, it did callously allow the famine to develop and refused to alter policies exacerbating the situation. We can debate whether this is 'murder' or not, but really it seems a moot point given that I clearly distinguished between 'murder' and 'starved to death'.

[Rurkel]

I was referring to those individuals who were starved and worked to death in slave labour camps, penal colonies and prisons.
Fair enough.

[Prof. Oblivion]

It was a bad example of me to bring Mussolini on the table. Because when Mussolini died, it was already a situation that was clear the defeat of the fascists in Italy. Trialing him would be a better choice perhaps, but i m not gonna judge the people that killed him without it for being undemocratic or whatever.

Whereas in Katyn occasion, if we take as granted that the soviets did it, there are factors much more vital to the situation. For example, maybe the scenario of jailing them would be technicly imposible.

They were already in jail. They were taken out of jail to be executed.


I dont know. All I know is that there was a dictatorship in Poland

Poland was jointly invaded by Nazi Germany and the USSR in September 1939, about 6 months prior to the Katyn massacre. The joint invasion ended the Second Polish Republic. The Soviets and Nazis signed the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation, essentially an addendum to the more famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, at the end of September following the successful invasion of Poland.

From September, the country was controlled by the Nazi's and Soviets. There was no longer a Polish dictatorship in the country.

For someone so vehemently apologetic you seem to not have any idea about the history.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Not defending the USSR while it existed even in its extended phase as a degenerated workers state is only part of it. If you don't defend it when there was a revolutionary leadership (Before 1923) then you are on the wrong side of the class line, consistently. Perhaps I'm wrong, but you seem to have no interest in a serious discussion of the history of the USSR. Of course I don't mindlessly defend the USSR. Why does someone need to defend the USSR to be considered 'serious' or to have a 'serious' discussion? I that not the point of discussion? Yet you disregard me as not serious because I don't like the USSR.


But why should anyone here have a comradely discussion with Confused?I wonder the same about you, calling others anti-communist, non-revolutionaries, and disregarding others opinions as being non-'serious' because they disagree with yours.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

You are not a revolutionary -- you are an anti-communist.

Lolno, in fact, I'm probably a lot more communist than those playing apologetics for the crimes commited by a state capitalist regime.


In every thread I find you echoing mostly empty bourgeois propaganda

Since you get so angry about what historians say about the Soviet Union, you might as well challenge the historical conscensus on the holocaust... oh.. wait... you're only interested in challenging conventional views in areas you have an ideological investment in, not out of a genuine interest in historicity. Yup, you continue to involve yourself in psuedo-history in order to attempt to rehabilitate some of the most vile dictators in recent history.


That is precisely what you stand for. I'm sure during WWI and WWII you would have lined up with your own bourgeoisie as they waged imperialist war. What happened in Katyn is a legitimate source of discussion. But not with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JauB3k4-tZQ

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Lolno, in fact, I'm probably a lot more communist than those playing apologetics for the crimes commited by a state capitalist regime.


Are you actually a social-democrat? You seem like one. I hope you're not one of those DSA-buggers.

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Are you actually a social-democrat? You seem like one. I hope you're not one of those DSA-buggers.

DSA?

The term has been so muddied over the past century. I believe SD is the necessary step towards Marxism, essentially you reform as much as possible, implement participatory and direct democracy, the decentralisation of power, autogestion (probably the most important part), eventually the workers realise the state can't do everything, and take power for themselves in a peacful transition (all the organs are already present in such a form to make this as smooth and democratic as possible), and since you have already won multiple bourgoise elections already, you can safely guage that the majority of the people are socialist minded, and so no need for state terrorism or Blanquism.

[Fourth Internationalist]

DSA?

The term has been so muddied over the past century. I believe SD is the necessary step towards Marxism, essentially you reform as much as possible, implement participatory and direct democracy, the decentralisation of power, autogestion (probably the most important part), eventually the workers realise the state can't do everything, and take power for themselves in a peacful transition (all the organs are already present in such a form to make this as smooth and democratic as possible), and since you have already won multiple bourgoise elections already, you can safely guage that the majority of the people are socialist minded, and so no need for state terrorism or Blanquism.

How does modern social democracy leads towards Marxism, unless youbare talking about older social democratic parties (Marxist ones)?

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

How does modern social democracy leads towards Marxism, unless youbare talking about older social democratic parties (Marxist ones)?Definately older ones. The various SD parties of Europe have to exorcise Thatcherite neo-liberlism and various US poisons and go back to their roots.

Maybe the various British Trotskyite groups and their entryism may be on to something?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Lolno, in fact, I'm probably a lot more communist than those playing apologetics for the crimes commited by a state capitalist regime.



Since you get so angry about what historians say about the Soviet Union, you might as well challenge the historical conscensus on the holocaust... oh.. wait... you're only interested in challenging conventional views in areas you have an ideological investment in, not out of a genuine interest in historicity. Yup, you continue to involve yourself in psuedo-history in order to attempt to rehabilitate some of the most vile dictators in recent history.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JauB3k4-tZQ
Oh yeah, I don't think the Black Book has any credibility -- and the Wiki page on the Red Terror is laughable, that means I don't agree with "consensus" of historians about the USSR. You see, we take a vote, and if historians say the world was flat, well. . . Regarding the USSR in its early years, there is no consensus, comrade. Comparing me to a Holocaust denier is both highly insulting and absurd. The historians that are credible and not anti-communist mouthpieces have something very different to say about the USSR. I mentioned the most excellent British Historian, E.H. Carr -- what about his work? Or how about Alexander Rabinowitch? Even Paul Avrich, not exactly sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, wrote a credible history of Kronstadt. I disagree with his conclusions, but he is not a hack. None of these fellows is a Marxist, btw, but they are honest and do excellent historical research. I read history and take it seriously where that is warranted. The cynical anti-communist mouthpieces whose fabricated or misrepresented data that you take as good coin are a joke.

The numbers in the Wiki article, quite seriously don't make sense. Don't you wonder that they say there were 3 million deserters from the Red Army? If that were true how could the Red Army have functioned effectively (with a desertion rate of over 50 percent). Yet it functioned very well, defeating the Whites, and the invasion by 17 countries. A completely dispirited army only fighting because soldiers were scared of reprisals could not have accomplished what the Red Army did.

I don't deny the Red Terror as I don't deny The Great Terror of the French Revolution. Some things were done that are regrettable (e.g., the execution of the great chemist Lavoisier), but it had to be done of the Revolution was going to move forward. The Bolsheviks were viciously attacked from internal and external enemies.

The usurpation of political power by the rising bureaucracy, led first by the Triumvirate, then the Duumvirate, and finally Stalin alone is also a fact. It is necessary to understand the context in which it happened, which is a discussion for another thread. It did not change the class nature of the USSR, which retained the forms of a workers' state -- specifically a collectivized planned economy.

[Rafiq]

Not really. Capitalism is quite anti-humanist.

Like how prodhoun criticized property relations with the all powerful and universal laws of property relations, humanists criticize bourgeois ideology while pre supposing the basic tenets of bourgeois ideology, namely, humanism. Capitalism is full of contradictions. So is bourgeois ideology. And while it may be helpful to exploit those contradictions, would you really stoop so low as to actually absorb and accept a portion of these contradictions into your own ideological framework? Christians claim to be peace loving, and so on. But when they do things which violates one of their religious convictions in order to fulfill another, are we going to claim christianity, as atheists, as our own?

[kasama-rl]

Questionable wrote:


These people were officers in the Polish military dictatorship, correct? If so, their crimes probably outweighed the Soviet Union's.

Well, how do you know? Should people be killed if you suspect they "probably" committed crimes?

As for people who have fought for the old order -- what happens if they think they will all be executed for their past... won't they fight to the bitter end? Isn't the policy of revolutinaries (allowing people to come over, allowing people to return to ordinary life) better for securing a victory? If you seem to justify mass killings of people who have opposed you, don't you think it will make it much harder to win (by encouraging your enemies to fight to the end, by making middle forces scared of your intentions, and by making even the advanced concerned about your arbitrary methods)?

Isn't our purpose (in making socialist revolution) in part to provide justice for people?

How is there justice if you take a whole category of people (in silence and darkness) and kill them, without indictments, without trials, without specific grievances, without daring a public explanation to the people?

And should anyone want to elevate to power a movement capable of justifying the massacre of 20,000 people in this way?

And doesn't that deeply affect the ability of revolutionary people to criticize their own state, if that state can arbitrarily kill people without trial or public justification? It led to a tremendous depoliticization in the Soviet Union, where people just kept their heads down and did what they were told (or else became careerists and such asses.)

Think through how such license, such morality and arbitrary power works to undermine the ability of people to have the debates they need t make socialism advance.

I spent time in eastern Europe (including in Czechoslovakia under Soviet invasion/occupation) and the depolitization of people (even the people in revolt) was mind-numbing.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

As I said earlier the Russian Government released recently documents proving the Soviet authorship of the massacre. Those documents contain Stalin's order and signature. That is no doubt anymore.

There are people who have stepped forward claiming they were responsible for creating these forgeries.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/01-12-2012/122996-katyn_truth-0/

[Old Bolshie]

There are people who have stepped forward claiming they were responsible for creating these forgeries.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/01-12-2012/122996-katyn_truth-0/

You certainly don't think that I am going to believe in a single word of what is written in that ludicrous article.

The documents released are authentic and no one ever questioned their authenticity.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

You certainly don't think that I am going to believe in a single word of what is written in that ludicrous article.

I don't really care what you think is credible.


The documents released are authentic and no one ever questioned their authenticity.

Except the documents have been attacked as being forgeries since they were first made public. Now people who claim to have been involved in the forgery process are coming forward.

[Tenka]

There are people who have stepped forward claiming they were responsible for creating these forgeries.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/01-12-2012/122996-katyn_truth-0/

Pravda is a tabloid today, yellow as it gets. Anyone who doubts, feel free to check out some of their headlines, e.g., "Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and the Illuminati of the Vatican".
You've got to love deregulation of the press.

Apart from that, I don't want to participate any further in this discussion of whether it was utterly contemptible that the dead Soviet state executed some 10,000+ officers.

[Old Bolshie]

I don't really care what you think is credible.

But you should if you wanna try to convince anybody of your point.


Except the documents have been attacked as being forgeries since they were first made public. Now people who claim to have been involved in the forgery process are coming forward.Initially I didn't really know if you were just trolling or not but I am seeing now that you really believe in that crap. Not that I want to give too much attention to this story but that is one big fault in it. Your article states that the Katyn Massacre forgery documents happened with Yeltsin but already in 1989 Soviet scholars were confirming that Joseph Stalin had indeed ordered the massacre after the opening of the archives and the Soviet Union was admitting the authorship of the massacre. Gorbachev even went further by revealing two other burial sites similar to Katyn: Mednoye and Piatykhatky.

Apart from that, that is also a note from the Head of KGB Aleksandr Shelepin to Nikita Kruschev sent in 1959 with information about the execution of 21, 857 poles and a proposal to destroy their personal files and documents related with the Katyn Massacre in order to eliminate anything that could relate the SU with the massacre.

So as you can see that is not to much that you can deny here, even with the most fanciful story that you can find.


http://www.armahellas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/katyn1.jpg

This is the document proving the Soviet and Stalin's responsibility in the massacre.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

But you should if you wanna try to convince anybody of your point.My point doesn't depend on what you think about anything. Committed anti-communists will believe whatever they want to believe, regardless of the evidence.


Your article states that the Katyn Massacre forgery documents happened with Yeltsin but already in 1989 Soviet scholars were confirming that Joseph Stalin had indeed ordered the massacre after the opening of the archives and the Soviet Union was admitting the authorship of the massacre.So the Gorbachev regime, which was actively trying to dismantle socialism, said a lot of bad things about the USSR. And we know lots of documents from this era are forgeries. So what?


Apart from that, that is also a note from the Head of KGB Aleksandr Shelepin to Nikita Kruschev sent in 1959 with information about the execution of 21, 857 poles and a proposal to destroy their personal files and documents related with the Katyn Massacre in order to eliminate anything that could relate the SU with the massacre.A convenient excuse for why there is so little documentation.


This is the document proving the Soviet and Stalin's responsibility in the massacre.Here is a document that has been revealed as a rough-draft of that forgery:

http://www.katyn.ru/images/news/794-page1.jpg

And another:

http://www.katyn.ru/images/news/794-Page1-ekz2.jpg

[Old Bolshie]

My point doesn't depend on what you think about anything. Committed anti-communists will believe whatever they want to believe, regardless of the evidence.

So far you presented zero evidence of anything.


So the Gorbachev regime, which was actively trying to dismantle socialism, said a lot of bad things about the USSR. And we know lots of documents from this era are forgeries. So what?

So your article says that the Katyn Massacre documents were forger during Yeltsin era. And no one knows that a lot of documents are forgeries.

Btw, how would Gorbachev know the other two burial sites? By magic powers?


A convenient excuse for why there is so little documentation.

You are the one claiming that was an excuse. It wasn't since the little documentation was sufficient to prove Stalin's guilty.



Here is a document that has been revealed as a rough-draft of that forgery:

http://www.katyn.ru/images/news/794-page1.jpg

And another:

http://www.katyn.ru/images/news/794-Page1-ekz2.jpg

Have you ever heard about copies?

Show me sources proving that these are drafts of a forged document. What I see is a conspiracy theory and I don't argue over conspiracy theories. And when I say sources I don't mean Pravda articles or anything alike.

[Invader Zim]

The question we must ask ourselves, even if we were to believe the outlandish claims that the numerous documents related to Katyn, which have been examined by dozens of historians, are fake - how do the resident Stalinist deniers of mass murder and white-washers of history explain away:

"We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Führer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news item to the German press."

Diary of J. Goebbels, 14th April 1943.

Given that the Stalinist liars wish us to believe that it was the Nazis, it seems rather odd that Goebbels diary from the time of the Germany discovery suggests the precise reverse.

I suppose that the Stalinist liars would also have us believe that the 'anti-communists' (which is presumably anybody who is interested in what actually happened as opposed to Stalinist manufacture) broke into the German luftwaffe reconnaissance archives, shortly before they were captured, and doctored the aerial photographs over the Katyn region, taken in preparation for the Nazi invasion of the area, which clearly show that disturbed ground of the graves left by the NKVD killers and their henchmen.

Perhaps the 'anti-communists' also 'got' to Dr. Tramsen, an anti-Nazi activist in occupied Norway, who was a key scientist involved in the Rec Cross investigation, and made him tell lies to his contact with the British SOE in 1943?

The fact is that if a person came on here and told the kinds of crass lie the Stalinists revel in, only regarding the Holocaust, they would be banned in an instant. It is a pity that this board is so disgracefully run that telling lies about one mass murder is deemed irredeemably unconscionable but A-OK if it is about another.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

So far you presented zero evidence of anything.Except I have.

Here is a video, relating how the forger did all this stuff, who hired him, who else he worked with, etc:

jRJzkIAKarQ


And no one knows that a lot of documents are forgeries.One that immediately comes to mind was the old Ermin letter that they tried to pass off as a 'revelation' about Stalin being an agent of the Okhrana.


Btw, how would Gorbachev know the other two burial sites?This claim is repeated everywhere with no evidence of anything. The wikipedia article even incorrectly puts the date of Gorbachev "admitting" anything (with no source) in 1990, when he never publicly "admitted" to anything until December 23rd, 1991.


You are the one claiming that was an excuse.If you're making up a huge lie, it's also convenient to make up a lie about why you can't find anymore evidence to verify your lie.


Have you ever heard about copies?Yes. This is the draft-copy of the forgery.


Show me sources proving that these are drafts of a forged document.If admissions to making up the document won't phase you, nothing will. Anti-communists are committed to their beliefs, and evidence won't phase them. I am only arguing with you for the sake of people who might be reading this that don't already have their minds made up (which should be anyone with a genuine concern for the truth).

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

"We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU, for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching us from ahead are gruesome. The Führer has also given permission for us to hand out a drastic news item to the German press."What's so hard to explain about Goebbels being a liar, and/or uninvolved with the lies? Why do you put so much faith in a professional Nazi liar?


...aerial photographs over the Katyn region, taken in preparation for the Nazi invasion of the area, which clearly show that disturbed ground of the graves left by the NKVD killers and their henchmen.You mean this smudge? lmao

http://kanada.net/war/assets/katyn_view.jpg


Perhaps the 'anti-communists' also 'got' to Dr. Tramsen, an anti-Nazi activist in occupied Norway, who was a key scientist involved in the Rec Cross investigation, and made him tell lies to his contact with the British SOE in 1943One could ask you the same thing about Kathleen Harrimam, the daughter of Averell Harriman, US ambassador to Moscow, who found a letter in a dead officer's pocket dated to 1941. The "Reds" just planted evidence and got to her, lol.

[Old Bolshie]

Except I have.

Here is a video, relating how the forger did all this stuff, who hired him, who else he worked with, etc:

jRJzkIAKarQ



Again, credibility of this statement? None.


One that immediately comes to mind was the old Ermin letter that they tried to pass off as a 'revelation' about Stalin being an agent of the Okhrana.

Firstly, the Ermin letter was published in 1956 and not during Gorbachev era.

Secondly, it was confirmed to be a forgery. If they confirmed it as a forgery why don't they confirm Katyn related documents as a forgery too? I am certain that one could do that if its claim was really true.

You are just giving more reason about Katyn.


This claim is repeated everywhere with no evidence of anything. The wikipedia article even incorrectly puts the date of Gorbachev "admitting" anything (with no source) in 1990, when he never publicly "admitted" to anything until December 23rd, 1991.

I can give you the precise date of the public admission: 13 of April,1990. You can search it on internet if you want.



If you're making up a huge lie, it's also convenient to make up a lie about why you can't find anymore evidence to verify your lie.

But the issue here is that it isn't necessary to find more evidence to prove Stalin's guilty.



Yes. This is the draft-copy of the forgery.

Evidence of it? You just presented 2 pages similar to the one of Stalin's order which just by itself tells nothing. If those are really draft copies of a forgery show me evidence of it.


If admissions to making up the document won't phase you, nothing will. Anti-communists are committed to their beliefs, and evidence won't phase them. I am only arguing with you for the sake of people who might be reading this that don't already have their minds made up (which should be anyone with a genuine concern for the truth).

Unless you can present evidence to back your claim of forgery it will be very hard to convince anyone unless you are talking about people who like a good theory of conspiracy story.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

Again, credibility of this statement? None.

Says you, a committed anti-communist.


Firstly, the Ermin letter was published in 1956 and not during Gorbachev era.

It was "rediscovered" in the archives in the Gorbo era and passed off as a "revelation" though.


If they confirmed it as a forgery why don't they confirm Katyn related documents as a forgery too?

Who is this "they" you speak of?

And who says "they" won't confirm it is a forgery sooner or later?


I can give you the precise date of the public admission: 13 of April,1990. You can search it on internet if you want.

To quote the New York Times:


Mikhail S. Gorbachev today denied that as Soviet President he had withheld evidence that Soviet leaders ordered the execution of 20,000 Poles in World War II. "I didn't hide anything that I knew," Mr. Gorbachev said at a news conference.

The massacre of the officers in the Katyn forests has been a point of contention between Moscow and Warsaw for five decades. Under Mr. Gorbachev's policy of openness, the Kremlin acknowledged that the Soviets were responsible for the executions, not Nazi Germany, as had been asserted by Soviet leaders.


In an apparent effort to discredit Mr. Gorbachev, Russia has accused the former Soviet leader of concealing documents relating to the massacre.


Mr. Gorbachev said a file proving that Stalin ordered the executions turned up in the waning days of the Soviet Government.


He said he and President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia read them together in the Kremlin on Dec. 23, 1991, two days before Mr. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet President.


So to clarify, Gorbachev claims he never saw these documents until that date.



But the issue here is that it isn't necessary to find more evidence to prove Stalin's guilty.


It is, if these documents are forgeries. Which is the issue here.



If those are really draft copies of a forgery show me evidence of it.


Done and done. That you, as a committed anti-communist, don't like the evidence, is just to be expected.

[Captain Ahab]

I feel a sort of amusement when Stalinites frame questioning the actions of their dear leader as "anti-communism". It's like Zionists framing all questioning of Israel's actions as antisemitism.

[Old Bolshie]

It was "rediscovered" in the archives in the Gorbo era and passed off as a "revelation" though.

Rediscovered doesn't mean discovered and the forgery didn't happen during Gorbachev era as was your claim initially.


Who is this "they" you speak of?

And who says "they" won't confirm it is a forgery sooner or later?

Scholars, researchers, teachers, journalists... whatever you like with some credibility.

When they confirm it as a forgery I will give you reason in your claims.


To quote the New York Times:




So to clarify, Gorbachev claims he never saw these documents until that date.

You said that Gorbachev didn't publicly "admitted" to anything until December 23rd, 1991. I gave you the exact date when Gorbachev admitted publicly the Soviet guilty. Now you claim that Gorbachev didn't read the documents before that date. That definitely doesn't mean that he didn't know of the existence of those files before. I am certain that as the head of the regime he had people who informed him about the existence of the files and the soviet guilty on the matter. He publicly admitted the soviet guilty, that is the fact.






It is, if these documents are forgeries. Which is the issue here.

If these documents are forgeries, but they aren't until someone proves it otherwise.




Done and done. That you, as a committed anti-communist, don't like the evidence, is just to be expected.

You have been accusing me of being anti-communist during the whole discussion and I have been ignoring it since I don't consider that type of accusation to be much relevant when coming from someone who supports a man who killed more communists than Hitler.

[Invader Zim]

What's so hard to explain about Goebbels being a liar, and/or uninvolved with the lies? Why do you put so much faith in a professional Nazi liar?

Why would he lie in his own diary?


You mean this smudge? lmao

The disturbance of the ground, even using the thumb-nail image you have presented, is clear enough.


One could ask you the same thing about Kathleen Harrimam, the daughter of Averell Harriman, US ambassador to Moscow, who found a letter in a dead officer's pocket dated to 1941. The "Reds" just planted evidence and got to her, lol.

Actually yes, as the Russian state has admitted, and as declassified documents regarding the Soviet cover-up have proven. We even have the photographic evidence of the Soviets, when they recaptured the area later in the war, bulldozing incriminating evidence. It is a well know fact, as was observed in classified Soviet documents, that the Burdenko commission was a whitewash.

And you have ignored the issue. Why would a secret anti-Nazi spy, employed to investigate the graves by the Nazis, lie to his British handlers about the veracity of his team's findings?

You really are a pathetic character.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

Why would he lie in his own diary?Future publication purposes? Goebbels had already published part of it before.


The disturbance of the ground, even using the thumb-nail image you have presented, is clear enough.A "disturbance of the ground" doesn't really prove anything.


and as declassified documents regarding the Soviet cover-up have proven.Can you cite these documents?


We even have the photographic evidence of the Soviets, when they recaptured the area later in the war, bulldozing incriminating evidence.Can you produce these photos for us to look at?


It is a well know fact, as was observed in classified Soviet documents, that the Burdenko commission was a whitewash.Can you cite these documents?


And you have ignored the issue. Why would a secret anti-Nazi spy, employed to investigate the graves by the Nazis, lie to his British handlers about the veracity of his team's findingsWhy would the daughter of a US ambassador lie?


You really are a pathetic characterAnd you're just a Nazi-sympathizer masquerading as a radical.

[Fourth Internationalist]

And you're just a Nazi-sympathizer masquerading as a radical.


Trolling/flaming/being stupid is not allowed. :)

[Invader Zim]

Future publication purposes? Goebbels had already published part of it before.

No, he hadn't. The first time any part of the the diaries were formerly published was 1948, after 7,000 pages of manuscript were discovered in the basement of the Nazi propaganda ministry. Perhaps you are confusing publication with Goebbels private decision to begin using an amanuensis in 1941 and his decision, in 1944, to copy them to microfiche.

There is an interesting article about the find here:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/125241

Why interject on a subject you plainly know nothing about? Regardless, your 'argument' is one of the most cretinous comments I've ever read. Firstly, if Goebbel's didn't want to include the truth of the matter in subsequent publications, he needed only to remove the relevant passages in the transcription phase. Moreover, why would he actually insert a lie he did not believe into his own diary manuscripts? Had this been a published copy, then you would have a point. But it isn't and you're an an idiot for treating it in the same manner. That is critical source analysis 101: who wrote the piece and who is the audience. Secondly, Goebbels' includes numerous passages in his diary which explicitly discuss issues which undoubtedly he believed would never see the light of day, such candid discussion, which ran contrary to the propaganda his own agency was pumping out, regarding the state of the war. He also candidly discussed the mass murder of Jews - something the Nazis kept hidden from the wider German public as best they could:

"Jews always remain the same. You must either stigmatize them with a yellow star, or put them in concentration camps, or shoot them, or else let them saturate all public life with corruption, especially during a war. There is no halfway measure.

[...]

Everywhere the Jews are busy inciting and stirring up trouble. It is therefore desirable that many of them must pay with their lives for this. Anyway, I am of the opinion that the greater the number of Jews liquidated, the more consolidated will the situation in Europe be after this war. One must have no mistaken sentimentality about it. The Jews are Europe's misfortune. They must somehow be eliminated, otherwise we are in danger of being eliminated by them."

March 6, 1942

"Finally we talked about the Jewish question. Here the Fuehrer is as uncompromising as ever. The Jews must be got out of Europe, if necessary by applying most brutal methods."

March. 20, 1942

"Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor."

March 27, 1942

"I believe both the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff-raff."

Dec. 13, 1942.

"The intellectual does not have the natural means of resisting the Jewish peril because his instincts have been badly blunted. Because of this fact the nations with a high standard of civilization are exposed to this peril first and foremost. In nature life always takes measures against parasites; in the life of nations that is not always the case. From this fact the Jewish peril actually stems. There is therefore no other recourse left for modern nations except to exterminate the Jew."

May 13, 1943.

So, why we must ask ourselves, if Goebbels was perfectly willing to openly discuss "exterminating the Jewish riff-raff" from occupied Europe, repeatedly, and in the most sickening terms, why would he lie about murdering Slavs? What, precisely, do you think he felt the need to cover up when considered next to the other things he discusses?


A "disturbance of the ground" doesn't really prove anything.What, so you don't think there is anything in the fact that the very spots of ground in which mass graves were uncovered, we can clearly observe artificial trenches? Trenches that would prove to contain said bodies?

But whatever, I guess all those academics and scientists who use historical GIS from this period all the time should just bin all their findings and researches. A Red-Alert Stalin kiddie on the internet doesn't accept the validity of the scientific methodology behind their work. Shucks for them.


Can you cite these documents?"Special File
Top Secret
No. 632-sh[elepin]

To Comrade Khrushchev, N. S.

Since I940, records and other materials regarding prisoners and interned officers, policemen, gendarmes, [military] settlers, landlords and so on, and persons from former bourgeois Poland who were shot in that same year have been kept in the Committee of State Security of the Council of Ministers, USSR. On the basis of the decision by the special Troika of the NKVD USSR, a total of 2I,857 persons were shot; of these, 4,421 [were shot] in the Katyn Forest (Smolensk Oblast), 3,820 in the camp of Starobelsk, close °to Kharkov, 6,311 in the camp of Ostashkov (Kalinin Oblast), and 7,305 persons were shot in other camps and prisons of western Ukraine and western Belorussia.
The whole operation of liquidating the above-mentioned persons was carried out on the basis of the decision of the CC CPSU of 5 March 1940. All of them were sentenced to the highest order of punishment according to the files started for them as POWs and internees in 1939. From the time when the above-mentioned operation was carried out, that is, from 1940, no information has been released to anybody relating to the case, and all of the 21,857 files have been stored in a sealed location.

All these files are of no operational or historical value to Soviet organs. It is also highly doubtful whether they could be of any real value to our Polish friends. On the contrary, any unforeseen incident may lead to revealing the operation, with all the undesirable consequences for our country, especially since, regarding the persons shot in the Katyn Forest, the official version was confirmed by an investigation carried out on the initiative of the organs of Soviet authorities in 1944, under the name of the "Special Commission to Establish and Investigate the Shooting of Polish Prisoner-of-War Officers in Katyn Forest by the German-Fascist Aggressors."

According to the conclusion of that commission, all the Poles liquidated there are considered to have been killed by the German occupiers. The materials of the inquiry were extensively covered in the Soviet and foreign press. The commission's conclusions became firmly established in international public opinion.

On the basis of the above statements, it seems expedient to destroy all the records on the persons shot in 1940 in the above-mentioned operation.

In order to answer possible questions along the lines of the CC CPSU or the Soviet government guidelines, the protocols of the meetings of the NKVD USSR Troika that sentenced these persons to be shot, also the documents on carrying out this decision, could be preserved. The volume of these documents is not large and they could be kept in a special file."

http://law.case.edu/lectures/files/2010-2011/20110204_KatynSiberia_docs.pdf


Can you produce these photos for us to look at?http://www.katyn-books.ru/archive/godseye/godseye-illustrations.htm


Can you cite these documents?See previous document pack. or are we to be bombarded with nonsense about type-writers written by Russian Nationalists who have never set foot in a WW2 archive, and regurgitated by dullards like you who have also never stepped foot in an archive and who lack the critical faculties to gain anything from such a visit anyway?


Why would the daughter of a US ambassador lie?You have provided no evidence that she found what you claim she did. Moreover, she and the rest of the observers were granted access only after the NKVD's goons had been over the site.


And you're just a Nazi-sympathizer masquerading as a radical. Sorry, but you're the one in denial, in the face of overwhelming evidence, of mass murder - and that's a game right out of the neo-Nazi playbook. Moreover, as has been pointed out, you're the Quisling for a regime which killed more communists than Hitler.

[Labor Aristocrat Killer]

No, he hadn't.Yes he had. It was published as From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery. Here is an Amazon link to it:

http://www.amazon.com/Kaiserhof-Reich-Chancellery-Joseph-Goebbels/dp/1291215581


Why interject on a subject you plainly know nothing about?You should be asking yourself that question. I merely provided a single alternative interpretation of the text that is incompatible with the interpretation you are forcing on the text, in order to promote your pro-Nazi agenda.


So, why we must ask ourselves, if Goebbels was perfectly willing to openly discuss "exterminating the Jewish riff-raff" from occupied Europe, repeatedly, and in the most sickening terms, why would he lie about murdering Slavs?Who knows?


Special File
Top Secret
No. 632-sh[elepin]This has already been discussed, and is one of the documents that is claimed to be a forgery.

So you have no new "evidence," just more forgeries, this one a forgery to excuse the non-existence of more documentation.


http://www.katyn-books.ru/archive/go...ustrations.htmInteresting stuff, but even a cursory glance at the photographs doesn't show what you claim it does. And in any case, these photographs I think were first published in a CIA journal in the 1980s. How do we know they aren't fakes?


You have provided no evidence that she found what you claim she did. Moreover, she and the rest of the observers were granted access only after the NKVD's goons had been over the site.Are you claiming the Nazis didn't go over the site before the people they invited got access to it?

Why the double standards for Nazis, Zim? lol


Sorry, but you're the one in denial, in the face of overwhelming evidenceThe evidence is hardly "overwhelming." It's a peculiar interpretation of some photographs released by the CIA, and documents which people have admitted to forging. Oh, and WW2 Nazi propaganda.

[Fourth Internationalist]

in order to promote your pro-Nazi agenda.

Can we please ban this person for constant trolling and flaming?

[Invader Zim]

Yes he had. It was published as From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery. Here is an Amazon link to it:

Fair enough. It doesn't alter the point though, because Goebbels published an edited collection of excerpts into an obscure publication a decade earlier by no means is suggestive that subsequent diary entries were intended for publication as well, that he could and would not have removed potentially damaging information at the editing stage for any publication or that he did not, in fact, include plenty of other damaging and incriminating information which would certainly have been omitted if it were published. In short, you have no argument, as you effectively confess:

"Who knows?"


I merely provided a single alternative interpretation of the text that is incompatible with the interpretation you are forcing on the text

I have forced no 'interpretation' on the text, it says perfectly and entirely plainly that Goebbels was delighted with the discovery of the mass graves in anti-Soviet because he saw it as a viable source of propaganda. It explicitly notes that it was the Soviets, as opposed to the Nazis own thugs, who committed the atrocity. You, on the other hand, are ignoring what the text says, because you know it utterly destroys the shit you are spraying across this thread and instead are attempting to construct utterly feeble reasons to dismiss the source out of hand without considering what it tells us. Of course, you have no evidence to support your line of "reasoning", that Goebbels dd not believe it to be true, or that he intended to publish the contents of his diary. In fact, given the absolutely incriminating, and highly secret, discussion policies of genocide the entire line of argument you are pursuing is without merit, and utterly and knowingly spurious.


in order to promote your pro-Nazi agenda.

See, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is the epitome of Stalinist discourse and debate - when proven wrong, every and all opponents are described as either anti-communist or Nazi sympathizers.


This has already been discussed, and is one of the documents that is claimed to be a forgery.

So, every document that exists on Katyn is a forgery is it? Given that neither you, nor any of the ultra-reactionary Russian Nationalist pond-life who produced the claim initially, can provide even a shred of actual evidence to actually substantiate these claims, why should anyone take them seriously?

And do not confuse it, the basis for the claim that the documents are forgeries are utterly without saving grace. For instance, one of the key claims is that because the document has no office number it must be a forgery. Quite clearly, if we consider that for even a moment, the claim is utterly contemptuous. These documents have been around since 1991, and passed under the gaze of dozens if not hundreds of historians all with a professional lifetime working with precisely these kinds of documents. yet none of them noticed anything odd about them. Yet you lot, or at least the people's whose nonsense you are regurgitating, think you can find 49 obvious signs of forgery. Yet all the professionals looking into the matter didn't notice? Well, I looked into a couple of them, for instance the claim that " it was necessary of them to sign the document, and to write next to their signatures "agreed" or "after"." However, Stalin, for instance, writes "in favor". So that's bollocks. I would go through the whole thing, but what would be the point?

And the fact is that, in the light of these claims, the archive even released them (where before they had only been available to researchers) to the general public to put rest to this issue once and for all. The charge that these are forgeries has been put to bed by anybody and everybody who takes this issue seriously. You should to.


Interesting stuff, but even a cursory glance at the photographs doesn't show what you claim it does.

You remind me of a small child denying the existence of the incriminating evidence of the chocolate on his face after a mysterious raid of the cookie jar. The evidence is right there is the photographs. Perhaps you need your eyes testing?

In fact, it was based on investigation of these photographs, and others like them, that mass graves were actually uncovered in the early 1990s. That is what forced the Russian government to come clean.


And in any case, these photographs I think were first published in a CIA journal in the 1980s. How do we know they aren't fakes?

You can go to the National Archives 2 in College Park Maryland and look at them for yourself. And, you are, of course employing a guilt-by-association fallacy. You have no actual basis to conclude that the images are fake, but are trying to dismiss them out of hand anyway. Interestingly you expose the inadequacy of your argument through contradiction. On the one hand you contend that the photographs don't show anything (when plainly they do), yet you are also trying to deny their validity by suggesting that they have been faked. Why fake an image which doesn't contain any incriminating evidence. You've caught yourself up in your own lies, sunshine.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/024/183/500pxShopped.jpg?1318992465


Are you claiming the Nazis didn't go over the site before the people they invited got access to it?

Given that they didn't do it, and were trying to make a propaganda event out of the discovery, why would they need to? Moreover, Tramsen reported that there was no evidence of foul play. The same cannot be said of observers of the Burdenko report, including the very Kathleen Harrimam who, in 1944, had reached the conclusion that she had been duped and repudiated her earlier testimony. And of course, neither she, Melby, or the journalists with her, were medical professionals with a specialism in pathology.

Tramsen, on the other hand, was a professional. As indeed was Burdenko who admitted that his investigation was a whitewash later in life.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Yay he was banned. I'm so powerful with my words. :D

[conmharáin]

I could conceivably buy into the idea that the Nazis were responsible for the massacre and that placing the blame on the Soviets is a tactical maneuver by bourgeois academic institutions to discredit socialism. That said, I can't honestly assert this idea as fact. It isn't so hard to believe that even your very own "good guys" can do some seriously fucked up shit.

[Invader Zim]

I could conceivably buy into the idea that the Nazis were responsible for the massacre and that placing the blame on the Soviets is a tactical maneuver by bourgeois academic institutions to discredit socialism. That said, I can't honestly assert this idea as fact. It isn't so hard to believe that even your very own "good guys" can do some seriously fucked up shit.

The problem with this is that "bourgeois academic[s]"are not a homogenous group. There is, in fact, a vast array of political opinion within the historical profession, from arch-capitalist cold warriors, through to card carrying communists. It would be impossible to get them all, even within the fields of Soviet, Nazi and modern Polish history, to agree to something like that. Furthermore, think about the kudos and book sales involved for just one academic historian to break ranks.

You're not alone in making the suggestion that such a things occur (some here adamantly believe it), but realistically, it simply cannot. It is really rather like the claim by climate deniers that the entire (or at least 97%) of climate scientists are engaged in a massive conspiracy and all in the pocket of Al Gore. Or that 9/11 was an inside job, or that the moon-landings were faked. I can kind of see the appeal, I don't want to believe that climate change is going to ruin us all any more than the next person and it is comfortable to believe that all the experts are wrong, trying to conform, or just saying it for the grant money, but the conspiracy theory doesn't hold up if you think about it.

[conmharáin]

The problem with this is that "bourgeois academic[s]"are not a homogenous group. There is, in fact, a vast array of political opinion within the historical profession, from arch-capitalist cold warriors, through to card carrying communists. It would be impossible to get them all, even within the fields of Soviet, Nazi and modern Polish history, to agree to something like that. Furthermore, think about the kudos and book sales involved for just one academic historian to break ranks.

You're not alone in making the suggestion that such a things occur (some here adamantly believe it), but realistically, it simply cannot. It is really rather like the claim by climate deniers that the entire (or at least 97%) of climate scientists are engaged in a massive conspiracy and all in the pocket of Al Gore. Or that 9/11 was an inside job, or that the moon-landings were faked. I can kind of see the appeal, I don't want to believe that climate change is going to ruin us all any more than the next person and it is comfortable to believe that all the experts are wrong, trying to conform, or just saying it for the grant money, but the conspiracy theory doesn't hold up if you think about it.

Much as I admire the accomplishments made within the socialist endeavor during Stalin's time, I guess there's really no two ways about it, huh? These guys did some seriously fucked up shit.

[The Idler]

Being against the system, does not mean ignoring Occam's Razor.