European Court of Human Rights makes ruling on Katyn

[Red Commissar]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/world/europe/rights-court-assails-russia-over-inquiry-of-1940-massacre.html

Rights Court Assails Russia Over Inquiry of 1940 Massacre
By ALAN COWELL
LONDON — In the long-simmering and emotional debate over a notorious mass killing during World War II, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Monday that Russia had failed to comply with its obligations to adequately investigate the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police in 1940.

The ruling by the court’s highest panel, the Grand Chamber, came after relatives of the victims complained that a lengthy Russian inquiry had been ineffective and the Russian authorities had displayed a dismissive attitude to requests for information about the event, known as the Katyn massacre, which occurred near Smolensk.

The Grand Chamber ruled unanimously that “Russia had failed to comply with its obligation” under the European Human Rights Convention to “furnish necessary facilities for examination of the case,” according to a statement from the court in Strasbourg.

The ruling confirmed in part a decision by a lower chamber made public in April 2012. But it differed from the earlier verdict by saying there had been no violation of Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment as it relates to the suffering of families of “disappeared” people, subject to “a long period of alternating hope and despair.”

In the Katyn case, the court’s jurisdiction only covered the period starting in May 1998, when the convention came into effect in Russia. “After that date,” the ruling said, “no lingering uncertainty as to the fate of Polish prisoners of war remained.”

The 2012 ruling said that Article 3 had been violated for 10 of the 15 Polish family members in the case. Both the 2012 finding and the ruling Monday said the European court had no jurisdiction to examine complaints in the case based on Article 2 of the convention, covering the right to life, because the massacre had taken place a decade before the convention became international law and 58 years before Russia acceded to it.

That period of time was too long for a “genuine connection” to be established between the killings and Russia’s accession to the convention, the Grand Chamber ruled on Monday. It rejected an application for “just satisfaction,” its usual basis for awarding damages.

The likely impact of the decision in Moscow seemed unclear. Russia acknowledged the responsibility of Soviet leaders for the massacre only in 1990, when military prosecutors opened a criminal investigation that was discontinued 14 years later.

At that time, military prosecutors classified 36 out of a total of 183 volumes of files relating to the investigation as “top secret.” The full text of the decision to end the investigation was also classified as a state secret.

In its ruling, the Grand Chamber said Russia had not offered a “substantive analysis” for maintaining the classified status of the decision. “The court was unable to accept that the submission of a copy of the September 2004 decision could have affected Russia’s national security,” the ruling said.

The massacre has long haunted Russian-Polish relations, evoking memories even in far more recent times.

In April 2010, for instance, the Polish president’s plane crashed over Smolensk, killing him and 95 other members of Poland’s political and military elite. The disaster tore at the country, but what added a harsh resonance was the fact that the high-profile delegation had been traveling to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre.

In November 2010, the Russian Parliament approved a statement holding Stalin and other leaders responsible for the killings.

Despite protests from Communist Parliament members, the State Duma acknowledged that archival material “not only unveils the scale of his horrific tragedy but also provides evidence that the Katyn crime was committed on direct orders from Stalin and other Soviet leaders.”

Since the New York Times is paywalled I copied the whole article onto here. But long story short the ECHR made a ruling that makes Russia responsible for not properly investigating the Katyn killings. Regardless of how valid this ruling may be, I think though this fits into a broader anti-communist push among EU governments in the past years to try and demonize and delegitimize different aspects of it based on actions of the USSR and Eastern Bloc states.

[Conscript]

A bunch of officers of a fascist, imperialist state got shot. Who cares?

What about the right to life of those who died in dresden, or american firebombings of japan? They're actual civilians no less.

This is not about justice, this is about cementing western liberal power over europe, and appeasing their newfound allies.

[argeiphontes]

A bunch of officers of a fascist, imperialist state got shot. Who cares?


I care, because I'm Polish. I also care because I'm human, and socialist. It shows the reality of your precious Soviet Union. Whatever they were, they were defending their people from your murderous dictatorship.

[argeiphontes]

I think though this fits into a broader anti-communist push among EU governments in the past years to try and demonize and delegitimize different aspects of it based on actions of the USSR and Eastern Bloc states.

You can't possibly be serious. You can only delegitimize what's legitimate.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

I care, because I'm Polish. I also care because I'm human, and socialist. It shows the reality of your precious Soviet Union. Whatever they were, they were defending their people from your murderous dictatorship.
So? You're Polish? Big whoop. I have English and Irish ancestry. Give me a medal please. The Bolsheviks exterminated the anti-communist elites of their country, the ones they were able to get their hands on, the ones that weren't able to escape retribution and flee to Europe or North America. Landowners, clergy, capitalists, officers, anticommunist intellectuals and their filthy ilk. Why should these parasites be spared? Because their surnames end in "ski" or "szyk"? Don't be absurd. Communists don't discriminate based on ethnicity.

I have no sympathy for the targets of Soviet purges in 1939-1941, except for the innocents that were tragically caught in the cross fire. The Second Polish "Republic" was a quasi-fascist state and the conservative nationalists that died fighting for it can rot in hell along with other fascists.

By the way, this gave me a chuckle: "I also care because I'm human, and socialist". Ahahaha. As if serious Anarchist movements are known for their pacifism or restraint when it comes to violence against their ideological enemies. Just several years before Katyn, during the Spanish Revolution, Anarchists painted Spain red with the blood of landowners, priests, nationalists and other class enemies. And rightly so, the Spanish Revolution was one of the very few events where Anarchists even came close to accomplishing something.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

So? You're Polish? Big whoop. I have English and Irish ancestry. Give me a medal please. The Bolsheviks exterminated the anti-communist elites of their country, the ones they were able to get their hands on, the ones that weren't able to escape retribution and flee to Europe or North America. Landowners, clergy, capitalists, officers, anticommunist intellectuals and their filthy ilk. Why should these parasites be spared? Because their surnames end in "ski" or "szyk"? Don't be absurd. Communists don't discriminate based on ethnicity.

It wasn't the "Bolsheviks" who did this, most of the "Bolsheviks" were dead or rotting in Siberian gulags. It was Stalin's Red Army. Considering Capitalists currently run Poland, you can't reasonably argue that butchering a bunch of Polish army officers in 1945 actually helped the cause of communism in Poland in any meaningful way in the long term. It just cleared the way for a bunch of cronies with red flags to seize power after the war for a few decades before getting thrown out by (ironically enough) a pro-capitalist workers union.

The idea that a professional army (and one guilty of numerous crimes against humanity - not only against Polish army officers but workers, peasants, ethnic minorities, women and so on) could bring leftwing revolution at the point of the bayonet was simply wrong. Had these people been tried and convicted by a revolutionary court of Poles, that would have been one thing. That's not what happened - the Soviet army simply determined that all of these people were reactionaries worth killing.

[Conscript]

I am polish for the record, my father's side of the family is pretty much entirely polish.

Our nation has long been repressed by a variety of states, including the soviet union who pretty much destroyed any possibility for polish socialism by forcing their imperialist interests on us.

However that just makes me wish it was polish workers executing these scum.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

It wasn't the "Bolsheviks" who did this, most of the "Bolsheviks" were dead or rotting in Siberian gulags. It was Stalin's Red Army. Considering Capitalists currently run Poland, you can't reasonably argue that butchering a bunch of Polish army officers in 1945 actually helped the cause of communism in Poland in any meaningful way in the long term. It just cleared the way for a bunch of cronies with red flags to seize power after the war for a few decades before getting thrown out by (ironically enough) a pro-capitalist workers union.
Not the Bolsheviks who did this? The Soviet leader at the time was Joseph Stalin, one of the original Bolsheviks since 1903. The People's Commissar of Defense was Klement Voroshilov, a Bolshevik since 1903 as well. The commanders were almost life-long Bolsheviks as well. Chuikov joined the Bolsheviks and volunteered to serve in the Red Army in 1918, at the age of 19. Krivoshin joined the Bolsheviks and volunteered for the Red Army in 1918 as well, at the age of 18. Kovalev volunteered for the Red Army in 1918, at the age of 21. Timoshenko joined the Red Army in 1918, at the age of 23.

Stalin's inner circle consisted of life-long Bolsheviks too. Beria joined the party in 1917 when he was 18 years old. Molotov joined the party when he was 16, in 1906. Ordzhonikidze joined the party at the age of 17, in 1903. Mikoyan joined the party in 1915, at the age of 21. Kaganovich joined the party in 1911 when he was 19. Kalinin was a Bolshevik since 1903 and a communist since the 1890s. The list goes on and on. The Soviet leadership and the Red Army leadership consisted almost entirely of lifelong Bolsheviks that joined the party either before or during the 1905 revolution and weathered Czarist persecution during the reaction after the 1905 revolution and during WWI, or younger Bolsheviks who joined the cause in their teens and early 20s during the most dangerous phases(for communists) of the Civil War. These communists can't be disassociated from Bolshevism or the Russian Revolution, regardless of how many names of Trots and Bukharinites you can conjure up.



The idea that a professional army (and one guilty of numerous crimes against humanity - not only against Polish army officers but workers, peasants, ethnic minorities, women and so on) could bring leftwing revolution at the point of the bayonet was simply wrong.
So wrong that it actually happened. Good thing the bayonets were pointed the ruling classes of Poland, reactionary officers, landowners, capitalists and clergymen, not the Ukrainian and Belorussian peasants and workers who were liberated.


Had these people been tried and convicted by a revolutionary court of Poles, that would have been one thing. That's not what happened - the Soviet army simply determined that all of these people were reactionaries worth killing.
Yawn. Only Poles can judge Poles? Don't do that. Trial or no trial, the end result is the same: dead reactionaries in the ground. As far as I'm concerned, thinning the number of enemies to Soviet power during WWII was a mighty fine thing.

[argeiphontes]

dead reactionaries in the ground.

That has nothing to do with why they were killed. Good riddance to reactionaries indeed:

http://0.tqn.com/d/history1900s/1/0/6/I/1/stalinsign.jpg

[Rafiq]

If all the counter revolutionaries in Russia during the civil war were rounded up into a single forest and executed, imagine, the same goes for France. Why oppose Katyn because it was less pretty? If a polish revolution saw to the deaths of all of those people but on a local, scattered level, no one would give a shit.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

That has nothing to do with why they were killed. Good riddance to reactionaries indeed:


What's your point? Last time I checked the Soviets smashed the Nazis, stormed Berlin and won the war against fascism. Are you offended that the Soviets, in order to prevent the Soviet Union from being conquered by the Nazis and having their untermensch inhabitants either exterminated or enslaved by the glorious Aryan race, dabbled in realpolitik, played their cards exactly right, and maneuvered themselves into a position where they could win what they saw as an inevitable war against Nazi Germany and her allies?

Clearly they should have pursued an idealistic foreign policy instead. Who cares if that would have meant the victory of Nazism and a Holocaust of one hundred million victims. At least Russian ultralefts could have patted each other on their backs afterwards for being such fine idealists, before resuming their slave labor in Nazi concentration camps. Not to worry, they wouldn't spend much time in the Nazi camps; the life expectancy of Nazi forced-laborers/camp-slaves wasn't very high.

[argeiphontes]

What's your point? ... Are you offended

I'm offended that you're justifying the killing of prisoners of war for no reason. Please continue.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

I'm offended that you're justifying the killing of prisoners of war for no reason. Please continue.
What do you mean by "no reason"? There was a mighty huge, gigantic, enormous even, reason to kill officers of the quasi-fascist Polish army. The Soviets made the mistake of not liquidating such elements once. After the October Revolution, they showed mercy to, refused to arrest and released an entire army of Czarist officers and other officials, Provisional Government ministers and supporters and counter-revolutionaries of all stripes. The core of the White Movement was founded by these elements. Because of the Bolshevik refusal to execute them, Kornilov and his supporters were broken out of prison by other Kornilovists. Denikin I believe also escaped from prison or was released by the Bolsheviks. Wrangel was released by the Bolsheviks. Yudenich wasn't even arrested at all. There are hundreds of examples. What were the Soviets supposed to do with the Polish officer cadres? Release them and allow them to build up a guerrilla resistance movement against Soviet power? The USSR didn't need a fifth column in their rear while preparing for Operation Barbarossa.

Communists aren't European 12th century knights. There is no code of chivalry. If you have to execute prisoners of war, then you execute prisoners of war. And I'm not going to shed any tears over the killing of the most counter-revolutionary layer of Polish society in 1939-1940. The Second Polish Republic was among the most reactionary states in Europe at the time, and that's saying a lot. Fascists and reactionaries can eat lead, for all I care. Polish fascists and reactionaries don't get special treatment.

[argeiphontes]

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, then every day'd be Christmas. It's a question of basic human rights.

[Lensky]

I am polish, I support the mass murder of the petite-bourgeois / bourgeois officer corps in Katyn. Human rights are a liberal concept, they don't exist. We fight and struggle as proletarians not for rights or justice, but because we want to seize power.

[DasFapital]

So judging by these comments some people think being a leftist is just a fun stalinesque role playing game

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Not the Bolsheviks who did this? The Soviet leader at the time was Joseph Stalin, one of the original Bolsheviks since 1903. The People's Commissar of Defense was Klement Voroshilov, a Bolshevik since 1903 as well. The commanders were almost life-long Bolsheviks as well. Chuikov joined the Bolsheviks and volunteered to serve in the Red Army in 1918, at the age of 19. Krivoshin joined the Bolsheviks and volunteered for the Red Army in 1918 as well, at the age of 18. Kovalev volunteered for the Red Army in 1918, at the age of 21. Timoshenko joined the Red Army in 1918, at the age of 23.

Stalin's inner circle consisted of life-long Bolsheviks too. Beria joined the party in 1917 when he was 18 years old. Molotov joined the party when he was 16, in 1906. Ordzhonikidze joined the party at the age of 17, in 1903. Mikoyan joined the party in 1915, at the age of 21. Kaganovich joined the party in 1911 when he was 19. Kalinin was a Bolshevik since 1903 and a communist since the 1890s. The list goes on and on. The Soviet leadership and the Red Army leadership consisted almost entirely of lifelong Bolsheviks that joined the party either before or during the 1905 revolution and weathered Czarist persecution during the reaction after the 1905 revolution and during WWI, or younger Bolsheviks who joined the cause in their teens and early 20s during the most dangerous phases(for communists) of the Civil War. These communists can't be disassociated from Bolshevism or the Russian Revolution, regardless of how many names of Trots and Bukharinites you can conjure up.


The fact is that Stalin's clique was a small minority which had violently repressed much of the rest of the Bolshevik party, changing its nature in the process.



So wrong that it actually happened. Good thing the bayonets were pointed the ruling classes of Poland, reactionary officers, landowners, capitalists and clergymen, not the Ukrainian and Belorussian peasants and workers who were liberated.


Actually it was pointed at many of them - anyone from an ethnic group unlucky enough to have been deemed a "Nazi collaborator" by the Soviet government. Ethnically discriminatory collective punishment against workers and peasants was quite common.



Yawn. Only Poles can judge Poles? Don't do that. Trial or no trial, the end result is the same: dead reactionaries in the ground. As far as I'm concerned, thinning the number of enemies to Soviet power during WWII was a mighty fine thing.

It's not that only Poles can judge Poles, it's that there was no real social and economic revolution, simply the installation of a pro-Soviet puppet regime which ended up imploding less than five decades later. The Katyn massacre didn't liberate the workers and peasants of Poland, it was just a way for the USSR to decapitate the old Polish ruling class to make room for one more aligned with the interest of the Soviet state. Part of this is evidenced in the arbitrary decision to redraw the borders of Poland and Germany against the interests of the workers and peasants of the country.

I don't dispute that the human rights complaints are hypocritical coming from countries like Britain and France, which committed their own war crimes. That doesn't mean that this event was particularly revolutionary, however.

[Magic Carpets Corp.]

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, then every day'd be Christmas. It's a question of basic human rights.
Good thing that communists, especially Marxists, couldn't give less of a shit about bourgeois concepts like "human rights". Reactionaries and fascists that stand in the way of human progress have only one right: the right to shut the fuck up while being shot in the back of the head.


The fact is that Stalin's clique was a small minority which had violently repressed much of the rest of the Bolshevik party, changing its nature in the process.
The "Stalinist clique" wasn't a "small minority", it was the vast majority. The "small minorities" were the "Left" Opposition of Trotsky/United Opposition of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev and the Right Opposition of Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov.

Even said oppositionists admitted that their opposition made up only a small minority of the party, which is why they lost. But I'm sure you know better.


Actually it was pointed at many of them - anyone from an ethnic group unlucky enough to have been deemed a "Nazi collaborator" by the Soviet government. Ethnically discriminatory collective punishment against workers and peasants was quite common.
Actually, I don't disagree with you here, in the main, however, this doesn't apply to Poland. During the 1939 war with Poland(if you can call it a war, the Soviets began the invasion 2 weeks after the Nazis started theirs - by that time, the Polish government had collapsed, and the Polish army, now being attacked from their rear by the Soviets, didn't put up any sort of fight and collapsed as well, I believe the Soviets lost a bit over a thousand men during this military operation, mostly from disease), the Soviets newly-gained lands were inhabited primarily by Ukrainians and Belorussians. Even though of all the Soviet nationalities, Ukrainians were the most likely to collaborate with the Nazis, they were never discriminated against. The Belarussians were probably the nationality least likely to revolt against Soviet power, and they were never discriminated against either.



It's not that only Poles can judge Poles, it's that there was no real social and economic revolution, simply the installation of a pro-Soviet puppet regime which ended up imploding less than five decades later.
Poland underwent extreme social and economical transformation during the 1940s and 1950s, actually.


The Katyn massacre didn't liberate the workers and peasants of Poland, it was just a way for the USSR to decapitate the old Polish ruling class to make room for one more aligned with the interest of the Soviet state.
So what you are saying is, the USSR killed Polish ruling class cadres to make a communist takeover of Poland easier, and this is a bad thing?


Part of this is evidenced in the arbitrary decision to redraw the borders of Poland and Germany against the interests of the workers and peasants of the country.
Arbitrary? There was nothing arbitrary about the decision. The necessity of the decision was dictated by the strategic interests of the Soviet state.

By the way, even though I believe the Katyn executions were committed by the Nazis(all of the evidence points to this), I wouldn't hold it against the Soviets if they were behind it. Either the Nazis, an enemy of the working class, killed other enemies of the working class, or the Soviets, the incarnation of working class interests, killed a bunch of enemies of the working class. The outcome is favorable either way.

[argeiphontes]

Good thing that communists, especially Marxists, couldn't give less of a shit about bourgeois concepts like "human rights". Reactionaries and fascists that stand in the way of human progress have only one right: the right to shut the fuck up while being shot in the back of the head.

Well, I haven't met these people, except for a few on this board, and I'm not sure what Marxism has to do with human rights, but I for one am glad to hear it. Stalin would have been the first such person on my list. Heck, if you add in the fact that he set the cause back by 200 years and is probably personally responsible for us never experiencing true communism in our lifetimes, then I can only conclude that there has never been a greater enemy of the people than Stalin.

[erupt]

In almost every revolution, soldiers and military men become just as polarized as the working class. There is nothing to tell me that out of those 19-21,000 "quasi-fascists," everyone of them were vehemently opposed to revolution or even Communism with a capital "C". I bet they became vehemently opposed, and their families and most people they know, though, thanks to the infallible Uncle Joe.

Also, in reference to whomever said they played the Nazis for the better, why did the USSR get invaded by Nazi Germany? It seems to be fair to say both Hitler and Stalin knew what was coming, but if the Soviets were right in every realpolitik and militaristic manner, they would not have been invaded in the first place.

[Red_Banner]

Why should Russia be soley responsible?

They are not the only USSR sucessor.

Ukraine and Turkmenistan are too, they didn't become members of the CIS.

Members of the CIS had to acknowledge the Russian Federation as the sole USSR sucessor.

So why aren't these other states getting any blame?

[erupt]

Why should Russia be soley responsible?

They are not the only USSR sucessor.

Ukraine and Turkmenistan are too, they didn't become members of the CIS.

Members of the CIS had to acknowledge the Russian Federation as the sole USSR sucessor.

So why aren't these other states getting any blame?

Good question; one could even argue all soviet repubics part of the USSR at the time should be included.

[Red Commissar]

You can't possibly be serious. You can only delegitimize what's legitimate.

Well, the Soviet Union was a "legitimate" state and for better or worse seen as the representative of socialism and it's really hard to go around and think that this is just against stalinism, not against communism in general (most of these people aren't beyond lumping the anti-stalinist Marxists with them because they are opposed to communism on principle, regardless of what human face you try to stick on it). For the record I think what the Soviet Union did in Poland was oppressive and terrible, but at the same time moves like these are meant to draw communists under the same brush as oppressors.

Katyn was a large loss of life but it paled in comparison to the the vast majority of the Polish Jewish population being wiped out, something the current Polish state doesn't really pursue beyond some token apologies and such, which in of itself also implicates the Soviet Union in their role in letting the Nazis roll into Poland. This does not promote any political goal in Poland the same way attacking the immediately previous government would. IMO the holocaust in Poland is more damning to the Soviet Union than the execution of some officers from the gentry, but it's more politically expedient to focus on this massacre.