• Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    3 个月前

    Our poor smol nazi collaborators “”““military officers””“” massacred in the Soviet Union uhhh…territory of Polish-Russian conflict like dis if u cri everytiem :cri:

    • mr_sunburn [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      3 个月前

      Is there an existing historical claim that these people were Nazis collaborators? From what I’ve read, the USSR didn’t make that claim in the end and Gorbachev acknowledged the killings.

      Certainly the Polish government officials were anti-Communist and bourgeois, but difficult to be a Nazi collaborator when you’re actively being invaded by the Nazis from the West.

      I will read anything you send me if I’m missing useful context of some kind.

      • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        3 个月前

        I was memeing a bit in my post. So to be serious: the Russian government acknowledged the massacre after the Soviet Union collapsed and the archives were opened. The original discovery was made by Nazis, which itself is suspect. The actual massacre occurred in Russia, not in Poland, near the Belarusian border.

        The questions we need to ask: why were Polish prisoners executed in Russia, nowhere near Poland? Why weren’t they given the option to serve in penal battalions like other prisoners? The answer is because they were captured for anti-communism and couldn’t be relied on in the coming nazi advance. Rather than risk a mutiny that defects to the other side, the prisoners were executed.

          • cornishon@lemmygrad.ml
            2·
            3 个月前

            https://www.idcommunism.com/2016/04/the-real-story-of-katyn-massacre.html

            Bourgeois sources blithely claim that Soviet evidence in support of blaming the Germans for the atrocity was either totally absent or based purely on hearsay evidence of terrorised inhabitants of the region. They don’t mention one piece of evidence which even Goebbels had to admit was a bit of a bummer from his point of view. He wrote in his diary on 8 May 1943, "Unfortunately, German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn … It is essential that this incident remains a top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped. "

            Furthermore, documents were found on some of the bodies which had obviously been missed by the Germans when they doctored the evidence. These included a letter dated September 1940, a postcard dated 12 November 1940, a pawn ticket receipted 14 March 1941 and another receipted 25 March 1941. Receipts dated 6 April 1941, 5 May 1941, 15 May 1941 and an unmailed postcard in Polish dated 20 June 1941. Although all these dates pre-date Soviet withdrawal, they all postdate the time of the alleged murder of the prisoners by the Soviet authorities in the spring of 1940, the time given as the date of the supposed massacre by all those whom the Germans were able to bully into giving false testimony. If, as is claimed by bourgeois propagandists, these documents are forgeries, it would have been the easiest thing to forge documents which postdated the Soviet departure, but his was not done - and it was not done because the documents found were undoubtedly genuine.

            “Katyn is the best documented “crime of Stalinism.” If they admit that the “official version” of Katyn is a lie, what else might turn out to be false? And then, what is the ideological justification for the dissolution of the USSR?” Professor Grover Furr asked.

            During the analysis of the “Beria letter” (which consists of four pages) he magnified the text 3 times and carefully compared the images. Molokov found that pages 1, 2 and 3 are written on a different typewriter than page 4. He has, among other things, examined the letters’ distance from each other, their altitudinal and the clarity of the printing ink. His conclusion is that the pages 1, 2 and 3 are consistently equal. But page 4 (the one with Beria’s signature on) differs from the first three pages. It should be added that the typewriter which was used to print page 4 has a font that is known to have been on one of the typewriters in Beria’s office, while the font from the typewriter that wrote pages 1-3 is unknown (it has not been found in any of the documents sent by Beria).

      • mr_sunburn [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        3 个月前

        The choice to put this where it is certainly is bizarre and part of the anti-Communist obsession in America. On the flip side, no denying the USSR did massacre those Polish government officials.

        Pre-invasion Poland was a conservative quasi-totalitarian state, but killing low level government and military prisoners was not justified.

        Now… why Baltimore needs to be reminded of this when they go shopping at J Jill I’m not sure….

          • mr_sunburn [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            11·
            3 个月前

            Yes and also read the plaque you posted.

            I thank you for pointing out the weirdness of having this memorial here given the context, it had faded into the background of the city for me. The purpose of this monument seemingly serves is primarily anti-communist propaganda - good example of Parenti critique. There should be a monument to the victims of slavery or indigenous genocide well before this particular event given their greater proximity and historical impact on the city.

            At the same time, the USSR was in the wrong to kill these Polish prisoners. In no way is the USSR the equivalent of Nazis, but this was a massacre and a shameful historical event. Shameful as the fact, that the Nazis and the USSR agreed to partition the nations in eastern Europe in an imperialist pact and providing oil and grain to Nazi Germany and turning the KPD in exile over to the Gestapo and killing them in purges. The 4th International tendencies critique of Stalin’s rule stands IMO.

            • ikilledtheradiostar [comrade/them, love/loves]@hexbear.net
              OPEnglish
              2·
              3 个月前

              i actually don’t have an opinion on the USSR’s behavior since one, removing intelligentsia is a vital first step in eliminating an ideology, you can’t reeducate the educators, fascists and communists should do this if they’re serious about bringing about the changes they want.

              and two, concrete details about the massacre are scant and muddled. as a comment here pointed out

              what i do have a strong opinion on is the incident being used as anti communist propaganda

              • mr_sunburn [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                1·
                3 个月前

                I’ve learned almost everything about it just today since you brought it to my attention. I’m an interested party since I’m a communist in Baltimore.

                It doesn’t appear to be ‘scant’ as documents were produced and leaked to the Polish government confirming Beria and Stalin’s involvement during the Yeltsin/Gorbachev power struggle. It would probably do some good to view much in that period through the political lens it was intended to have - Gorbachev “opening up” the USSR and relations with Poland to sustain as much state power while shedding socialist ideology, Yeltsin actively trying to undermine the whole enterprise. Both were liberalization forces trying to break from a Stalinist past with an axe to grind.

                Still, doesn’t seem like there’s much historical doubt cast on this incident from sources I can find. There’s this Anti-Kayn wikipedia page which has some arguments regarding similar numbers of Soviet POWs killed from malnourishment or intentional neglect in Poland. The Polish killed were intentionally executed in contrast. Alas, seemingly all the actors involved in this discussion are US state-backed NGOs pushing back on claims of shared grievances and centering the discussion in an anti-Communist context. Would be nice to get out of the anglo-centered Wikipedia context, but that’s quite a research commitment.

                So my conclusion reading so far is: war crimes probably happened during WWII and the Soviets were no exception and that’s a bad thing. Personally, I’ll never be at a stage of political development where I would consider mass executions necessary or a write-off.

          • mr_sunburn [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            3 个月前

            I’m very likely just wrong, I haven’t read a ton on this subject before today. It’s pretty difficult for me to parse contradictory claims about this particular subject due to the political charge associated with it, and I should keep abreast of the dominant US-biased lens through which my historical knowledge is founded, so I’ll have to keep reading. Then again, it would feel great if the USSR didn’t commit war crimes and confirm a lot of priors, so I have to challenge that bias as well. The idea it was a German false flag that then got echoed during perestroika challenges the Western narrative certainly. I see this fuller Goebbels quote from a Reddit thread:

            “Unfortunately German munitions were found in the graves of Katyn. The question of how they got there needs clarification. It is either a case of munitions sold by us during the period of our friendly arrangement with the Soviet Russians, or of the Soviets themselves throwing these munitions into the graves. In any case it is essential that this incident be kept top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped.” (Goebbels, p. 354)

            Which seems to indicate to me that this was intentionally politicized narrative from the start and used for propaganda purposes. But also that the Stalin Society source you cited above found the shorter paraphrase convenient. Also, I cannot read German directly so I’m reduced to relying on reddit threads and trying to extrapolate. At the very least I have to say that this isn’t a settled matter and there’s a lot of active debate about it. Before today I had no position on Grover Furr, which seems to be the hook a lot of the challenging narratives are hung on.