Criticism of Russia's attitude to Katyń

On the national holiday commemorating the victims of the Katyń Massacre in which several thousand Polish officers and civilians were shot, the liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza criticises Russia's attitude to the massacre, which continues to be a bone of contention between the two countries: "The Russians say the Poles have a 'Katyń problem', but they're wrong because they're the ones with a problem. We believe people should express sympathy for the victims of this crime, and rehabilitate them, while the executioners must be condemned. But with its schizophrenic resistance Russia condemns the victims and defends the executioners. And this is about more than Katyń, it concerns the Stalinist crimes in general. The Russians never stop looking for one justification or another. By now we're used to seeing how the official [Russian] propaganda and judiciary approach the subject of the crimes of the Soviet NKWD [People´s commissariat for internal affairs] in 1940. The courts conceal evidence of Katyń, and refuse to rehabilitate the murdered ... Poles."

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