5.3.1940
People's Commissar of the Interior of the USSR Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria handed Stalin File No. 794/B, in which he defined Polish prisoners as hardened opponents of the Soviet system, with no possibility of reform. It states that the NKVD considers it undesirable that these prominent prisoners of war, hostile to the USSR and communism in general, should return home. It proposes a special solution, the application of the highest possible punishment against the above - execution by shooting.
The same day, a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union signed by Stalin and all senior members of the leadership (Beria, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Molotov, Voroshilov) decided that some 26,000 Polish enemies should be subjected to the ultimate punishment. This resolution decided the fate of 15,000 Polish officers, border guards, intelligence and counter-intelligence officers, gendarmes, policemen and prison service personnel held in the camps mentioned above. However, the other 11,000 Poles who were held in prisons and camps throughout the western belt of the Soviet Union were no longer just soldiers. They were settlers, landowners, various businessmen, priests and members of the intelligentsia.
Source.
Katyn Massacre.
People's Commissar of the Interior of the USSR Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria handed Stalin File No. 794/B, in which he defined Polish prisoners as hardened opponents of the Soviet system, with no possibility of reform. It states that the NKVD considers it undesirable that these prominent prisoners of war, hostile to the USSR and communism in general, should return home. It proposes a special solution, the application of the highest possible punishment against the above - execution by shooting.
The same day, a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union signed by Stalin and all senior members of the leadership (Beria, Kaganovich, Kalinin, Molotov, Voroshilov) decided that some 26,000 Polish enemies should be subjected to the ultimate punishment. This resolution decided the fate of 15,000 Polish officers, border guards, intelligence and counter-intelligence officers, gendarmes, policemen and prison service personnel held in the camps mentioned above. However, the other 11,000 Poles who were held in prisons and camps throughout the western belt of the Soviet Union were no longer just soldiers. They were settlers, landowners, various businessmen, priests and members of the intelligentsia.
Source.
Katyn Massacre.