“We are brothers”. Mikhail Gorbachev expressed condolences over aircrash near Smolensk

Mikhail Gorbachev’s Interview to Novaya Gazeta, April 10, 2010

We called Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who conveyed the truth about Katyn to the Polish government in 1990. When did he learn about the Katyn killings?

Gorbachev. For a long time, I didn’t know the truth. We proceeded from the information provided by the Burdenko Commission, which said that the Polish officers had been executed by the Germans.

I became General Secretary, and the Polish authorities, Jaruzelski, actively raised the issue. By that time, we had started to open up the archives. We opened them but could not find anything – until the moment when we came upon the archives of the convoy troops, those that guarded the Poles.

It then became clear that it was our fault, that the massacre of the Polish officers had been committed by our agencies.

In spring 1990 we made an official statement: The bitter and horrifying truth is that our country did it. That is what happened, and there is no denying it. We set up a commission of our two countries to investigate the tragedy.

On the day I was stepping down as President and was transferring powers, officials from the archive insisted repeatedly on being received ASAP. I asked them what’s so pressing.

They replied: Katyn.

When we met they told me that there’s a Special File (that’s how the most important parts of the archive were called). I now think that they had known about it but kept silent; but finally they stepped forward, for it was my last day in the Kremlin. So here we were: the file contained a memo from the head of the KGB, Shelepin, to Khrushchev, saying that it was the Soviets rather than the Germans who had killed the Poles in Katyn, and it was later that the authorities made everything to conform to the false conclusions of the Burdenko Commission. Well, we already knew some of it from the “convoy troops” archives and had told the Polish side about it.

But then! The Special File contained a report from Stalin’s minister of internal affairs, about five or seven pages, detailing the number of officers and junior commanders held as POWs, and where they were held (Katyn!). And the minister’s proposal : to execute all of them. Slaughter everyone! What did Stalin do? He submitted it to the Politburo and by the stroke of a pencil they ended the lives of thousands of human beings. The resolution’s meaning was “in favor” - they supported Stalin. So the execution order went out.

Thousands of Soviet citizens were killed in those woods in the same way, getting a bullet in their head.

I have that file to Boris Yeltsin before leaving the President’s office: “Now it’s for you to pursue it.” Yeltsin didn’t hide anything and gave those documents in Warsaw to the Polish government.
I am talking to you in a state of shock.

Our two nations are in an unenviable position, having inherited a relationship with a bitter history. The President and the government of Russia have done everything that needed to be done, that had to be done, in organizational and in human terms.

We need to bring to conclusion the investigation of the Katyn killings. And the most important things: let’s draw closer together in common grief.

The President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and his delegation died in performance of their duties. They were hurrying to join the people, that’s why they didn’t land in Minsk or somewhere else.

I express my deepest condolences to the Poles, to Poland.

I express my deepest condolences to the citizens of Russia. 

This is a common tragedy.

It’s a tragic disaster but let’s stick to the harsh facts, not mystifications. Let me repeat: the Polish delegation was hurrying to join the people waiting for them.

I want to urge both the Polish and the Russian citizens to draw closer, to show understanding and trust.

We are brothers.

Novaya Gazeta, 12.04.2010