All events · The World Wars

The Katyn Massacre of Polish Prisoners

1940 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Confinement Mass Killing Killing was the defining act

Confined

21,857

The Politburo decision of 5 March 1940 authorised the shooting of 14,700 prisoners of war held in the Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps and 11,000 prisoners held in the western Ukrainian and Belorussian provinces. A 1959 memorandum from KGB chief Alexander Shelepin to Khrushchev states that 21,857 people were shot in total. These are Soviet internal documents, released by Russia in 1990-92 and reproduced in the record of the European Court of Human Rights.

Share of the population affected

8.7%

of the Polish military personnel, police and officials taken into Soviet captivity after the invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939, 1939

Killed

21,768–22,000

direct killing

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What happened

After the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in September 1939 the NKVD held tens of thousands of captured Polish officers, police, border guards, officials and landowners. On 5 March 1940 the Politburo approved a proposal by Lavrentiy Beria to shoot them without trial as 'hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet power'. About 21,857 people were killed in April and May 1940 at Katyn near Smolensk, in the NKVD prisons of Kalinin and Kharkov and at other sites. When German forces uncovered the Katyn graves in 1943 the Soviet Union blamed Germany, a claim it maintained until 13 April 1990, when the Soviet government acknowledged NKVD responsibility. In 2010 the Russian State Duma adopted a declaration attributing the massacre to Stalin and other Soviet leaders. The Russian criminal investigation was discontinued in 2004 and much of its file remains classified; the European Court of Human Rights found in 2013 that it could not examine the adequacy of that investigation but held that Russia had breached its duty to cooperate with the Court.

Parties

The Soviet NKVD shot Polish officers, police and officials held prisoner after the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland

Disputed

Russia acknowledges Soviet responsibility but has not classified the killings as genocide or war crimes in domestic law, has kept much of the investigation file classified, and has resisted the legal rehabilitation of individual victims sought by Polish relatives.

The denominator

Soviet records indicate roughly 230,000-250,000 Polish servicemen and police were captured in September-October 1939; most rank-and-file conscripts were released or handed to Germany, while officers, police and officials were held in the Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps and in NKVD prisons in the western oblasts. The Politburo decision of 5 March 1940 designated about 25,700 of these for execution, of whom 21,857 were shot — a figure confirmed by the Shelepin note released from the Soviet archives in 1992.

The more meaningful ratio is against the roughly 25,700 prisoners the Politburo order designated for execution, of whom 85 per cent were killed; measured against all Polish prisoners taken in 1939 the share looks far smaller because most conscripts were released.

Where the baseline comes from

Katyn massacre — Wikipediaopen-edited
Soviet invasion of Poland — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

The figure of 21,857 comes from the 1959 Shelepin memorandum and is the count used by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and by the European Court of Human Rights; small variations reflect whether prisoners shot at related sites and those whose remains have not been located are included.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionArbitrary Detention

The Politburo order, the transport lists and the execution procedure are documented in the Soviet files released in 1990-92 and set out in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights.

Formal findings

Government of the USSR (1990) — Official statement of 13 April 1990 acknowledging that the NKVD carried out the killings and describing them as one of the grave crimes of Stalinism — source
State Duma of the Russian Federation (2010) — Declaration 'On the Katyn tragedy and its victims' of 26 November 2010, stating that the massacre was carried out on the direct orders of Stalin and other Soviet leaders — source
European Court of Human Rights (Grand Chamber) (2013) — Janowiec and Others v. Russia: held that Russia had failed in its obligation under Article 38 to cooperate with the Court, while finding the complaint about the effectiveness of the investigation outside its temporal jurisdiction — source