Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth [Paperback]

Allen Paul (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2010

 Twenty years ago, Allen Paul wrote the first post-communist account of one of the greatest but least-known tragedies of the 20th century: Stalin’s annihilation of Poland’s officer corps and massive deportation of so-called “bourgeoisie elements” to Siberia. Today, these brutal events are symbolized by one word, Katyn—a crime that still bitterly divides Poles and Russians. Paul’s richly updated account covers Russian attempts to recant their admission of guilt for the murders in Katyn Forest and includes recently translated documents from Russian military archives, eyewitness accounts of two perpetrators, and secret official minutes published here for the first time that confirm that U.S. government cover-up of the crime continued long after the war ended.

Paul’s masterful narrative recreates what daily life was like for three Polish families amid momentous events of World War II—from the treacherous Nazi-Soviet invasion in 1939 to a rigged election in 1947 that sealed Poland’s doom. The patriarch of each family was among the Polish officers personally ordered by Stalin to be shot. One of the families suffered daily repression under the German General Government. Like thousands of other Poles, two of the families were deported to Siberia, where they nearly died from forced labor, starvation, and neglect. Through painstaking research, the author reconstructs the lives of these families including such stories as a miraculous escape on the last transport of Poles leaving Russia and a mother’s daring ski trek over the Carpathian Mountains to rescue a daughter she had not seen in six years. At the heart of the drama is the Poles’ uncommon belief in “victory in defeat”—that their struggles made them strong and that freedom and independence, inevitably, would be regained.

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

 Praise from the first edition of Katyn

“A moving reconstruction of the human side of these events … the volume is especially valuable in its tracing of individuals and families through the barbarous darkness of the 1940s.”—The New York Times

"Not only a riveting human drama but a powerful historical exposé."—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser

 

"Allen has given us the complete story of Katyn . a wonderful companion to my film!"—Andrzej Wajda, Academy Award-winning Director of Katyn 

"Poles everywhere fell in love with this book . twice a bestseller in Poland."—Malgorzata Maruszkin, Publisher–Non-Fiction, Bertelsmann/Poland

 “A moving reconstruction of the human side of these events … the volume is especially valuable in its tracing of individuals and families through the barbarous darkness of the 1940s.”—The New York Times

“Paul marshals an impressive array of research gathered from unpublished documents, monographs and interviews to support his interpretations. The detailed personal experiences of three Polish families woven through the text transform what otherwise would be a standard historical narrative into a poignant testimony to the remarkable capacity of human beings to endure tyranny in its most inhumane form.”—The Washington Post

 

 “As Allen Paul makes plain in his often moving history of the Katyn massacres, Stalin’s execution order was a deliberate attempt to eliminate the Polish educated classes and clear the ground for eventual Soviet dominance of the country.”—The New York Review of Books

 “Allen Paul has thoroughly researched the murders, but more important, he has laid bare the massive coverup of the murders and of the Soviet guilt—a coverup that appears to have involved Roosevelt and Churchill, as well as Stalin.”—The Boston Globe

 

 “Vividly written, intensely personal and passionately anti-Soviet.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

 “A masterful chronicle … Paul tenaciously tracks and Katyn cover-up and its festering repercussions.”—Publisher’s Weekly

 

 “Powerful examination. Well researched and ably written: a fine and harrowing study.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Engrossing. Powerfully written and filled with intriguing detail. A compelling human drama and a tribute to the unconquerable nature of the Polish people and nation.”—Buffalo News

 “A formidable undertaking … well crafted and easy to read.”—The Polish Review

About the Author

 Allen Paul is a former Associated Press reporter and political speechwriter. In April 2009, the President of Poland awarded Allen Paul the Order of Merit for Katyn.

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 430 pages
• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press; 1 edition (March 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875806341
• ISBN-13: 978-0875806341
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A lifelong writer, Allen first worked for The Raleigh Times and the Associated Press covering politics and racial strife. Later he wrote speeches for prominent public officials including one member of the cabinet, a governor, a committee chairman in congress and the co-chairman of one presidential campaign.

Allen holds an A.B. degree in English from Guilford College. He earned a Masters of International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). It was during his studies at the SAIS campus in Bologna, Italy that he first encountered the Katyń issue. In April, 2009 he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit by the President of Poland for his work on the Katyń crime.

This spring Allen was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship which will enable him to spend a year in Poland researching a book about Solidarity. He will be based at the University of Warsaw starting in September. He made the first of many trips to Poland in 1989 and was researching the Katyń subject there in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. At the present he is finishing a historical novel which will be published in the fall of 2011. It is based on a true story about the Polish underground's daring plot to expose Stalin's guilt at Katyń.

His book Katyń: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth is an epic portrayal of how the Poles resisted Joseph Stalin's attempt to Sovietize their country. It tells the story of three families trapped at the center of one of the 20th Century's greatest if least-known tragedies: the mass liquidation of Poland's officer corps and the massive deportation of so-called "bourgeoisie elements" to Siberia. The book describes the Poles' indomitable will to survive and their unyielding demand for the truth about how these horrific policies were carried out. Two editions of Katyń have been bestsellers in Poland; a Czech edition was a bestseller in 2008. New editions released in the U.S. and Poland include revelations on the high-level U.S. cover up of Katyń. The crime still remains the most painful thorn in Russo-Polish relations.

The book first was published in 1991 Charles Scribner's Sons to wide acclaim. Robert Conquest, one of the foremost authorities on the Soviet system, called it "a moving reconstruction of the human side of these events" in the New York Times. The Boston Globe wrote that "Allen Paul has thoroughly researched the murders, but more important, he has laid bare the massive cover-up of the murders and of the Soviet guilt--a cover-up that appears to have involved Roosevelt and Churchill, as well as Stalin."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book everyone should read, July 22, 2010

By 

thomas olsinski - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth (Paperback)

I purchased this book from Amazon since you seem to carry books not on the bookstore shelves! Originally I wanted to learn more about my cultural history, being part Polish. I was impressed by the writer's scholarship as seen by the references. I was emotionally impacted by horror story and the quality of Mr. Paul's writing. I read with interest the author's opinions and obeservations blended (and appropriately separated) with the facts. This is a well written history that should impact everyone in the world by the truth it tells.
I was embarrassed how little I knew about the events with the pages. I am sure most people know little about the Russian execution massacre of Polish officers at Katyn Forest in 1940. Even worse was the subterfuge and lies and informaion burial perpetrated by so many high level people. Having seen the grainy black and white war crimes trials in Nuremberg, it haunts me that the murdering executioners of these Polish elite went home unscathed and pensioned for the rest of their lives while the world watched other heinous ciminals punished. The world didn't care.
As to Fanklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and their advisors: I recall someone once said that a greater crime than evil comes from good men who allow evil to exist. With all the well explained logical rationale in this wonderful book about these two icon's motivations, I still take away the fact that historical people I once admired (Churchill) and accepted (Roosevelt) allowed Stalin to get away with Polish executions (murder) in an attempt to destroy the Polish culture. Happily he failed.As Mr. Paul observes: in the long term the truth has prevailed.
In summary, not only should all people of Polish descent read this book, but so should anyone interested in the machinations around WW2 and the outcomes we live with today. To me, this book is a must read for history lovers.
Mr. Paul - thank you for all your work on the research and for bringing this story to the public. Well done, sir!

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Non-Polish American Studies the Katyn Massacre, June 6, 2010

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth (Paperback)

Very seldom do we encounter a book such as this--where a non-Pole has such a thorough and relatively factual understanding of Polish history. Allen Paul not only discusses the genocidal Katyn massacre itself in considerable detail, but also gives a thorough review of Polish history in WWII and the immediate aftermath.

German-Soviet collaboration and mutual military assistance had long predated Hitler's coming to power in 1933 (p. 57). Paul is perceptive in his repudiation of oft-repeated canards regarding Polish conduct during the German-Soviet attack in 1939. He realizes that the Polish Air Force was not destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war (p. 23). (Functional Polish airplanes had earlier been scattered throughout secret airfields for this very contingency). He knows that Polish cavalry did not charge German tanks (p. 30). It was simply a canard from German propaganda that became "true" through retelling.

Paul provides graphic detail on the massacre itself. It was not just a cold-blooded shooting of captive enemy officers, but a systematic destruction of the very cream of Polish society--in effect a "beheading" of Poland. (Being unmistakeably a nation-destroying act, it was clearly a form of genocide). Some Poles valiantly resisted getting shot point blank, as indicated by the tied-up corpses (p. 353). Forensic evidence alone put the blame for this crime squarely on the Soviets (p. 229). There is riveting testimony provided by Stanislaw Swianiewicz, one of the few surviving eyewitnesses (pp. 103-on).

Paul provides a good description of the "airplane accident" that claimed the life of Wladyslaw Sikorski on July 4, 1943: "Coming when it did, only weeks after the discoveries at Katyn, Sikorski's death seemed too convenient. Evidence of sabotage was not found, but conclusive proof of an accident was not found either. Continuing doubts persisted. On November 12, 1952, Sumner Welles, who was U. S. under secretary of state at the time of the crash, told a House committee investigating the Katyn murders, `I have always believed that there was sabotage.' Welles noted that Sikorski had narrowly escaped death in a similar incident the year before in Montreal. `To put it mildly, it would be an odd coincidence,' Welles concluded." (pp. 239-240).

Paul discusses many of the heart-wrenching difficulties faced by the remaining Poles, released from Soviet captivity as part of the Sikorski-Maisky pact. [My mother, aunt, grandmother, and biological father were among them].

Unfortunately, there is an undercurrent of blame-the-circumstances thinking behind Paul's depiction of the sellout of Poland by Churchill and Roosevelt in the events leading up to and including Teheran and Yalta. Yes, the Soviet Union had done the largest share of the fighting. But the Soviet Union was also heavily dependent upon western Lend-Lease aid, which could have been judiciously dispensed to force Stalin to recognize Poland's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Yes, the west feared the possibility of a Soviet-Nazi separate peace. But Stalin was saddled with an identical fear of a western-Nazi separate peace.

Paul also implies that the Polish government-in-exile should have been more flexible, and more willing to compromise with Stalin. But what evidence is there that Poland's postwar fate would have been any different had it in fact been more "realistic"? With Hitler in 1939, the real issue had not been Danzig and the Polish Corridor, but the existence of Polish sovereignty. Likewise, with Stalin in 1941-onwards, the real issue had not been the location of the Soviet-Polish border but the existence of Polish sovereignty.

Paul has a mistaken understanding of Poland's prewar eastern half (the Kresy) (p. 248). He says that, in principle, the Soviet Union had just as much right to the territory as Poland because it "had been neither Polish nor Russian". That is utter nonsense. The Kresy had been part of Poland for centuries before the Partitions, and some parts of them (eastern Galicia) had never once been part of Russia until the Soviet-German conquest of Poland in 1939. The prewar Kresy had a 20-40% ethnic Polish minority (depending upon whose figures one believes). The percentage of Russians, outside of western Byelorussia (if one counts Byelorussians as Russians), was negligible. Nor is it correct that the non-Poles of the Kresy had "chafed under Polish rule." This was true only of some of them. In any case, few of them willingly preferred to be part of the Soviet Union. Ironically, Paul demolishes his own argument when he cites Sikorski, who, in retort to Maisky's assertion about Poland needing to be strictly limited to so-called ethnographic frontiers, pointed out that the Soviet Union was itself a multi-ethnic, multi-national federation! (p. 158).

At the time this book was written, the Soviet Union had finally acknowledged blame for the Katyn Massacre. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security advisor to then President Carter, said in December 1990: "Recently, several direct participants in the mass murder of the defenseless Polish officers in Katyn and elsewhere--15,000 of them [now known to be 22,000] shot one by one in the back of the head--have been identified. If Gorbachev has totally broken with Stalinism, why has not a single one of them been put on trial? The Eichmann of the operation, a former NKVD major by the name of Serepenko who was in charge of the `logistics' of the operation, lives comfortably in Moscow." (p. 340).

Numerous Nazis have been found and punished for their crimes, but not a single Soviet Communist has been punished for his crimes. THAT is perhaps the greatest, and cruelest, legacy of the Katyn massacre.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wound that refuses to heal, April 28, 2010

By 

Tom (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth (Paperback)

Allen Paul wrote the original edition of Katyn back in 1991 so this recently published soft cover revision is positively welcomed.

While Poles have been painfully aware of the story of Katyn since 1943 few others outside of Poland had ever heard of the massacre. After the Soviets invaded Poland in September 1939, in conjunction with the German attack from the West, military and civilian leaders were transported to several prison camps in the western USSR. On March 5, 1940, Stalin signed the execution order and between April and May approximately 22,000 Poles were murdered by the NKVD Soviet secret police, the bodies buried in mass graves at remote sites (one near the Katyn Forest). Stalin's motivation was to remove Poland's military and civilian elite as part of his strategy to dominate the country.

In addition to this group of elites, the NKVD deported another 300,000 Polish citizens to various locations in the Soviet Union. Approximately half that number died of disease and starvation. It's interesting to note that although Polish ethno-nationalists are fond of ascribing all Soviet crimes to Jews, a propotionate number of Polish Jews died at Katyn and and were deported to the Gulag.

Germany turned on it's Soviet ally in June, 1941 and pushed the Red Army back beyond Katyn. The mass graves were discovered by the Germans in April 1943 and used as propaganda against the Western-Soviet alliance. Of course, the Soviets denied their involvement, blaming the Germans despite evidence to the contrary. The controversy created serious tensions in the alliance and the London-based Polish government-in-exile was basically told to drop its inquiries in the interests of the greater war effort.

Throughout the post-war years the Soviets kept to their official version of the massacre, blaming the Germans, although every Pole knew differently. Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin finally admitted to Soviet complicity, however official Soviet documents have remained sealed to this day. The Russians fear too much cooperation may result in demands for reparations. Russians also counter Polish indignation over Katyn with accusations that 20,000 Red Army prisoners of war died in Polish internment camps at the time of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920.

For the Polish people, Katyn became a national symbol of martyrdom and oppression under the rule of the Soviets.

Allen Paul's book is a very readable account of one of the most tragic episodes in Polish history. With the release of Andrzej Wajda's film in 2007 along with the tragic airplane crash on April 10, 2010 which claimed the lives of ninety-six Polish dignitaries on their way to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre, the rest of the world has begun to realize what took place at Katyn.