The Murderers of Katyn (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As a Russian journalist who has been given free voice only recently, Abarinov seems to want to tell us everything he knows, no matter how irrelevant. The resulting book is so chaotic that even the most dedicated student of the Katyn massacre is likely to give up early on in frustration. In reconstructing the deaths of the Polish officers whose bodies were found by the Nazis in a mass grave in occupied Soviet territory near Smolensk in 1943, Abarinov, a correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta , moves from point A to B via X, L and S, frequently detouring to sideswipe other Moscow journalists who have written about Katyn. One is criticized for his "exercises in belles-lettres," another is baldly deemed inaccurate; then, with cheek, Abarinov wraps himself in sanctity, noting: "Naturally, any struggle for individual pre-eminence in covering such a theme as Katyn is completely out of place." As though Gorbachev in 1990 had not admitted Soviet culpability for the WW II genocide of some 15,000 Polish officers, Abarinov builds his own case against his country for the Katyn slaughter, then further leaves us to wonder about his attempt at investigative reporting when he concludes: "No . . . unequivocal document has yet been discovered, nothing beyond indirect evidence. . . . We do not know the names of the criminals or the details of what was done."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Katyn murderers were the Soviet secret police units who, at Stalin's command, shot 15,000 Polish officers in 1940 and then blamed the deed on the Nazis. This fact, long a commonplace outside the Soviet Union, began to become more widely known there as the pressures of glasnost grew; Gorbachev and Yeltsin have both acknowledged the USSR's responsibility for the ghastly deed. Abarinov's book, which was first published in Russia in 1991, goes into several aspects of the massacre and its Soviet cover-up, but his organization is very confusing. His book also lacks a bibliography. Abarinov has seen some archival records but stresses that more work needs to be done lest "the spinners of fairy tales" in Russia manage to blunt Stalin's responsibility. A major addition to Katyn studies.
- R.H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: Hippocrene Books (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0781800323
• ISBN-13: 978-0781800327
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,594,198 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Relatively Objective Russian View of the Katyn Massacre and 50-year Coverup, September 14, 2007

By	Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Iwo Pogonowski has an introduction to this book, in which he briefly describes the events which led to the Katyn Massacre. In the end of the book, Pogonowski also provides a valuable chronology of events leading up to the massacre and the ensuing decades-old coverup.

Abarinov evaluates reports that some of the Polish POWs had been deliberately drowned in the White Sea (pp. 93-96). Other reports indicate that all the Poles had died by shooting.

The reader learns that, as the invading Germans were approaching the Smolensk region in 1941, the NKVD tried to burn the local archives. Failing that, Soviet planes several times dropped incendiary bombs on the relevant building after the Germans had taken Smolensk (p. 187); again to no avail. Later, Soviet propaganda attempted to blame the Germans for the Katyn massacre, in part by pointing to the fact that the ammunition used in the shootings had been German-made. However, the German company, Gustaw Genschow, had been selling ammunition to the Soviet Union on a large scale before WWII (pp. 352-353).

One survivor of the Kozelsk (Kozielsk) camp, Professor Stanislaw Swianiewicz, survived an assassination attempt (p. 286). Another Katyn witness, the American John Van Vliet, had his testimony stolen from the American archives, apparently according to the machinations of Alger Hiss (pp. 287-288).

Abarinov briefly discusses the exhumation of the Polish corpses at Mednoye in 1991. Unlike in other areas, the corpses and other artifacts had been exceptionally well-preserved (p. 329).

There are late-1939 descriptions of Polish deportees near Stavropol, and the gross destitution under which they lived (p. 143). Later, the Poles released and allowed to join General Anders' army lived under horrible conditions. They had to live in tents during the winter of 1941-1942 and, not surprisingly, many of them froze to death (p. 147). Additionally, several former-Soviet witnesses recall that they saw Poles in the USSR after the war. Some of these (p. 132) were undoubtedly Poles who were not released despite the provisions of the Sikorsky-Maisky Pact, while others (p. 148) were victims of the postwar Soviet takeover of Poland.

This book is indeed at times hard to follow, even for someone who knows something about the events described herein. However, the greatest value of this book, in my opinion, is not the information it provides, but the fact of some "ordinary" Russians acknowledging the massacre and the Soviet responsibility for it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For specialized reader on a specialized topic, August 30, 2008

By	NOYDB "NOYDB" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Unfortunately, I read this book a fairly long time ago, so my memory is relatively hazy on the details. Nonetheless, I'll second the previous reviewers compliments, as well as affirm that the book is difficult to follow, especially for someone with only a basic background on the issue and its context. Due to the nature of the event, it also needs to be read somewhat critically, though this is of course not the fault of the author. All in all, however, it covers an interesting topic whose sheer scale of grotesqueness puts current affairs and charges in perspective.