Instrumentalising Horror

Introduction

On April 14 1990, fifty years after the event, Mikhail Gorbachev officially accepted the Soviet Union's responsibility for the Katyn Massacre. Although this admission had a profound political significance, it did not contain any surprising historical revelations. It merely confirmed what international leaders had known for almost five decades - that in April 1940, the NKVD had carried out systematic mass executions of 22,000 Polish officers and members of the Polish intelligentsia in the Katyn Forest. The discrepancy between the Soviet official narrative and the historical evidence of the massacre illustrates the limits of conventional historiography and its principle aim to understand how the past creates the present. Although historical methodology is theoretically predicated on archival sources as evidence and disinterested analysis, in practice, historiography is inevitably shaped by subjective interpretation and personal perception. These mercurial properties inherent in all historiography makes history itself vulnerable to exploitation and instrumentalisation.

In this dissertation, using the case study of the Katyn Massacre, I will analyse the strategies by which different political actors appropriated the historiography of the Katyn massacre for political gain. Due to the lack of eyewitness testimony, the exact details of the massacres remained unknown for many years, making it difficult for investigators and historians to establish an uncontroversial account of the events. Throughout the post-war period, legal and historical examinations of Katyn were limited by the political agendas of individual states, political opportunism and the geopolitical contingencies of the Cold War. Consequently, the discourse of Katyn became 'about' memory, rather than 'of' memory. The prevalence of different narratives of Katyn developed in accordance with the changing political agendas and allegiances during the Second World War and the Cold War. Different governments supported or even promoted a specific narrative in response to their political necessities at a given point in time. When analysing the emergence of rival narratives of the Katyn massacre against the backdrop of a specific geopolitical situation, one can identify the political motives of the Western governments.

The following essay will chart the dominance of different narratives of Katyn over a period of 50 years, from the initial discovery of the mass graves in 1943 to the present day. The first chapter will examine the German response to Katyn. When Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels learnt of the mass graves of Katyn in April 1943, he exploited the massacre to generate discord amongst the Allies, galvanise the Poles in the General Government, and motivate the German people through fear. In contrast, Britain and the USA prioritised their wartime alliance with Stalin, systematically suppressing the statements of Colonel Van Vliet, an American soldier who visited the site in 1943, and Owen O'Malley, the British ambassador to the Polish Government-in-Exile.

Chapter Two will look at the Allies' changing attitudes towards Katyn. Throughout the Nuremberg Trials (1945), the limited jurisdiction of the International Military Tribunal ensured the Soviets were exempt from prosecution. Despite the failure to prosecute the Nazis and the seismic efforts of the London Poles to indict the Soviets, no further effort was made to discern who committed the crimes of Katyn. It was only through the efforts of Julius Epstein that Katyn entered public discourse in the USA, with the United States House Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre formed in 1951. Upon witnessing the influence that Epstein's testimony had on Polish emigres in America, the Republicans championed the truth of Katyn to benefit their 1952 election campaign. However, when elected, the Republican administration repudiated Soviet culpability and stated that the Germans were responsible for Katyn in order not to antagonise Stalin throughout the Korean peace talks. 

The final chapter will look at the victim's perspective on Katyn. Throughout the Polish People's Republic, the Soviet-aligned government of the PRL propagated that the Nazis committed the massacres at Katyn; at this time, challenging the official narrative of the Soviet Union would have been a risky endeavour. Consequently, Poles were encouraged to remember the individual victims of Katyn rather than asking who committed the crimes. During the Solidarność movement, Katyn stopped being a symbol of remembrance and became a symbol of Anti-Communism. The instrumentalisation of Katyn as a symbol of anti-communism would foreshadow Katyn's position in modern Polish political discourse. Through the efforts of the Law and Justice Party, Katyn has evolved to become a symbol of nationalism, patriotism, and victimhood; fundamental tenets in Polish national identity.

Overall, this dissertation, therefore, examines the political instrumentalisation of a historiography which is no longer concerned with how the past creates the present, but rather, how the present can create the past.

Chapter 1: The Discovery of the Mass Graves

In July 1941, Signal Regiment 537 of Anny Group Centre established its base by the Dnieper River in the Katyn forest. In the winter of 1943, the regiments commanding office, Colonel Friedrich Ahrens, was tracking a wolf through the forest when he discovered several mounds of earth marked by wooden crosses. Unbeknownst to Ahrens, the mounds marked the graves of 22,000 Poles murdered by the NKVD in March 1940. The graves had been delineated by Polish workers, who, having heard rumours that the NKVD had murdered their countrymen, covertly excavated the corpses and marked the graves with wooden crosses. Colonel Ahrens reported his discovery to Army Group Centre in February 1943, who sent Professor Dr Gerhard Buhtz, a former forensic pathologist at the University of Breslau, to investigate. 'By the time of an interim report on April 10, in a single grave, workers had uncovered twelve layers of some 250 corpses each, for a total of at least 3,000 dead'. Out of a sample of 100 corpses, 65 were identified by identity cards, diaries and letters; 39 were clearly Polish officers. Excavation continued for a further two months, with Buhtz' team discovering seven mass graves and 4143 corpses; 2815 were identified as Polish soldiers by their military uniforms.

News of the Katyn massacre reached Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels on April 1 1943. Before launching his propaganda campaign, Goebbels had to solve two fundamental problems: Firstly, the allies wholly distrusted Nazi propaganda due to ideological tribalism, with any anti-Soviet rhetoric likely to be branded Hitlerite lies. Secondly, throughout the German occupation of Poland, the Nazis had murdered between 5,470,000 and 5,670,000 Poles. Consequently, any attempt to propagate the atrocities of the NKVD would be deemed wholly hypocritical. To overcome such problems, Goebbels arranged for a delegation of Polish leaders to fly from Warsaw, Kraków, and Lublin to Smolensk on April 10. Through arranging for a delegation of Polish leaders to visit Katyn, Goebbels hoped to harness Polish victimhood and validate the discovery through third-party corroboration. The delegation of Polish leaders were taken to the Katyn Forrest, where they were shown two excavations, totalling approximately 250 bodies. The following day, German news agency Trans-Ocean reported the discovery of the mass graves: 'It is reported from Smolensk that the local inhabitants have indicated to the German authorities a place in which mass executions had been carried out by the Bolsheviks and where 10,000 Polish officers had been murdered by the GPU'.

The USSR immediately responded to the broadcast, denying their part in Katyn and labelling the announcement ‘vile fabrications by German-Fascist murderers'. Poles in the General Government were also unconvinced by the broadcast. They sought to establish the 'definite facts' by examining Soviet records. It became clear that at least 15,000 Polish officers had been held at Kozelsk (c.a. 5,000), Starobelsk (c.a. 3920), and Ostashkov (c.a. 6,570), and the officers from Kozelk had been transferred to Smolensk by the Soviet military in 1940. However, who committed the massacre remained unclear. Whilst the Poles distrusted the Soviet narrative, ‘German crimes against Poland and Poles' discredited the German account. Consequently, on April 16, Polish War Minister Lieutenant Gen. Marian Kukiel demanded that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) should be granted access to investigate the site. This request for an independent examination led Soviet Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to claim that the Polish government has used the 'the slanderous Hitlerite fake' to reclaim the borderlands of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus. Ostensibly, the German government agreed to the ICRC investigation, however, ICRC policy dictated that all countries involved must be invited to the investigation. Naturally, the German’s were never going to allow the Soviet’s admission to the site. Consequently, the Polish Red Cross, despite concerns that Katyn was going to be used for propaganda purposes, were coerced by the Germans in the General Government into sending a four-member Technical Commission to visit the Katyn forest. The Technical Commission was joined by Buhtz and an International Physicians Commission. The International Physicians Commission was made up of forensic pathologists from Axis countries or states occupied by Germany. The Polish Red Cross and International Physicians Commission concluded that the massacre occurred in early 1940, when the region was under Soviet jurisdiction.

Despite its immediate and long-term political significance, historiography denies Katyn its position as a momentous event in 20th-century discourse. This is primarily due to historians, such as Szymczak and Sanford, contextualising Katyn in the immediate wartime environment. When contextualised within the wartime milieu, one naturally considers Katyn against the backdrop of widespread Nazi atrocities. On August 22 1939, Hitler told Nazi generals: 'the annihilation of Poland is at the foreground. The goal is the elimination of the living forces, not the attainment of a certain line'. The planned extermination of the Poles was carried out by the German Wehrmacht and SS Action Groups during Operation Tannenberg. As the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland from the East, they executed Polish soldiers and civilians. SS Action Groups accompanied the German Wehrmacht into Poland. They were tasked with dismantling Polish society by eradicating the Polish intelligentsia. The SS Action Groups were disbanded on November 20 1939, by which time 42,000-50,000 Poles had been executed in the so-called 'pacification’ of Poland. According to Hughes, throughout the 6 years of Nazi occupation that followed, between 5,470,000 and 5,670,000 Poles were executed by the Nazis.

Timothy Snyder analyses Katyn in the broader context of Soviet anti-Polish sentiment. By doing so, he correctly returns the execution of 22,000 Polish servicemen, government officials and intelligentsia at Katyn to its rightful place as a significant chapter within three decades of criminality. When the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17 1939, methodically executing soldiers, citizens and members of the Polish intelligentsia, their objective in no way differed from Nazi policy nor diverged from their own anti-Polish policies of the last three decades. According to Snyder, the territory between Warsaw and the Soviet Union's Western border; the Baltic States, Belarus, and Ukraine, endured a systematised period of politically motivated genocide from 1932 until 1945. This agenda emerged throughout the Polish-Soviet War (1920-1921), developed during The Great Purge (1937-1938) and culminated at Katyn in 1940. Through recontextualising Katyn within the broader context of Soviet hostility towards Poland, one can understand how such barbarity occurred. The NKVD enjoyed countless opportunities to perfect the 'logistical and bureaucratic techniques necessary to render individualised mass murder by pistol shot to the nape of the neck both efficient and expeditious'.

Whilst Snyder's analysis correctly positions Katyn as a significant event within three decades of criminality, analysing Katyn in a purely domestic context is problematic. At the peak of The Great Purge, between August 1937 and November 1938, the NKVD carried out on average 1700 executions per day. Kramer identifies The Great Purge as ‘one of the most egregious cases of state-perpetrated murder in the long list of atrocities committed in the twentieth century’. Of the 800,000 citizens the NKVD murdered, 250,000; including 110,000 Poles, were killed purely because they belonged to a particular ethnic group. Thus, viewing the 22,000 Poles murdered at Katyn against the backdrop of widespread Stalinist persecution makes the massacre appear inconsequential. One solution is to re-evaluate Katyn within the context of Soviet occupation policy between 1939–1941. After signing the Nazi-Soviet pact on August 23 1939, Soviet troops moved into eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bessarabia. The Soviet occupation regime murdered, raped and pillaged, deporting many citizens to Siberian prison camps. Whilst the NKVD committed atrocities on a regular basis, 'they generally did not carry out systematic executions of thousands of people at a time'. In the context of Soviet occupation policy, Katyn is anomalous and was 'perceived as such by some key Soviet officials and their Polish Communist counterparts'.

Chapter 2: Josef Goebbels' Propaganda Campaign and the Immediate Reaction of the Allies

'Polish mass graves have been found near Smolensk. The Bolsheviks simply shot down and then shovelled into mass graves some 10,000 Polish prisoners, among them civilian captives, bishops, intellectuals, artists, et cetera .... Gruesome aberrations of the human soul were thus revealed. I saw to it that the Polish mass graves be inspected by neutral journalists from Berlin. I also had Polish intellectuals taken there. They are to see for themselves what is in store for them should their wish that the Germans be defeated by the Bolsheviks actually be fulfilled'.

April 9 1943, Josef Goebbels.

Within Germany, Goebbels utilised Katyn to stabilise the Nazi regime, using 'Kraft Durch Furcht' (strength through fear) propaganda to galvanise ‘the increasingly pessimistic German population’. Goebbels' instrumentalisation of Katyn was very much consistent with the 'propaganda of pessimism' that originated after Stalingrad, and best exemplified in his 'Do you want total war?' speech at the Berlin Sportpalast on February 18, 1943. Throughout his domestic propaganda campaign, Goebbels associated Bolshevism with Judaism, utilising the negative rhetoric surrounding Bolshevism whilst promulgating anti-Semitic agenda. The Völkischer Beobachter (Völkischer Observer) ran headlines such as ‘Mass Murder of Katyn: The Work of Jewish Butchers', and 'Judah's Blood Guilt Grows to Unfathomable'. In autumn 1943, Goebbels began to utilise visual media to demonstrate the barbarity of the massacre. Photographs of the murdered Poles were exhibited in Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Katyn (Official Material on the Mass Murder of Katyn) and Der Massenmord im Walde von Katyn: Ein Tatsachenbericht auf Grund Amtlicher Unterlagen (The Mass Murder in the Forest of Katyn: A Factual Account on the Basis of Official Documents). Goebbels also utilised cinematography to propagandise Katyn. Fritz Hippler, who controlled the Reich Ministry of Propaganda’s film department, directed the documentary Im Wald von Katyn (In the Forest of Katyn). The documentary graphically reconstructed the exhumation process of Katyn whilst equating such barbarity to the Bolshevik ideology.

On April 15 1943, Goebbels launched his propaganda campaign in Poland. The propaganda campaign saw 12 million brochures and 20 million fliers detailing the Katyn massacre distributed in Poland, each exploiting national mourning and the narrative of victimhood to generate anti-Soviet sentiment. On April 15 1943, the Goniec Krakowski (The Kraków Messenger) printed the names of the murdered Polish officers. Two days later, the newspaper published photos of the mass graves with the headline: 'Wrażenia krakowskiego robotnika w lesie pod Katyniem (Impression of a Kraków worker in the forest near Katyn)'. On April 20 1943, the Goniec Krakowski published an updated list of the 'identified Polish officers'. The updated list included personal information and documents about the murdered Polish officers. By including personal information about the officers, Goebbels attached a personalness to the murders. According to Ledford, Goebbels’ propaganda campaign in Poland ‘paid dividends’. He argues that 'When the Polish government's request for an ICRC investigation coincided in time with that of the German government, Stalin took the opportunity… to sever diplomatic relations'. In reality, Stalin had already decided to sever relations with the Poles; the ICRC investigation merely allowed him to construct the narrative that the Poles were Nazi collaborators. This narrative would be 'used by the Soviets as a pretext to embark on their ultimately successful policy to install a subservient administration in Poland'.

The discovery of Katyn proved problematic for the British Foreign Office. On May 24 1943, Owen O'Malley, the British ambassador to the Polish Government-in-Exile, dismissed the Soviet narrative and concluded that the Soviets were almost certainly guilty. O'Malley cited the International and PRC Commission investigations, both of whom dated the deaths of the soldiers to Spring 1940, when the region was under Soviet occupation. O'Malley concluded his testimony with a six-paragraph long monologue on the importance of ethics in international politics. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden ignored O'Malley's testimony. Both understood the Soviets were the most likely culprits, however, this revelation would risk 'destabilising both the allied relationship and public perceptions that allies did not commit the same atrocities as the Germans'. Consequently, Churchill refused to incriminate the Soviets, stating 'No other policy is possible. Our duty of to proceed in such a manner to save fundamental aims agreed by ourselves'. Churchill's eagerness to cover up the crimes of the NKVD was not shared by Polish Prime Minister in Exile, Władysław Sikorski. Despite the efforts of Anthony Eden, Sikorski recognised that the NKVD were culpable and refused to propagate Stalin's lie. Unfortunately, Sikorski's convictions would never see the light of day; on July 3 1943, after meeting with Allied commanders in Cairo, his plane crashed over Gibraltar.

American wartime propaganda ignored the specificities of Katyn, stifling reports that could jeopardise their wartime alliance with Stalin. The apathy of the American media is exemplified in a memorandum from the US Office of War Information (OWI) to the Voice of America (VOA) radio program, ordering the broadcast to overlook German evidence. Whilst the American media followed a policy of apathy, US army officials went to great lengths to suppress the truth. This is exemplified in the suppression of the Van Vliet report. US Army Colonel John H. Van Vliet Jr. visited the site of Katyn in 1943 whilst a prisoner of war. Despite his self-professed hatred of the Nazis, Van Vliet sent a telegram to his superiors, stating that the Soviets were responsible for Katyn. Van Vliet's evidence was conclusive; the Polish corpses were in an advanced state of decay, the personal possessions found on the victims implied they died in 1941, and the excellent state of their uniforms and boots indicated they were killed shortly after capture. Upon receiving Van Vliet's testimony, Major General Clayton Lawrence Bissell destroyed the report and swore Van Vliet to secrecy. Van Vliet's testimony would only come to light during the 1952 Congressional Investigations, when the Cold War climate and anti-Soviet public opinion made his testimony more palatable.

Chapter 3: The Allied Response: The Nuremberg Trials and United States Select Committee

Following the defeat of the Axis powers in September 1945, Nazi leaders were tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg. The tribunal indicted the Nazi leaders on four counts: Conspiracy, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity. This was the first time that Crimes Against Humanity appeared in international law, referring to acts of murder, assassination, torture, enslavement, and persecution on racial, political or religious grounds. The Katyn massacre fell into this category, however, such charges were directed at the Nazis as opposed to the Soviets. This was because crimes committed by the Allies did not come within the jurisdiction of the IMT, thus, the Allies were absolved from prosecution throughout the trials. On July 1 1946, an indictment was levelled against Nazi officials, reading: 'In September 1941, 11,000 Polish officers, prisoners of war, were killed in the Katyn woods near Smolensk'. The only supporting evidence submitted for consideration was the Burdenko Commission Report, a Soviet-sponsored investigation that found German forces responsible for Katyn. 'The lack of convincing documentary evidence and vigorous efforts of the German defence team... led the Allied prosecutors to drop the Katyn case'. Despite the Nazis being found innocent, no further efforts were made to discern who committed the Katyn massacre. Consequently, all mention of Katyn was omitted from the Nuremberg verdicts.

The Soviet defence team's inability to prosecute the Nazis led many Americans to question the validity of the Burdenko Commission and the integrity of the Democrat wartime government. As Katyn was probed and dissected by non-partisan actors, a 'sense of national guilt about America's postwar betrayal of East Europeans transpired'. This was primarily due to the work of Julius Epstein, 'an Austrian-born Jew who had worked for the Office of War Information during the recent conflict'. Working for the New York Herald-Tribune, Epstein promulgated the forensic investigation undertaken by the International Medical Commission in 1940, endorsing their judgement that the USSR were responsible for Katyn. In an attempt to circulate the IMC's findings, Epstein contacted the State Department, offering to write a broadcast for the Voice of America radio programme. However, the Voice of America had been instructed not to discuss Katyn. Consequently, Epstein’s request was rejected, with the radio programmes Polish office declaring it 'would create too much hatred against Stalin among the Poles and that the [desk chief] had not gotten the green light from Washington to use anything . . . about Katyn'. Undeterred, Epstein established The American Committee for the Investigation of the Katyn Massacre Autumn 1949. Epstein utilised the committees political status to scrutinise the media coverage of Katyn both privately and publically. In doing so, Katyn was thrust into the political domain, with Republican congressman George Dondero and Democratic congressman Richard Madden joining the Committee. Whilst Szymczak implies that Dondero and Madden joined out of altruism, their respective constituencies of Michigan and Indiana had a large percentage of East European voters. It is not outside the realms of possibility that the men took an interest in Katyn for political gain, a strategy adopted by the Republicans throughout their 1952 election campaign.

Despite Epstein's efforts to indict the NKVD, the Cold War climate recast Katyn as a symbol of anti-communism. On June 25 1950, Communist North Korea ‘launched its full-scale invasion’ of South Korea. It was not long until reports of ‘Communist atrocities appeared in the American press’. Such atrocities were associated with Katyn, with US diplomat Arthur Bliss Lane declaring; 'The photographs in Life magazine last week showing a dead G.I. with his hands tied behind his back and a bullet through his brain gruesomely recalled the fate of the Polish officers who were found in a similar condition in the Katyn mass graves'. Lane's association stimulated conspiracy theories amongst the far-right, who believed that the democrats had ‘secretly conspired with Stalin against America's staunch ally, Chiang Kai-shek’. They argued that the ‘Chinese people had apparently been ‘sold down the river’, as had the Poles at Yalta’. It was not just far-right extremists who believed that communists had infiltrated the US government; between 1949 and 1953, Congress conducted 58 separate investigations into the Truman administration.

Epstein unwittingly fuelled far-right conspiracy theories by exposing the Van Vliet cover-up. Epstein wished to obtain Van Vliet's testimony, however, attempts were rebuffed by the Army 'on the grounds that the document was confidential'. Following Epstein's enquiry, army officials discovered that Van Vliet's original report had disappeared from military record. Following such a revelation, Van Vliet was forced to reconstruct his report, however, his testimony was once again made confidential. This prompted uproar amongst the Polish Political Congress, who published a pamphlet entitled 'The Mysteries of the Van Vliet Report'. With conspiracy theories rife, the army released Van Vliet's second report on September 18 1950, with the New York Times publishing the report the following day.

Whilst Goebbels instrumentalised Katyn for political benefit, the US Democrats were forced to engage with the subject to prevent political annihilation. The Democrat House, realising the damage that Katyn was doing to their 1952 election bid, voted 398-0 for an investigation into the massacre on September 18 1951. The United States House Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre concluded that the Soviets were responsible for Katyn. The Select Committees findings were presented to the United Nations, however, the case was dismissed on the grounds of not wanting to antagonise Stalin during Korean War peace talks. The Select Committees verdict was too little too late; the Republicans had more than enough evidence to prise Eastern European voters away from the Democrats throughout the 1952 election campaign. On January 20 1953, Democrat President Harry S Truman was replaced by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Despite the Republicans championing the truth of Katyn throughout their election campaign, the Eisenhower administration swiftly abandoned their position, once again blaming Katyn on the Nazis. Despite Epstein's selfless efforts, the truth of Katyn once again succumbed to the political agenda of the US.

Chapter 4: Katyn in the Polish Peoples Republic

Within the Polish Peoples Republic (PRL), the Soviet-aligned government propagated that the Nazis committed the massacres at Katyn. Therefore, for the ordinary Polish citizen, engaging with Katyn was a perilous endeavour. Individuals were encouraged to remember the dead rather than ask who committed the atrocity. Remembrance took place at the Powązkowski Military Cemetery in Warsaw. Throughout the late 1950s, the site became a place of pilgrimage for those who wished to remember the atrocities of Katyn. The PRL were anxious that such emotive memory discourse could be instrumentalised by dissidents who wished to mar the communist regime. Consequently, as memorialisation increased, so did suppression. On All Souls' Day in 1959, a cross was placed in the cemetery with an inscription reading: 'Symbolic grave of the 12,000 Polish officers murdered in Katyn. They were Poles, and they died on foreign soil at the hands of a brutal enemy'. The PRL swiftly removed the cross and launched an internal investigation. The PRL's anxiety that Katyn could be instrumentalised as a symbol of anti-communism was proved correct in 1980. As the Solidarność movement appropriated Katyn for political gain, Katyn stopped being a historic event to be memorialised and became a powerful symbol of anti-communism.

Officially founded in September 1980, the Solidarność movement was formed by the Lenin Gdańsk shipyard workers. The shipyard workers first utilised Katyn in August 1980 to substantiate their demand for workers rights and social development. They demanded a pay increase of two thousand złoty, strikes to be permitted, and a memorial for those who lost their lives in the 1970 workers protest. When this request was denied, a worker responded:

‘We are haggling over dead bodies like blind beggars under the lamp post. You're talking about planning problems….people have been waiting for a monument to fifteen thousand Polish soldiers murdered by the Soviet government in Katyn'.

As the Solidarność movement evolved, so did the symbolic value of Katyn. For many workers, Katyn represented oppression, autocracy and victimhood; tenets prevalent throughout the PRL. By criticising the PRL’s apathy towards Katyn, 'workers were able to express their feelings, emotions, and thoughts, surrounding many political, economic, social, and ‘existential’ issues’. Solidarność propagated Katyn as a symbol of anti-communism throughout their publications. Building upon the covert literary efforts of the 'Katyn Institute', Solidarność published literary works and documents about Katyn that opposed the Soviet narrative. The overt references to Katyn throughout Solidarność's publications were significant. Within the PRL, only one book about Katyn was published legally. Prawda o Katyniu (The Truth About Katyn), written by Bolesław Wójcicki in 1952, propagated the state narrative and claimed that the Germans were responsible for the massacre. Solidarność utilised literature to introduce Katyn into the political domain. This was exemplified in September-October 1981, during the First Congress in Gdańsk-Oliwa. Throughout the Congress, literary works and documents about Katyn were sold to political attendees, with memorial posters of Katyn decorating the walls of Gdansk's Hala Olivia. As Solidarność’s literature was gradually disseminated amongst political actors, the topic of Katyn become an increasing theme in political debates until the implementation of martial law in 1981.

Despite Solidarność successfully introducing Katyn into Polish political discourse, their motives have been challenged by the modern-day Law and Justice (PiS) party. PiS leaders Lech and Jaroslav Kaczynski have argued that Solidarność were 'seduced by… the communist secret police. The transition of 1989… was an orchestrated arrangement whereby communists would essentially maintain power and privileges behind the scenes'. Such an assertion demonstrates how Katyn continues to be prevalent in modern-day Polish political discourse. However, through the efforts of Lech and Jaroslav Kaczynski, Katyn has evolved from representing just anti-communism, now symbolising victimhood, nationalism, patriotism and shaping Polish national identity. According to Fredheim, throughout the 21st century, PiS has mobilised Katyn to 'epitomise communist crimes against the nation'. It is telling that in 2000, Poles did not associate September 17; the date that the Soviets invaded Poland, with any significant event. By 2008, 50% of Poles associated the date with the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland. The following year, PiS president Lech Kaczynski appropriated the Westerplatte commemorations, which marked the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 2. Kaczynski utilised the emotive memorial service to argue that Katyn was a genocide and 'ought to be seen as a symbol parallel to Auschwitz'.

In 2010, Lech Kaczynski and 96 Polish politicians lost their lives when their plane crashed near Smolensk. The Smolensk air disaster was instantly associated with Katyn, with former presidents Lech Walesa describing the crash as 'Katyn 2', and Alexander Kwasniewski describing Smolensk as 'cursed'. In the wake of the air disaster, Katyn was referenced over fifty times in statements by PiS politicians; in the years 2000-2004, Katyn was referenced just once. Significantly, Lech Kaczynski and his wife were buried alongside Polish heroes at the Royal Castel Wawel. According to Christ, ‘Burying them alongside kings and national heroes sacralised the crash, elevating the president to a national hero and into martyrdom’. Such nationalist sentiment was fuelled by Jaroslav Kaczynski, who claimed that the Russians downed the plane and Donald Tusk’s liberal-conservative government covered up the assassination. Such conspiracy theories were reinforced when the remains of the plane crash victims were exhumed in 2016. Despite there being no signs of foul play, Kaczynski propagated the conspiracy theory for 8 years, promising that the true perpetrators would be caught. Only in 2018 did Kaczynski admit that the people of Poland 'may never really know the truth'.

Conclusion

Although historical methodology is theoretically predicted on archival sources as evidence and disinterested analysis, in practice, like all human enterprise, it is shaped by subjectivity and interpretation. History never truly shows us what happened; it merely communicates the instinctive accounts of individuals within a given political environment. The Katyn Massacre demonstrates the limits of conventional historiography as a reliable science, moreover, demonstrating the extent to which political actors can manipulate historical events.

For half a century, the Katyn narrative was shaped and re-shaped to fit the prevailing political environment. While Katyn's instrumentalisation raises serious questions about the ethics and integrity in politics, as a historian, one must question the power that politics has over historiography. For half a century, political actors were able to engage with, re-orientate, or outright ignore the narrative of Katyn. Throughout World War 2, Goebells appropriated the discovery for propagandistic agenda, with the Allies propagating the official Soviet narrative as the truth was politically inconvenient. The US would only proclaim the German narrative in 1952, utilising the truth of Katyn to reinforce Cold War tribalism and aid the Republican Party’s election campaign. When this was achieved, the Republicans denounced the Select Committee's findings because it hampered their global-political agenda. Even within the PRL, the emergence of the truth was merely a byproduct of anti-communist protest. Solidarność’s primary aim was to mar communism; Katyn just happened to symbolise the iniquities of the regime. Despite taking place some four decades in the future, Solidarność's agenda was as exploitative as Goebbels’ propaganda campaign. The perennial manipulation of Katyn demonstrates that all historiography is shaped by its political environment. As time progressed, Katyn’s historiography became no more impartial- it was merely shaped by different political agendas.

In the case of Katyn, persistent political exploitation has distorted the relationship between the past and the present. It has stifled national healing and reconciliation, transforming the event from a historic crime into an enduring political weapon. With the rise of popularism throughout modern Europe, the lessons of Katyn become all the more relevant. The decay of master narrative, the rise of ethno-populism and the formation of a new culture of victimhood have given universal 'event-centric’ ideologies greater influence. Historic tragedies like Katyn are powerfully emotive and transcend party politics, making them a powerful weapon that any political actor can utilise. The fact that the PiS Party have gleaned support across the whole political spectrum demonstrates the universality of event-centric ideologies. While the Katyn massacre itself has prompted anti-Russian sentiment throughout modern Poland, it is the exoneration of culpability that has embedded victimhood in Polish national identity. Through understanding the extent to which Katyn’s historiography has shaped Polish national identity, the role of the historian takes on new importance. Not only do historians have a responsibility to analyse events within their socio-political context, but they also have a responsibility to understand how their historiographical contributions shape the future.