This article presents an outline of the history of the Katyn massacre perpetrated by the Soviet Union on almost 22,000 Polish citizens in 1940, the attempts to search for the truth about the crime, and the process of the deconstruction of the Katyn lie from 1943; it will then move to a description of the history of its commemoration (including by independent organisations such as the Independent Historical Committee for the Investigation of the Katyn Crime [Niezależny Komitet Historyczny Badania Zbrodni Katyńskiej] and the Polish Katyn Foundation), and the documentation of the massacre at the Katyn Museum, the Martyrology Branch of the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw. Due to the complexity of this issue, the article has been divided chronologically into several chapters, starting with the signing of the German-Soviet Pact (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) in 1939; the circumstances of World War II leading to the Katyn massacre; how Katyn qualifies as a war crime; and the progression of the story up until modern times. Apart from the history of the crime itself, the authors also describe the discovery of the evidence and the process of creating the Katyn Museum in Warsaw, as well as its permanent exhibition and the most important collections. The article discusses the issues of historic military architecture which was incorporated into the Katyn Museum, creating a unique exhibition containing thousands of artefacts (Katyn relics) recovered from the death pits in Katyn (Russia), Kharkiv-Pyatikhatky (Ukraine), Kyiv-Bykivnya (Ukraine) and Tver-Mednoye (Russia).

The victory of the Soviet Union over the National Socialist Third Reich in World War II is still considered in the Russian Federation as the most important, as well as indisputable contribution to the creation and functioning of the modern world. Moreover, contemporary Russia officially upholds its own version of these events and continuously refers to the shared history of the nations that once formed the Soviet empire. The recurrent images of the Soviets as victors and the ever-renewed concept of Stalin as a national hero are, however, no more than a duplication of the old propaganda models used during the Second World War. The present article seeks to examine the indoctrination efforts undertaken in the Soviet Union at the time of its conflict with Germany during the period 1941–5, particularly with regard to the soldiers of the Red Army. It also pays attention to the emotional appeals of Soviet propaganda and changes in the main ideological directions at various stages of the war.

This article is an attempt to examine the Communist-era historiography of the Battle of Lenino by introducing the context of the fighting in Belarus in 1943. The operational and strategic analysis of the tasks of the Western Front and the forces serving there shows the scale of Soviet operations in the autumn of 1943, and the size of the defeats they suffered. One of the battles conducted at the turn of 1944 in the Belarusian direction was the second Orsha operation of October 12–18, 1943. Due to mistakes made at the planning stage, the offensive towards Orsha turned into a bloody battle that took place in the area between the towns of Lenino and Bayevo. Throughout the existence of the USSR, Soviet historiography diminished the importance of the fighting in Belarus in 1943 and avoided research into this operation. The military historians of the Polish People’s Republic were in a different situation; they had a keen interest in the Battle of Lenino because of its propaganda importance. In all the academic publications from the period of the Polish People’s Republic, military historians presented only the first two days of the battle of the 1st Infantry Division at Lenino, avoiding any descriptions of the broader background of the operation, even though they had access to German military sources. The reason was the political dependence of the Polish People’s Republic and the Polish People’s Army to the USSR, which made any criticism of the Red Army impossible. As a result, the battle of Lenino was mythologised: it was presented as a success for the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division.

As many as 7465 Soviet soldiers died during fighting against the German troops in July 1944 in the Vilnius region (today’s Lithuania). After World War II, the Soviet authorities turned the soldiers’ burial sites into cemeteries and war memorials. Located in towns and cities, these places of remembrance served to perpetuate the Soviet perspective on World War II and the Soviet ideology. Nonetheless, the burial sites have been regarded as foreign elements in the region, both culturally and ideologically. After 1990, the Lithuanian government adopted new national and international regulations concerning the burial places of soldiers killed during World War II. In 1992, the local authorities in Nemenčinė (Polish: Niemenczyn) organized an official ceremony during which the remains of the Soviet soldiers were transferred from the town centre to a municipal cemetery. A red star on the monument was then replaced by an orthodox cross. Such changes may help to relieve the towns and cities from the bitter legacy of the former Soviet ideology. After 2000, using the Lithuanian international obligations, the Russian side began reconstructing and contemporizing the places of remembrance by placing the symbol of the orthodox cross next to the symbol of the red star. This may, in time, change the attitude of the local communities towards such places. However, Lithuanian authorities are inclined to believe that the cemeteries of the Soviet soldiers may become a “Trojan horse” and have an adverse effect on Lithuania.

The article focuses on the background of the pamphlet ‘Falsifiers of History. An Historical Note’ issued by the Soviet Information Bureau in 1948. The book was personally edited and largely hand-written by Joseph Stalin. His involvement was not fully known until now. In this paper, the authors deciphered, translated and compared the text of the published pamphlet. It shows Stalin’s guidelines in the official interpretation of the causes of World War II and the reasons for the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Throughout the post-war period the official Soviet narrative regarding the origins of the of World War II were largely based on a set of guidelines contained in a pamphlet ‘Falsifiers of History’. Currently, the neo-Stalinist historical narrative concerning the origins of World War II is promoted by the Russian officials. Nevertheless, not all Russian historians share these views, and many assess the Hitler-Stalin Pact in a much more critical way.

Review: Россия – Германия. Вехи совместной истории в коллективной памяти. Vol. 3: XX century. Moscow: Институт всеобщей истории РАН, ООО “Интеграция: Образование и наука”, 400 pp., ISBN 9785904914080. This review article discusses a textbook on twentieth-century history, prepared in collaboration between German and Russian historians. The analysis of the publication’s content is set in a broader context-the place of Germany in Russia’s politics of remembrance (legislation, historical education). Of particular interest are the chapters whose caesuras are marked by the Revolution of 1917 and the end of Stalinism. The constitutive elements of the authors’ historical reflection, that are beliefs imposing the interpretation of events (the primacy of geopolitics, superpower), are indicated. The polemical remarks concern both the conceptual and methodological shortcomings of the textbook and the controversial interpretative approaches. The latter primarily concerns the genesis of World War II and the evaluation of the Yalta order. The above historiographical vision is contrasted with the collective memory of the national communities of Central and Eastern Europe.