Anti-Katyn

[3][4] One of the most "difficult issues" was the World War II massacre of approximately 22,000 Polish citizens, who were executed and buried in mass graves in several places including Katyn, Smolensk Oblast, less than a year after the coordinated Nazi-German and Soviet invasion of Poland.

[3] Under subsequent communist regimes in Poland and the Soviet Union, the Katyn massacre was not subject to further investigation for decades even as a potential war crime committed by the Germans.

The early Soviet deaths became the subject of, according to the Polish government, "various propagandist campaigns" purporting that the massacre of the Poles was "justified" in the eyes of Stalin.

[6][7] In 2011, Russian historian Inessa Yazhborovskaya wrote: The fear of clarifying the circumstances of the Katyn case, in particular the issues of responsibility for the party and state leadership, created a new problem, the so-called "anti-Katyn" – finding ways of glossing over the truth and avoiding admission of guilt on the Soviet side concerning the criminal, secret mass murder of Polish prisoners of war, by finding "balance" and presenting a "counterclaim.

John Lenczowski, president of the Institute of World Politics, noted that Soviet POWs were invaders and while suffering harsh treatment in the camps, they mostly died of communicable diseases, while the victims of Katyn were deliberately shot and murdered.