I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.
And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.
This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.
Eye witnesses report that the Germans did it. The rope used to bind their hands was not a type made or used in the USSR. And the bullets in the bodies were of a German caliber.
Germany reportedly captured a labor camp holding Polish officer POWs near Smolensk and executed these prisoners captured from the Soviets at Katyn in 1941.
Then in 1943 just as Germany was about to lose control of the area, none other than Goebbels reported they had discovered a mass grave of soviet victims at Katyn.
The polish government in exile chooses to believe Goebbels without evidence.
So what do we make then of the Soviets and Russians admitting later on that it was the NKVD? This is a blind spot for me but just scanning Wikipedia (I know) it seems like Gorbachev era USSR admitted to the killings being ordered by NKVD. What would their motivation be for saying that if it weren’t true?
Because Gorby was all about ‘admitting Soviet mistakes’ which mostly meant accepting Western narratives (which were not accepted by mainstream Soviet Russian historians, and were incredibly controversial) with the idea of ‘bridging the gap’ between East and West. Like when you read Gorbachev, you get the idea that he was a liberal western-style communist, who saw inefficient parts of a system that did have aspects of Russian chauvinism and said, ‘Well we can do better, look at those Nordic social democracies, let’s transition to be more like them.’ And then proceeded to unintentionally set the stage for the entire thing to get blown up by the vastly empowered criminal class.
Also, his entire legitimacy kinda rested on being reactionarily anti-Stalin.
Thanks. I’ll have to look deeper into the whole thing but yall have given me some good points of consideration.
I mean, it’s been awhile since I read his biography, so I don’t think he was stupid, it was a symptom of both forced errors on Stalin’s part, his whole ‘man of steel’ imagery is very powerful in Russia still. But it’s really reflective of where Russian ideology around communism was at, one of constant struggle against alien forces not by.your own design, unrecognizable and strange. A never-coming promise. Communication or lack of it is a huge theme in late Soviet early Federation artwork. Idk, I should really get back into reading this stuff myself. Post about what you find!
Gorbachev “admitted” to it but this admission wasn’t based on archival records. Rather the evidence the admission was based on was of an “indirect” nature.
Gorbachev might have believed it to be true or maybe it was a political decision to demonstrate a clear break with the former USSR and a politically opportune gesture of goodwill to a neighboring country that was going through a nationalist moment of anti-soviet sentiment.
Whatever his motivation, he wasn’t speaking from personal knowledge or even archival records but from “indirect” evidence that he professed to believe.
I think it’s debatable, but Goebbels did write in his diary at the time that they had found a Soviet grave/massacre of Polish officers and would be using it for anti-Soviet propaganda.
That is true but doesn’t definitively answer who Goebbels thought was responsible. A diary entry from a few weeks later on May 8, 1943 states:
Who knows how reliable Goebbels’ narrative here is. But either way, he is not out-and-out admitting Germany did it. He implies the Soviets did it, but with German equipment.