Anti-Katyn

Anti-Katyn (Polish: Anty-Katyń, Russian: Анти-Катынь) is a denialism campaign intended to reduce and obscure the significance of the Katyn massacre of 1940 — where approximately 22,000 Polish officers were murdered by the Soviet NKVD on the orders of Joseph Stalin — by referencing the deaths from disease of thousands of Imperial Russian and Red Army soldiers at Polish internment camps during the Interwar period.

"Anti-Katyn" first emerged around 1990. After the Soviet government admitted that it had previously tried to cover up its responsibility for the massacre by claiming that it was perpetrated by the German Wehrmacht, previously neglected research into the fate of Soviet POWs in Poland in 1920s was revived to be used as a "tit-for-tat" argument in the discussions of Katyn.^[1]

Polish historian Andrzej Nowak summarized "Anti-Katyn" as an attempt by certain Russian historians and publicists to "overshadow the memory of the crimes of the Soviet system against the Poles, creating imaginary analogies or even justification" because of the earlier deaths of the prisoners of war.^[2]

^ Radzivinovich, Vaclav (2000). Поиски «анти-Катыни» - Интервью Вацлава Радзивиновича с Борисом Носовым [Pursuing "anti-Katyn" - Interview with slavicist Boris Nosov]. New Poland (in Russian) (11). Retrieved 30 December 2015.
^ Nowak, Andrzej (2005). Десять вопросов [Ten questions]. New Poland (in Russian) (4). Retrieved 30 December 2015.

[1] Radzivinovich, Vaclav (2000). Поиски «анти-Катыни» - Интервью Вацлава Радзивиновича с Борисом Носовым [Pursuing "anti-Katyn" - Interview with slavicist Boris Nosov]. New Poland (in Russian) (11). Retrieved 30 December 2015.

[2] Nowak, Andrzej (2005). Десять вопросов [Ten questions]. New Poland (in Russian) (4). Retrieved 30 December 2015.

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