It was on this date in 1940, pursuant to a note to Joseph Stalin from Lavrenti Beria, six members of the Soviet Politburo — Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, and Mikhail Kalinin — signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus, which became known as the Katyn massacre. The killings took place between April and May 1940. In 1943, Nazi German officials found the mass graves. They investigated and concluded that the Communists were responsible. Stalin lied and said the Nazis did it. In 1944, when confronted with the evidence, President Roosevelt ordered a cover up to appease Stalin. And, at the Nuremberg Trials, the Soviets unsuccessfully tried to blame the Nazis. In 2010, the Russian Duma approved a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for having personally ordered the massacre.
And, thirteen years to the day after signing the order for the massacre, on 5 March 1953, Joseph Stalin died. Coincidence?
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