Although the Soviet Union’s standpoint, or rather Joseph Stalin’s himself, towards fighting Warsaw, is not well known, it still causes controversies and contradictory opinions. This issue has not been thoroughly and synthetically studied, particularly as far as halting the Red Army’s offensive against Warsaw is concerned. Stalin did not accept the draft plan of the Warsaw operation prepared by Marshals Zukov and Rokossovski of August 8, 1944. The Russian leader did not agree to make Russian airfields available for American and British aircraft, carrying help for fighting Warsaw. It was mid-September, when the Uprising was about to collapse, when Stalin allowed launching limited operational and tactical activities that had a clear propaganda and political aim. He wanted to show the West that the Soviet Union helps fighting Warsaw. The First Polish Army units were used for this task, whereas Russian troops’ participation и/as limited to minimum. The Russian command undertook also an ineffective drop action to help the insurgents. Deciding on an apparent and very late change of standpoint towards the Warsaw Uprising, Stalin could reassure the international community without taking any risk in his policy towards Polish issues. In fact, both Stalin’s and the Soviet leadership attitude towards the Warsaw Uprising was hostile from the very beginning.
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The author has carried out a systematic review and evaluation of selective stages of historical research on Katyń genocide in the last 60 years. He has discussed all the most important texts concerning this issue published both in Poland and abroad basing them in a broad historical and political background. He has analysed largely the Soviet and the socalled people’s democratic countries, Polish People’s Republic’s including first of all, propaganda attempts to conceal the true perpetrators. He has stressed the crucial importance of opening Soviet archives for the Katyń genocide research. He has underlined that many documents essential to recreate the „crime technology” itself, the prisoners’-of-war indoctrination process still remains unavailable.
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