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To: "H-Net Network on American communism and anticommunism" <H-HOAC@H-NET.MSU.EDU> Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 11:29 PM Subject: Re: Politicizing of Soviet Studies (Furr) It seems pointless to continue this discussion, but I do want to note for the record that, contrary to what Grover Furr claims, there have been no "serious questions" raised about the authenticity of the Katyn Forest documents. On the contary, the only person who's challenged their authenticity is Yurii Mukhin, a Stalinist, anti-Semitic crank who's been arguing for the past ten years or so that Soviet troops could not have carried out the executions in Katyn Forest. Mukhin has never produced a shred of evidence to back up his assertions, which have appeared in quasi-fascist publications like "Zavtra," a fringe weekly that also publishes articles about flying saucers, paranormal phenomena, and Jewish conspiracies. A lurid monograph that Mukhin published 7-8 years ago under the title "Katynskii detektiv" was replete with venomous slurs about Poles and Poland, but it contained nothing that could be remotely described as "serious." Most of it was so preposterous that I almost began to wonder whether it was published in jest. The documents I mentioned are by no means the only ones that have emerged. The Main Military Procurator's office set up a special investigative group to collect as much evidence as possible on the Katyn Forest massacre. This group compiled more than 160 volumes of documents and other materials, including analyses of the exhumed corpses and excavated gravesites, depositions of eyewitnesses, photographs, and many related items. All of this evidence confirmed that the Soviet NKVD carried out the massacres at Stalin's behest. Given the vast amount of reliable evidence from a multiplicity of independent sources pointing to the Soviet Union's responsibility for the killings, and the lack of any evidence pointing in the opposite direction, it's not surprising that there is no debate in Russia among reputable scholars about the Katyn Forest executions. The Mukhins of this world will always be around to publish their ravings, but this hardly amounts to anything "serious." Mark Kramer Harvard University
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