Gromyko describes "anti-Soviet propaganda" in the United Kingdom related to the Katyn massacre. He proposes that the Soviet Embassy in London make representations to the British Foreign Office.
April 15, 1971
Excerpt from Minutes Nº 1 of the CPSU CC Politburo meeting of 15 April 1971, 'Concerning the Representation to the British MFA in connection with the Anti-Soviet CCampaign around the So-called “Katyn Affair”'
[CPSU CC letterhead]
TOP SECRET
Nº P1/35
to Cdes. Brezhnev, Kosygin, Suslov, Andropov, Katushev, Ponomarev, Gromyko, and Rusakov
Excerpt from Minutes Nº 1 of the CPSU CC Politburo meeting of 15 April 1971
Concerning the Representation to the British MFA in connection with the anti-Soviet campaign around the so-called “Katyn Affair”
Approve the draft instructions to the Soviet Ambassadors in London and Warsaw (attached).
CC SECRETARY
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vd
Ref point 35 of Minutes Nº 1
Secret
LONDON – TO THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR
Copy: WARSAW – TO THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR
Visit the British MFA and declare the following:
“According to information available to the Embassy the BBC television company intends to show a film about the so-called “Katyn Affair” it has prepared that is hostile to the Soviet Union. The publication in Britain of a slanderous book about the Katyn tragedy is timed to this.
The British side well knows that the guilt of the Nazis for this crime has been irrefutably demonstrated by an authoritative Special Commission which conducted an investigation of this crime on-site right after the expulsion of the German occupiers from the Smolensk region. In 1945-1946 the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg found the main German war criminals guilty of conducting a policy of extermination of the Polish people and in particular of executing Polish POWs in the Katyn Forest.
In this connection [we] cannot fail to be surprised and indignant at the desire of some circles in Britain to again spotlight the insinuations of Goebbels’ propaganda in order to blacken the Soviet Union, a people which saved Europe from fascist enslavement with the blood it shed.
The Embassy expects that the Ministry of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will take appropriate steps not to allow the spread of the aforementioned slanderous materials in Britain which in the authors’ design are calculated at provoking a worsening of relations between our countries”.
The text of the representation can be left with the interlocutor.
(Only for Warsaw: inform the PNR MFA about these instructions to the Soviet Ambassador in London)
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The CPSU Central Committee calls on the Soviet Embassy in London to lodge a protest over a new BBC film about the Katyn massacre. The CPSU insists the massacre was perpetrated by the Nazis.
Associated Places
Associated Topics
Related Documents
April 12, 1971 | Note, A. Gromyko to the CPSU Central Committee |
Document Information
Source
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Dmitriĭ Antonovich Volkogonov papers, 1887-1995, mm97083838. Translated by Gary Goldberg.
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