Sixteen years after the Smolensk tragedy, we still feel that what happened on April 10, 2010 remains an unhealed wound. And any reflection on Smolensk is, and must be, viewed through the prism of the purpose of that state delegation—led by the presidential couple, Lech and Maria Kaczyński, as well as President Ryszard Kaczorowski. Thus, Katyn 1940 continues—and will continue—to loom over Smolensk 2010, as if something terribly tragic and perversely cruel in fate has bound these two histories together: those who flew to pay tribute to the murdered were themselves killed in a brutal death. Behind the deaths of the first stood Moscow and the NKVD; behind the deaths of the latter, too, there appears the shadow of a sinister, causative Moscow.
I remember how, in personal conversations with Ewa Błasik, I came to understand the course of the final days of her husband, General Andrzej Błasik. I remember what his uniform looked like—torn, shredded, and stained with Smolensk mud. Looking at it, one could instantly picture, in the mind’s eye, the uniforms of soldiers exhumed from mass graves in 1943, after the Germans revealed the Katyn massacre to the world. It was the same Smolensk–Katyn mud.
But there are also other elements in both stories—those of 1940 and 2010—that bind them together. Above all, it is the lie: a lie that becomes an inherent feature of the crime itself. In both cases, it was and remains a lie maintained stubbornly, brazenly, in defiance of logic and obvious facts.
In both instances, we are also confronted with the “silence of the West.” During World War II, the Katyn القضية became inconvenient for the major Western Allied powers, as they needed Stalin as an ally to defeat Germany. Polish efforts to fight for truth and justice after April 13, 1943 were therefore doomed to failure. The Soviets broke off relations with the Polish government-in-exile, and at both Tehran and Yalta, Poland was effectively handed over into Stalin’s grasp.
In the case of Smolensk, the West also remained—and remains—silent. In 2010, relations with Vladimir Putin were being cultivated (also with the involvement of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk), and there was a push for a “reset” in ties with Moscow. It was therefore more convenient to remain silent and allow Moscow’s falsehoods to dominate the narrative about the causes.
Finally, another element linking Katyn and Smolensk is the contempt for human life and dignity. The same barbaric indifference and cruelty shown toward Polish officers and their bodies after death in 1940 can be seen in the treatment of the bodies of politicians, officers, and prominent figures of Poland’s intellectual elite in 2010. The nightmare experienced by the Smolensk Families is an essential part of the horror that unfolded at that time.
In the Smolensk–Katyn mud, one can see, regrettably, so many similarities—despite the seventy years that separate these two devastating tragedies.