President Lech Kaczynski called the massacre of Polish officers in Katyn “an act of Russian chauvinism.”

Thursday, during a speech to commemorate the Soviet invasion of Poland 70 years ago, President Lech Kaczynski said that the massacre of Polish officers in Katyn was a revenge for the defeat of Bolsheviks in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920. Kaczynski called Katyn “an act of Russian chauvinism,” which, in his opinion, prevailed in the Soviet Union at the end of 1930s.

In his speech at the Memorial of Those Murdered in the East of Poland in Warsaw, Kaczynski said that Soviet aggression on Poland not only resulted in the massacre of Polish officers in Katyn, but also in deportations of Polish intellectual elites to Soviet labour camps in Siberia.

“Poles should always remember their painful history, especially now when some people herald a birth of new Europe, in which there is hardly any place for Poland,” said Kaczynski.

The President of Poland also stressed that  “without truth there can be no forgiveness and reconciliation.” (mg/mmj)

Photo credit: prezydent.pl