Surviving Katyn: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth

The Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war is a crime to which there are no witnesses

WINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE

Committed in utmost secrecy in April–May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake – the few survivors of the massacre and the Polish wartime forensic investigators – whose quest for the truth in the face of an inscrutable, unknowable, and utterly ruthless enemy came at great personal cost.

‘A gripping reconstruction… utterly compelling reading.’ Adam Zamoyski

‘Vividly recreates the last months of the officers – artists, scientists, engineers and poets as well as career military men – who were initially held at three special camps run by the NKVD.’ The Sunday Times

‘Riveting.’ Serhii Plokhy