– V.I. Ilyukhin, 2010 –
On June 16, 2010, at the plenary session of the State Duma, the Deputy V.I. Ilyukhin delivered a speech on behalf of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) faction.
There is an opinion that history is written and shaped by journalists and writers. To some extent, this is true. However, we now have grounds to assert that recent national history is also being shaped by falsifiers.
The KPRF faction has information — requiring thorough verification through a parliamentary investigation — that, in the early 1990s, a powerful team of specialists in falsifying historical documents from the Soviet period, primarily the Stalin era, was formed under the auspices of President Yeltsin’s administration. Their sole objective was to discredit the Soviet past and equate Stalinism with fascism.
This group included employees of Russian intelligence agencies and the Sixth Institute of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. It was based in facilities that formerly served as country residences of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the village of Nagorny, near Moscow. It is possible that this group — or parts of it — continues to operate to this day.
Its peak activity coincided with the declassification of the documents of the Political Bureau and Central Committee of the CPSU Central Committee, carried out in the early 1990s by a government commission led by Mikhail Poltoranin. According to available information, the falsifiers produced hundreds — if not thousands — of forged pages, which were then inserted into archival files and documents.
It has already been established that several documents were falsified, including the so-called “Lenin Testament,” certain documents related to Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication, claims that Stalin was an agent of the Tsarist secret police (“Okhranka”) and other fabricated records.
Today, it can be stated that the so-called memorandum by L. Beria from March 1940 — allegedly requesting Political Bureau consent for the execution of 27,000 Polish prisoners of war — was forged.
We present materials from expert evaluations that confirm this.
The excerpt from the resolution of the Political Bureau purportedly authorizing the execution of Poles was also fabricated.
Additionally, we present expert research demonstrating the fabrication of documents alleging that the NKVD of the USSR cooperated with the Gestapo of nazi Germany.
We express deep concern and alarm for several reasons — primarily because these forged documents have been introduced into academic circulation. They are presented as authentic in historical literature, documentary films and artistic works, shaping a distorted perception of our recent past.
We might have refrained from making such a statement if we did not know that, in the early 1990s, the doors of many Russian archives were opened to the removal of historical documents, with the state not opposing this and, in some cases, even encouraging such lawlessness.
Our conviction is reinforced by the fact that Dmitry Volkogonov, a former advisor to Yeltsin, handed over dozens or even hundreds of archival documents — both copies and originals — bearing “Top Secret” and “Secret” classifications to the Library of Congress in the United States.
Today, Russian archival documents are effectively “wandering” across Europe.
We are in possession of counterfeit seals, stamps and reproductions of signatures of Stalin, Beria and other figures, as well as blank forms from the 1930s and 1940s, which were used to create these forgeries.
I present to you a volume of archival documents — this includes correspondence between the NKVD, NKGB and the People’s Commissariat of Defence of the USSR with Stalin. This volume was created with a single purpose: to legitimize several forged documents, including a note fabricated in the name of the General Staff of the Red Army. Unfortunately, this legitimization has already taken place.
The file bears markings such as “To Be Preserved Forever” and “Not Subject to Declassification,” yet the documents are circulating outside the archives. How could this have happened?
In response to my earlier statements in the press, the director of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Sergey Mironenko, claimed that this could not be true and accused me of spreading baseless allegations. From this high tribune, I declare in return — I am prepared to resign as a deputy if Mironenko can prove that none of the documents in the file pertain to historical events of the 1930s and 1940s and that they did not have the right to be stored in the archives. If he cannot prove this, then he should step down from his position.
We once again raise the question of the necessity of a parliamentary investigation into the circumstances surrounding the execution of Polish prisoners near Smolensk in the Kozy Gory (Katyn) area, as well as the falsification of historical documents. In the near future, we will propose an amendment to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation introducing accountability for the forgery and distortion of historically significant archival materials.
If anyone believes that these issues concern only the past, they are gravely mistaken — they pertain, first and foremost, to the present.
(Translated by NEPH from the Russian original)