Rites of Place: Public Commemoration in Russia and Eastern Europe

Memory as the Anchor of Sovereignty: Katyn and the Charge of Genocide

 Memory as the Anchor of Sovereignty: Katyn and the Charge of Genocide James von Geldern “Space” means an arena of freedom, without coercion or accountability , free of pressures and void of authority. . . . But “place” is a very different matter. Place is space which has historical meanings, where some things have happened which are now remembered and which provide continuity and identity across generations. —walter brueggemann, The Land (1977) Katyn Cemetery, 2000 Katyn, 1940. Such was the simple inscription in the Polish War Cemetery at Katyn (Russian Federation) at its official opening on July 28,2000.Similar sites were opened that summer in the Russian town of Mednoe, and Kharkov in Ukraine, other places where Polish officers were slaughtered by Soviet NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) troops in 1940, following their capture in the wake of the Soviet-German partition of Poland .1 Katyn, though, is the singular name by which the massacre is known to Poles, and it was the name they remembered through the long years from 1945 to 1989 when public mention of the massacre was forbidden, and the crimes were blamed on the Germans. The fraternal ties between socialist Poland and the Soviet Union forbade public remembrance of this act of national murder. Few Polish citizens were ever fooled by the official lie,and the inability to publicly observe the national tragedy rankled deeply. Only in 1989, after Mikhail Gorbachev, under pressure from Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski,appointed a commission to investigate this “blank  james von geldern spot” in history, were documents published showing conclusively that the crime was committed by Soviet troops.2 Construction of a Polish cemetery in Katyn took years of negotiation and struggle. Although a Polish-Russian agreement was signed in 1994 that gave Polish authorities the right to maintain memorials to Polish victims in Katyn and Mednoe—and the duty to maintain Russian war graves in Poland—progress was slow. Only in 1999 did work on the memorial complex begin. That year the site was host to ceremonies marking the sixtieth anniversary of the crossing of Soviet troops into Polish territory. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski remained silent through much of the ceremony,during which he laid a wreath in the Polish national colors of red and white. In his speech, the focal point of the ceremony, he spoke of the “martyrs of Polish history.”3 The cemeteries in Katyn,Mednoe,and Kharkov were opened by official ceremonies in the summer of 2000. The Katyn Memorial Complex, set in the forest outside Smolensk, is a tasteful construction of quiet paths, muted graves, and low walls.4 It commemorates victims murdered at Katyn, including both Soviet citizens killed by the Soviet secret police between 1937 and 1953 and the Polish officers killed in 1940.The site offers several simple platforms for ritual commemorations: one with a Russian Orthodox cross, one with a Catholic cross, and one without a cross for civil ceremonies. Paths lead from the first ritual platform to the separate Russian and Polish burial sites. Visitors can also walk a common Path of Memory, which leads between the two burial sites to the main ritual platform. The Polish grave site, which was designed by the Poles, is entered through a solemn gate that leads to a memorial wall on which the names of the Polish victims are written.The graves themselves are low mounds framed in reddish cast iron, on which large crosses lay silent. The pits into which the murdered Polish officers were thrown are now covered by large cast-iron plates of the same clayish red, and across from the memorial wall are gravestone-like planks with the symbols of the four faiths that suffered losses at Katyn: a Catholic cross, an Orthodox cross, a Star of David, and the red star of the Soviet Union.The Polish site also features the graves of two generals killed in the massacre and a simple altar that is frequently draped with wreaths of red and white.However,as Karen Petrone shows in “Moscow’s First World War Memorial” in this volume,creation of a public cemetery (in that case,a First World War cemetery in Moscow) is no guarantee that public memory will invest itself in such a commemorative site over time. The opening ceremony was celebrated on the main ritual platform, unmarked with religious or national symbols, and separate from both grave sites.As Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek...