FIRST the crime, then the lie. After the massacre in April 1940 of 20,000-plus captured Polish officers by Stalin’s NKVD secret police, during the Nazi-Soviet carve-up of Poland, came five decades during which the Soviet Union blamed it on the Germans. Russian media still sometimes peddle Soviet lies, mostly amid official silence. The files are sealed. Victims’ relatives are suing Russia in the European Court of Human Rights.
But now Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, to attend a ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the massacre at its site, in Russia. That matters: Russian television viewers will for the first time see their leaders publicly accepting the true story.
Read more:http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15514833
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