Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »
Fri 09 Sep 2009Polish parliament condemns 1939 invasion by Soviet Union
POLAND’S PARLIAMENT has passed a resolution condemning the Soviet Union’s 1939 invasion of eastern Poland and Stalinist crimes that bore “characteristics of genocide”, provoking an angry response from Moscow and undermining hopes of a rapprochement with Warsaw.
The resolution specifically denounced the 1940 massacre by Soviet forces of some 20,000 Polish officers, priests and intellectuals in Katyn forest in western Russia, and the murderous Gulag prison camp system, and stressed that the Soviet regime deprived Poland and its Baltic neighbours Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania of their independence after the second World War.
Choose a Subscription type - required
