On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, Russian officials have removed plaques commemorating Polish officers executed by the NKVD in 1940, while the Soviet Union was still collaborating with Nazi Germany. This may have been a regional initiative, but it is very much in line with Russia’s aggressive attempts under President Vladimir Putin to blur or rewrite the darkest pages of Soviet history.
Two memorial plaques, erected in 1991, were removed from the former NKVD building in Tver on May 7. One read: “In memory of the tortured. In the 1930s-1950s this was the Central NKVD-MGB for Kalinin Oblast and its internal prison.” The inscription on the second was: “In remembrance of the Poles from the Ostashkov Camp, murdered by the NKVD in Kalinin. As a warning to the world.”