Today we are all witnesses and participants in a historical event—the opening of the Memorial Complex at Katyn dedicated to the memory of Soviet and Polish citizens who were victims of totalitarian repression. I am convinced that it has a special meaning for future Russian-Polish relations and, above all, for their dimension of humanitarian and human relations. Today's ceremony confirms the new character of mutual relations between our states, the higher level of understanding the history that binds together the Russian and Polish peoples and the societies of both countries.

We Russians can well understand the feelings of Poles connected with Katyn [and] the motives that moved the presidents of Russia and Poland in 1992 to judge the crimes of totalitarianism, which brought so much suffering to the peoples of our countries.

This is a reference to President Yeltsin's publication and condemnation of the Soviet Politburo decision of 5 March 1940 to shoot the Polish POWs and to President Walěsa's letter of thanks, 15 October 1992 (doc. 119).

In fact, it was the peoples of the former Soviet Union who became the first and principal victims of the inhuman Stalinist machine, which broke and mangled millions of human lives.

Indeed, in this earth, four thousand Polish officers rest alongside tens of thousands of our compatriots, and the Katyn Forest will remain in national memory as the symbol of a terrible tragedy that befell our society while also affecting representatives of other states. May their memory live forever!

I fully share the words of the prime minister of the Polish Republic which he spoke recently at the Warsaw ceremony on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the Katyn tragedy, that the concept of Katyn itself should become the “symbol of common memory, of our obligation to jointly surmount a difficult part of our history for the sake of our future, for the sake of strengthening friendly feelings between Poles and Russians, for the sake of building friendly relations between Russia and Poland.”

Khristenko was citing a fragment of Buzek's televised speech to his fellow citizens on the sixtieth anniversary of the Katyn crime; see KD2/239, p. 588, n. 1.

We are gathered here today not only to honor the memory of repressed Russian citizens and Polish military servicemen but also to declare with full responsibility that nothing like this should ever be repeated. The Russian names of the places of Katyn and Mednoe must lose their burden of negative significance in Russian-Polish relations and become the symbols of common mourning and reconciliation. The shadow of the past should in no way darken the present nor, all the more, the future of mutual, two-sided contacts and cooperation between Russia and Poland.

We are obligated to turn over this tragic page of our mutual history and instead strive to banish from Russian-Polish relations the distrust and prejudice remaining from the past.

This is a reference to a phrase in Wałěsa's letter to Yeltsin of 15 October 1992 (doc. 119).

The memory of the Katyn tragedy, the common mourning for those who perished, should not divide but unite our peoples.

I am convinced that this will be so!