The accepted proposal of <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria" class="mw-redirect" title="Lavrentiy Beria">Lavrentiy Beria</a> to execute former Polish army and police officers in NKVD prisoner of war camps and prisons. March 1940.
<p>TOP SECRET
</p><p>From the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to comrade STALIN
</p><p>In the NKVD POW camps and in the prisons of the western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia there is currently a large number of former officers of the Polish army, former Polish police officers and employees of intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist c-r (counterrevolutionary) parties, participants in underground c-r rebel organizations, defectors and so on. All of them are implacable enemies of Soviet power and full of hatred for the Soviet system.
</p><p>POW officers and policemen located in the camps are attempting to continue c-r work and are leading anti-Soviet agitation. Each of them is simply waiting to be freed so they can have the opportunity to actively join the fight against Soviet power.
</p><p>NKVD agents in the western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia have uncovered a number of c-r rebel organizations. In each of these c-r organizations the former officers of the former Polish army and former Polish police officers played an active leadership role.
</p><p>Among the detained defectors and violators of the state-
</p><p>(Signatures: In favor - <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stalin" class="mw-redirect" title="Stalin">Stalin</a>, <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kliment_Voroshilov" class="mw-redirect" title="Kliment Voroshilov">Voroshilov</a>, <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Molotov" title="Vyacheslav Molotov">Molotov</a>, <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Anastas_Mikoyan" title="Anastas Mikoyan">Mikoyan</a>)
</p>
(In margin: Comrade <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mikhail_Kalinin" title="Category:Mikhail Kalinin">Kalinin</a> - In favor. Comrade <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich" title="Lazar Kaganovich">Kaganovich</a> - In favor.)
<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria" class="mw-redirect" title="Lavrentiy Beria">Lavrentiy Beria</a>
1940-03-05
<ul><li>РГАСПИ  Ф. 17 оп. 166 дело 621 лист 130. Подлинник. Scan from <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://katyn.ru/index.php?go=Pages&amp;in=view&amp;id=6">http://katyn.ru/index.php?go=Pages&amp;in=view&amp;id=6</a></li>
<li>This is a colour photocopy of official document residing in the Russian archive RGASPI, a b/w copy of which had been legally transferred into the property of Polish Government, and first published in Poland in 1992.</li></ul>