World Notes HISTORY

The black marble monument stands in a grove in the Katyn Forest outside Smolensk, a memorial to the more than 4,000 Polish officers massacred at that spot during World War II. But the dedication etched in the marble tells a lie that mocks the very lives it memorializes: "To the victims of Fascism -- the Polish officers shot by the Hitlerites."

For almost 50 years, the Soviets have blamed the Germans for the Katyn massacre, despite evidence pointing unmistakably to Stalin's secret police, the NKVD. Last week a prominent American visitor rendered his own verdict. At the foot of the monument, he placed a bouquet of red roses bearing a handwritten message penned in both Polish and English: "For the victims of Stalin and the NKVD. Zbigniew Brzezinski."

The visit by the Polish-born former U.S. National Security Adviser was timely. Two years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev established a joint Soviet-Polish commission whose mandate included the reopening of the Katyn case. Since then, the Soviets have delayed a formal verdict. But officials, eager to clear the air before Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's arrival in Moscow later this month, want to hasten a judgment. Applauding Gorbachev for making a "historic break with Stalinism," Brzezinski offered a face-saving way out. "Many Soviet people were also victims of Stalinism," he said. "So the acknowledgment of these crimes should lead to reconciliation, not to hatred."