Chapter 1 Summary

On August 19, 1991, amidst news reports that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had "stepped down" due to health concerns, Colonel Aleksandr Tretetsky of the Soviet Military Prosecutor's Office, arrives. His new work site is a series of mass graves in a forest near Kalinin, a town located a few hours north of Moscow. Tretetsky and his crew of Soviet and Polish workers unearth the remnants of thousands of young, promising Polish officers, who were sentenced to death by former Soviet President Josef Stalin, more than a half century before. Not long before this day, most Russians would have denied that their government could be responsible for the death of these men. The purges, executions, and illegal imprisonments were not a part of any history they knew. The success of the Kremlin's propaganda campaigns had provided millions of Soviets with a far more proud alternate version...