On July 19, the book Katyn. In the Footsteps of the Crime was included into the federal list of extremist materials. This information was published on the website of the RoskomSvoboda human rights project.
The ban was initiated by the Procurator of Kaliningrad Region, who addressed the Leningrad District Court of Kaliningrad with the claim to prohibit the distribution of the book on the Internet. The claim was sustained. According to the court decision, the authors of the book deliberately distorted the history of the Soviet period and identified the goals, decisions and actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany.
The conclusion of the expert linguists, who were invited by the local branch of FSB, particularly emphasizes that this book «gives evidence of the negative attitude towards the Soviet state under I. Stalin’s rule and during the communist regime that is identified by the authors with the current Russian state policy carried on by the President of the Russian Federation V.Putin. They state that Russia continues to behave as an occupant state, trampling the sovereignty of other countries and pursuing an aggressive policy».
Katyn. In the Footsteps of the Crime is a guidebook, published by the Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Amity on the 81st anniversary of the Katyn crime. The book tells the story of the Polish War Cemetery in Katyn, as well as discloses the history and geography of the Katyn massacre.
In 2010, the Russian State Duma adopted a statement «On the Katyn tragedy and its victims», which acknowledged Stalin’s guilt for the mass shootings of Polish citizens and expressed hopes for further study of the Katyn crime.