ing to commemorate.

The crash cut a devastating swath through Poland's political and military elite and plunged the country into mourning. That the crash occurred in Russia near the scene of one of the most traumatic events in 20th century Polish history -- the Soviet massacre of Poland's officer corps in 1940 -- added to the sense of disbelief that enveloped the country Saturday.

Officials said all 97 people on board were killed, including the president's wife, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker as well as several lawmakers and presidential aides. Among the military personnel killed were the army chief of staff, the head of the air force, the navy chief commander and the commander of Polish land forces.

Also among the dead were some revered figures in the Polish struggle to break free of communism: Anna Walentynowicz, 80, the diminutive crane operator whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk led to the creation of Solidarity, the political movement that nine years later helped topple the communist government; and the last Polish president-in-exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski, 90, who stepped down when Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity, became the first post-communist president of Poland.

"This is a great tragedy, a great shock to us all," Walesa said.

The governor of the Smolensk region in Russia, where the accident occurred, said the pilot decided to land despite advice from the control tower that he divert to another airport because of poor visibility. The 26-year-old Russian-made jet, a Tupolev Tu-154, clipped trees and broke apart just over a mile short of the runaway at a military airport, officials said. Television images showed small fires amid the fog and a broke tail fin with the red and white colors of Poland.

Kazcynski, who became president in 2005, was the identical twin brother of former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. And together they had roiled both domestic and international politics with their combative brand of Polish conservatism that was suspicious of both the Kremlin and the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels.

Kaczynski was facing elections for a second term this fall but was trailing in opinion polls.

"In the face of this tragedy we stand all united," said Bronislaw Komorowski, speaker of the lower house of the Polish parliament, the Sejm, and now the acting president. "There is no left or right, there are no differences, no divisions. We are all together with our message of compassion to the families of those who died nearby the Smolensk airport."

Komorowski declared a week of national mourning.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Kaczynski family, the loved ones of those killed in this tragic plane crash, and the Polish nation," said a statement by President Obama, who also called Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. "Today's loss is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world. President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity. With him were many of Poland's most distinguished civilian and military leaders who have helped to shape Poland's inspiring democratic transformation."

The Polish delegation was planning to mark the 70th anniversary of the summary execution of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Union's secret police, the NKVD, in the forest of Katyn. The spring 1940 massacre followed the division of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.

The killings, which were directly ordered by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, were coldly systematic: Each officer was shot in the back of the head, his hands tied behind his back. And by wiping out such a large part of the Polish officer corps, the Soviets created a leadership vacuum they were later able to exploit when the Red Army drove the Nazis out of Poland.

For decades, the Soviets attempted to cover up the crime, blaming it on the Nazis, and the authorities in Moscow did not accept responsibility until 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev said the Soviet Union carried out the killings. The legacy of Katyn still festers in Russian-Polish relations and in Russia some revanchists continue to dismiss the crime as an anti-Russian conspiracy whipped up by the Poles.

"This is unbelievable -- this tragic, cursed Katyn," Kaczynski's predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on Polish television. "You get chills down your spine."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin immediately took charge of the investigation, flying to Smolensk, where he was scheduled to meet Tusk, who planned to fly in from Warsaw.

Both men this week had attended a ceremony marking the loss of Polish lives at Katyn, and Putin -- the first Russian leader to attend the commemoration -- said "we bow our heads to those who bravely met death here." Putin's words, and the airing of the film "Katyn" by the acclaimed Polish director Andrzej Wajda on Russian television this month, were seen as significant efforts to improve often strained relations between the two counties. Wajda's father, Polish cavalry officer, was murdered at Katyn.

A nationalist with an abiding suspicion of Russia, Kaczynski, 60, did not attend the Russian-Polish joint ceremony Wednesday and instead was arriving for a largely Polish ceremony Saturday. Kazcynski had in the past infuriated Moscow with his embrace of Ukrainian and Georgian leaders hostile to Moscow and his support for the placement of a U.S. missile defense system on Polish soil.

The deaths near Katyn of Kazcynski and a delegation sprinkled with people who had felt the heavy hand of the Soviets seems extraordinary, and will certainly fuel conspiracy theories about the crash. But all early reports pointed to pilot error.

Crowds gathered at the presidential palace in Warsaw, where people prayed, laid flowers and lighted candles. Tusk said the crash was "the most tragic event of the country's postwar history."

In the Polish system, the position of president is largely ceremonial and most power resides with the prime minister and parliament. Tusk had planned to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington this week, but it now appears he will not attend.

Condolences from world leaders poured into Poland.

"I knew that his whole life had been dedicated to the fight for the freedom of Poland and the freedom of Europe," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of Kazcynski.

"On this difficult day the people of Russia stand with the Polish people," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Tusk in a phone call, according to the Kremlin press service.

Polish and Russian officials said the president's plane was serviced and refurbished at a Russian plant in December, but the continued use of aging Russian jets by the Polish government has been the source of some controversy in the country. The government said it could not afford a new fleet of Western planes.

"I once said that we will one day meet in a funeral procession, and that is when we will take the decision to replace the aircraft fleet," said former prime minister Leszek Miller, who was injured in the crash of a government helicopter in 2003.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/10/AR2010041000592_pf.html

Saturday, April 10, 2010; 3:32 PM