POISON VICTIM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

POISON VICTIM.

HATED POLICE CHIEF. HEAD OF BREADED OGPTJ. MYSTERY BEHIND DEATH. What is the mystery behind the death of Viacheslav Menjinski, who, as head of the dreaded Ogpu, won the reputation oi being the most hated man in Russia? Thousands of red flags edged with blaeU recently flew in Moscow, and a State funeral was arranged for the former chief of the secret police, but this display did not succeed in quelling the persistent rumours in Russia that Menjinski was murdered. Heart disease was given officially as the cause of death, but the police, with knowing looks, significantly say that it should have been heart failure. Every heart must fail when poison is given to its owner. For two months the Ogpu hae beeu under direct control of Stalin, supposed to have taken over because of Menjinski's illness, but really because for years there has existed a private feud between the two. Rivals For Power. Each was jealous of the power of the other, yet each was powerless to change the position. Menjinski was hated because he was ruthless. Under his regime the Ogpu filled the notorious prisons of Butyrka and Lubianka with thousands of alleged political foes. But the prisons weren't filled fer long. They were quickly emptied at frequent interval! and the method used was so brutal that the very name of Menjinski breathed terror into the soul of the Russian people. Every now and again, to make room for new batches of prisoners, the political "enemies" of the State were driven from their cells into corridors, there to meet sudden and uneseapable death from machine guns. Yet Menjinski, the ruthless, the pitiless, the merciless, to whom it was useless to appeal, sat in his home at night and wept. Sometimes he read poetry and listened to music, of which he was passionately fond. But he was never ashamed to weep. He wept real tears. Not tears of grief for those who had been sent to an awful doom by his command, but tears of anguish at such unavoidable ' minor catastrophes as the death of a child under the wheels of a droshky or the Buffering of other children in the famine and feverinfested areas of the Soviets. He was ruthless only to Russia's political enemies. He hated to see other people suffer.