SECRET TRIALS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1937, Page 7

SECRET TRIALS.

Surprise Executions Sequel in Russia. PROMINENT OFFICIALS DIE. (Received 11 a.m.) MOSCOW, December 20. Eight leading Soviet oflicials have boon tried and executed for high treason, terrorism and espionage. 'I hoy are MM. Yonukidzo. former secretary of the Central Executive Committee: Leon Kara khan, former Foreign Commissar and Ambassador to Turkey: Onkerman. former chief of the western department of the Foreign Ollice; Steiger. unofficial head of the Soviet protocol: Orakhelashvili, former chief of the Coorgian Home Oflice and secret police; Shevnldieff, head of the Communist party in the Azoff region: Larin, Communist leader in the Rostoff region: and Mcteloff. who has not heen identified.

M. Karakhan, who was aged !>O, was an expert in Oriental languages and regarded as Russia's master spy in the East. He was one of the best-known and most outspoken of Soviet diplomatists. He was fond of pood clothes and tennis, and visited Wimbledon a few years ago. His wife, the ballerina Semenova, has been classed with Pavlova.

Slievaldieff was notorious for his merciless deportation of Kuban Cossacks in 1932 and his severity during the great famine of 1933. Yenukidze was formerly an old friend of Stalin.

Larin was a crippled Jewish emigre and an economic historian famous for his campaign against alcohol.

The executions have caused surprise coming so soon after the elections. Nothing was heard about the trials.

Vrinovsky, Vice-Commissar of Internal Affairs, in the "Pravda," states' that Karakhan for many years had deceived the Government by selling secrets of exceptional importance to the Fascist intelligence service.