SOVIET PURGE CONTINUES

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22121, 17 June 1937, Page 13

SOVIET PURGE CONTINUES

COMMUNIST LEADERS ARRESTED "STALIN'S ATTEMPT TO WIN MASSES" • CANCELLATION OF RED ARMY MANOEUVRES (UNITED PRESS ASSOCUTIOK-COFraIGHT.) (Received June 16, 9.30 p.m.) LONDON, June 15. The Riga correspondent of the "Daily Mail" says it is officially announced in Moscow that the autumn manoeuvres of the Red Army have been cancelled because of the changes in the commanding staffs since the execution of the eight officers last week. The cancellation means that the army will not obtain ammunition, which might be put to revolutionary The Riga correspondent of "The Times" says nine leading Communist leaders in the Ukraine are' to be tried at Odessa on charges of systematically persecuting and unmercifully beating peasants, endeavouring thereby to create anti-Soviet discontent. The trial is interpreted as a furtherance of- Stalin's policy of winning the support of the masses. The "News-Chronicle'.' says Herr Hitler has intimated to Baron von Neurath, the Nazi Foreign Minister, that he would refuse to receive the new Russian Ambassador, presumably on account of the Soviet allegation that 'the recently-executed army officers had plotted with the German general staff to seize the According to the German newspaper "Zeitung am Mittag," Russian sailors in the Vladivostok army area which is controlled by General Blucher, who is at present in Moscow, used rifles against the police. The latter were attempting to arrest them on suspicion of being involved in the Trotskyist intrigue. The death-roll is 15. . , . Further arrests in Russia include the Commissar for Justice (M. Kratinsky), the Soviet Ambassador to Japan (M. Jurienieff), the Soviet Ambassador to Madrid (M. Rosenberg), and four officials of the Foreign Office and War Ministry.