A NEW SOVIET PURGE

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22249, 13 November 1937, Page 15

A NEW SOVIET PURGE

German Residents Implicated PROMINENT MEN ARRESTED 496 Death Sentences In One Month (TJHITUS PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT.) (Received November 12, 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, November 11. The Moscow correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" says it is understood that the Commissariat of Internal Affairs offered to furnish Berlin with evidence from arrested spies. Some Germans who signed confessions implicating other German representatives in Russia have been put across the frontier after protracted negotiations. About 400 Germans, mostly members of the Left Wing and political refugees, are at present kept as prisoners on charges of spying and wrecking. The latest arrests include Professor A. N. Tupolev, who was the real creator of the Red Air Force. The famous series of machines constructed by him included that used in the recent record-making flight across the North Pole. . It bore his initials, "A.N.T.," but these markings are now being removed.

M. A. S. Bubnov, who was recently dismissed from the post of Commissar for Education and Fine Arts, M. Kurtz, the head of the Intourist organisation and former president of the Volga German Republic, and M. Yakovlyev, a former Commissar for Agriculture, who carried out M. Stalin's policy of collectivisation, are also under arrest. Others in custody are M. A. Chernov, who was recently dismissed from the position of Commissar for Agriculture, M. A. Bezymensky. the deputy poet-laureate, who is famous for his blood-thirsty verses conmemorating the execution of traitors, and M. Tretiakov. an author, who is alleged to have been a Japanese spy for 21 years.

The police also arrested M. Nissen. a trusted photographer, who made a close-up talking film of Stalin at the Soviet Congress last November. He is alleged to be a Nazi terrorist.

The majority of the vast numbers recently arrested are charged with wrecking or spying on behalf of "a foreign State." During October 496 death sentences were passed by public Courts on similar charges.

The correspondent adds that MM. Marenieff, Y. H. Davtyan, and M. Karski, Soviet Ambassadors to Germany, Poland, and Turkey respectively, were arrested in the purge. It is also reported that the German Consul-General at Leningrad, Herr Sommer. has been recalled to Berlin at the demand of the Soviet. The Warsaw correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" states that M. Davtyan's wife, Madame Maxakova, was once a well-known opera singer. Several members of his staff are also believed to be prisoners. Madame Maxakova is charged with association with Trotskyist plotters. M. Podolski, the former counsellor at the Soviet Embassy in Warsaw, and now Soviet Minister to Lithuania, is also believed to be "in trouble."