SOVIET PURGE HALTED

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22305, 20 January 1938, Page 11

SOVIET PURGE HALTED

CRITICISM OF O.G.P.U.

METHODS

PARTY EXPULSIONS MUST STOP POLICE HUNT MALICIOUS INFORMERS (TOTTED PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT.) (Received January 20, 1 a.m.) LONDON, January 19. The Moscow correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” reports that M. Stalin has halted the party purge. A decree issued to-day orders the cessation of expulsions from the party without investigation, and the re-examination and reinstatement within 15 days of tens of thousands thus expelled. The decree also orders the punishment of malicious informers. Citing the vast number of tnese expulsions in recent months, the decree states that whole families have been removed without investigation by ambitious time-serving party chiefs. There is now going to be a hunt for informers instead of a hunt for the victims of informers. There has been evidence in the press in the last few • weeks of this change of policy. Chief of these was an article by the celebrated Bolshevik journalist, Kolov, denouncing the O.G.P.U.’s method of accepting informers’ unconfirmed reports. Kolov would never have dai'ed to attack the O.G.P.U. unless he had been ordered to do so from a high quarter. SOVIET MINISTER GOES HOME DEATH SENTENCE LIKELY IN MOSCOW (Received January 19, 11.55 p.m.) LONDON, January 19. The Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” says that the former Soviet Minister to Norway (M. Jakubovitch) has arrived there on his way to Moscow, where it is believed he will be sentenced to death. He decided to go to Moscow after receiving news that his two sons had been arrested and threatened with death unless he returned. MINISTER EXECUTED IN MOSCOW BUDAPEST, January 18. The newspaper “Pesti Naplo” states that M. A. Bekzadian, Soviet Minister at Budapest, was executed at Moscow on January 14.