SOVIET PURGE CONTINUES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27096, 20 July 1953, Page 9

SOVIET PURGE CONTINUES

Premier Of Oil Province Falls (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, July 18. The downfall of a third member of the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr Georgi Malenkov’s team of 14 leaders was reported by Moscow Radio tonight. The latest casualty in the purge sweeping Soviet Russia is Mr Mirdajar Abbasovich Bagirov, the “strong man” of the Soviet Middle Eastern Republic of Azerbaijan, bordering Persia.

The Moscow Radio and the Soviet New Agency, Tass, announced that Mr Bagirov, for many yearn Communist Party leader of Azerbaijan and since last March Premier of that republic, had been expelled from the Azerbaijan Communist Party and its central committee. The importance of Mr Bagirov was not merely local, however. In the sweeping changes made after Stalin’s death in March he was appointed one of the four alternate (nonvoting) members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Soviet (All Union) Communist Party. This Party Presidium was Mr Malenkov’s equivalent of Stalin’s old Politburo.

On June 12 another alternate member of the Presidium fell. He was Leonid G. Melnikov, Communist Party leader in the Ukraine.

Last week the purge reached to Mr Malenkov’s “No. 2 man.” Mr Lavrenti Beria, the Interior Minister and Chief of the Secret Police, fell under a storm of abuse and accusations that he was a traitor. He is to be brought to trial. This week has’brought news of the downfall of other “Beria men” in Georgia, the Ukraine and Estonia. In Georgia and the Ukraine the Inter’ >r Ministers who had worked at a local level directly under Mr Beria as the All-Union (Federal) security chief were dismissed from office. In Estonia the Russian-born Minister of Justice was replaced by an Estonian. “Run to Pattern” The purge has run to a pattern—the disgrace of Beria men who are now being replaced by men acceptable to Mr Malenkov. There are several indications that the “Russification” policy followed in Stalin’s later years is being replaced by a policy which gives a greater measure of independence to the constituent nationalities. The. Estonian appointment appears, to indicate this. To date the purge has affected one after another of the constituent Soviet republics. Mr Bagirov is accused of grave violations oi his duties. A joint meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan—the oilrich Soviet republic of some 3,000,000 persons—and of the Baku City committee of the party, recommended his dismissal as Prime Minister. The same meeting approved the decision to commit Mr Beria for trial. . Mr Malenkov’s Emissary Mr Malenkov sent a personal emissary tv the oil city of Baku to address the meeting which ousted Mr Bagirov and condemned Mr Beria. He was Mr Pyotr N. Pospelov, one of the secretaries of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. Mr Pospelov is a Marxist theoretician and a former editor of “Pravda.” The official Tass report recorded that Mr Pospelov took part in the deliberations of the joint section. The dismissed Premier, Mr Bagirov, took a prominent part in the Nineteenth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party last October, and it was then that he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Mr Bagirov’s Career Mr Bagirov was appointed an alternate (non-voting) member of the Presidium of the Central Committees of the Soviet Communist Party in the changes made on Stalin’s death in March.

This meant that he was one of the top 14 men directing affairs in Soviet Russia. The full members of the party presidium comprised the Premier, Mr Georgi Malenkov, Mr Lavrenti Beria (now publicly disgraced), Mr Vyacheslav Molotov, and seven others.

Mr Bagirov was one of four alternates of the Presidium. One other alternate member of the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party, Mr Leonid G. Melnikov, was recently dismissed from his post as First Secretary of the party in the Ukraine. Mr Melnikov’s dismissal preceded the announcement of Mr Beria’s disgrace. Mr Bagirov was secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Azerbaijan in 1941, according to a Moscow Radio broadcast in that year. He was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1943. He also became a member of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet