DECORATIONS ANNULLED

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29799, 16 April 1962, Page 10

DECORATIONS ANNULLED

Secret Police In Russia (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) MOSCOW, April 14. About 700 members of Russia’s secret police and internal security organisations have been stripped of awards apparently earned for the mass deportation of Russian nationality groups during the war. Among those named in a Supreme Soviet decree annulling the awards are Lavrenti Beria (secret police chief during the Stalin era) and one of his successors, General Ivan Serov. Although Beria and many of his lieutenants were executed in the years after Stalin’s death, General Serov is still seen occasionally at diplomatic and government receptions, the British United Press reported. A decree issued in March, 1944, announced awards to the 700 for exemplary execution for special tasks for the Government. The special tasks were never explained, but the awards came shortly after the mass deportation to the east of Russia of about 1,000,000 Russians who were in the path of the German advance. After Stalin’s death most of the people were allowed to return to their homelands. Mr Khrushchev described the deportations in a speech in 1956 as “monstrous acts.”

Footing the Bill.— ln Ottawa, a Canadian timber firm paid a one dollar bill to the government with a wooden cheque, 12 feet long by four feet wide. The bank cashed it.