Leningrad Tribute To Dead

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31520, 7 November 1967, Page 17

Leningrad Tribute To Dead

(NZ.P-A.-Reuter—Copyright) LENINGRAD, Nov. 6. With a deafening 15-gun salute, this citypaid tribute yesterday to its men and women who died in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which began in Leningrad 50 years ago next Tuesday.

Still smelling of fresh paint and bedecked with red flags and banners, Leningrad warmly welcomed the Kremlin’s ruling triumvirate —the Communist Party general sec-

retary, Mr Leonid Brezhnev, the president, Mr Nikolai Podgomy, and the Prime Minister, Mr Alexei Kosygin, who was born in Leningrad in 1906. Mr Kosygin got the warmest applause of all when he appeared with the others at

a jubilee meeting of the city Soviet But he did not take part in the speech-making, which was dominated by Mr Brezhnev, foreign Communist representatives and local officials. The Prime Minister looked on as Mr Brezhnev praised the city, and President Podgorny gave it the newlycreated “Order of the October Revolution.” The audience broke into thunderous applause as Mr Podgorny pinned the small red-and-gold medal to a city flag. Earlier, the three men laid a wreath to those who died in 1917 on the Mars fields, a joint burial ground for casualties of both the Bolshevik Revolution in November and the earlier February Revolution which toppled the Tsar. China yesterday accused Soviet leaders of changing their country into a revisionist and capitalist State and declared that they were not entitled to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. The official Chinese press launched a bitter attack to coincide with the anniversary celebrations, charging that the Russian people had come under the oppression of a group of “scabs and renegades,” Peking Radio reported.

An article reproduced in the “People’s Daily,” the “Red Flag” and the “Liberation Army Daily,” praised Lenin and Stalin for opening a new era to mankind.

But the article, quoted by the radio, said the country had changed its colour and the renegate leaders—Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev and others—had changed it into a capitalist State.