MORE PLOT TRIALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 62, 10 September 1937, Page 18

MORE PLOT TRIALS

THE SOVIET PREPARES

PROMINENT MEN MISSING

I An intimation that further Soviet treason trials are in preparation is contained in Prosecutor A. J. Vishinsky's declaration that the secret court-mar-tial that resulted in the shooting of Mikhail Tukachevsky and seven other Red army generals brought to light new facts concerning criminal acts of. "enemies of the people," wrote Harold Denny from Moscow to the "New York Times" on June 20.

Opinion in Moscow is divided as to whether the new trials would be public, as were those held last summer and winter. Because of criticism provoked in the outside world they may jbe held in camera. A number of persons of considerable prominence who have not been for some time in their accustomed circles are believed to be under arrest, though official information is unobtainable.

Mr. Vishinsky in another warning to the public to be on . guard against everybody, even friends, because of spies' devious ways, said it had been learned since last winter's trial that those defendants, though professing to confess fully, actually concealed their confederates.

"At the trial of the Trotskyist antiSoviet centre [of Gregory L. Piatakov, Vice Commissar for Heavy Industry, Karl Radek, etc.] all the accused tried to tell the court they had disarmed and were ready to tell the whole truth about their crimes, and name all their accomplices," Mr. Vishinsky said. ■

*"lOLD LESS THAN HALF."

"Actually they told less than half the truth in their testimony. Actually they lied and double-dealt again, trying to conceal their people from investigation and thus preserve them. We had become convinced thereof at their trials and especially since. It was confirmed at the trial of Tukachevsky, Yakir, Üborevich, and others that revealed a number of new facts that had escaped detection at earlier trials."

Mr. Vishinsky asserted that every trial of wreckers and traitors, even those held a decade ago, had shown that internal enemies had collaborated with the intelligence services of foreign countries, some of which even had planned armed intervention.

Radek and M. Sokolnikov are now in the prison, to which they escaped with their lives after last winter's trial, though they confessed to full guilt.

A, group of women in the. Staff Commissariat of Social Welfare in the Crimea, including Commissar Anna Ziumbilova, whose name indicates that she is a Tartar, and the chief bookkeeper, were arrested at Simferopol on charges- of embezzling more than 400,000 roubles of State funds allotted for the needy. The commissar is accused of artfully forging semi-literate petitions by non-existent applicants and appropriating the money for herself while ignoring the appeals of the really destitute.

Commissar-Ziumbilova is accused of spending the money picturesquely. She paid her husband 4000 roubles to consent to a divorce, then bought a new husband—looo roubles down to the husband himself, and 3000 to his wife. Besides dispending money lavishly to relatives and friends, she is accused of subsidising the Trotskyists.

IJMSCHLICHT ARRESTED?

■ Josef Stanislavovitch Umschlicht, acting secretary of the Union Executive Committee, lias joined the growing list of high Bolshevist leaders apparently placed behind bars, says an Associated Press dispatch to the same paper. ; /

Umschlicht,- whose secretaryship gave him a job virtually equivalent to that held by the Speaker of the House in this United States Congress, disappeared on June 16. He was a member also of the powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party and a former Vice Commissar of War.

He stood close to" the top of the Government structure as secretary of the Committee of the Presidency, which gives Michael Kalinin the nominal title of President of the U.S.S.R.

• Umschlicht was a prominent member of the' Polish Social Democracy' Party before the revolution and was instrumental in linking, that party with the Bolshevist bloc. He is Polish by birth.

After the October revolution he became a military leader and Vice Commissar of Military and >faval Affairs, later engaging in economic work. Recently Umschlicht helped President Kalinin distribute medals to noted artists of the theatre. There was no hint' of what charge may have been placed against him.

Commissar of Railways Kaganovich dismissed N. S. Ghorasimenko, manager of the railway car department of the Gorki Railway.. 'It was reported he will be tried for sabotage in failure to repair cars. Several subordinates faced similar charges.

V. Skvortzdv, who was in charge of Gas Prevention Corps at Osoviakhim and Azov in the Black Sea province, was charged with deliberately poisoning workers and domestic animals with acid given him for use in anti-gas training. .A power plant construction manager at Uzbekistan was arrested with others, charged with being "Trotskyist" wreckers.