TO BE RESETTLED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 61, 9 September 1941, Page 7

TO BE RESETTLED

VOLGA POPULATION

TRANSFER TO SIBERIA

DANGER OF SABOTAGE

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.), (Rec. 9 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 8. A decree issued in Moscow orders the speediest resettlement of the whole of the population from the German Volga Autonomous Soviet Republic, which covers a small district in the Lower Volga area 250 miles east of the Ukraine, to Siberia. It is estimated that the population of the German Volga Republic is about 600,000, of whom . 60 per cent, are Germans and the remainder Russians and Ukrainians. The decree, which was signed by M. Kalinin, president of the executive, at the Kremlin, states:— "According to reliable information received by the military authorities, there are thousands—even tens of thousands —of diversionists and spies among the German population of the Volga region who are prepared to cause explosions at a signal from Germany. No German living there has reported their presence, and therefore the German population are covering up the enemies of the Soviet people. The Soviet Government would be forced to adopt measures of reprisal if diversionist acts were committed and bloodshed occurred, and therefore it finds it necessary to resettle the entire population of the Vplga region in other regions. Those who are resettled will be given land in the Novosibirsk and Omsk districts and also in the Altai region, and in the Kazak Republic, where the land is rich and fertile. They will also receive State aid for establishing themselves in the new regions." ,