RUSSIA

Evening Star, Issue 17324, 12 April 1920, Page 4

RUSSIA

KIEFF OUSTS BOLSHEVIKS. Press Association—By Telegraph— Copyright. • Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. ™ •« PARIS, April 9The Geneva correspondent of the ' Echo de Paris' announces that a rising has taken place against tho Bolsheviks at Kieff (Ukraine). Many Red notables were i arrested. The Soviet Government have been and the Cabinet has fled. SARCASTIC SOVIETERS. "MOSCOW, April 9. The Communist Conference decided to confer the Order of the Red Flag, the highest distinction which Soviet Russia Cp,n bestow, on M. Olemencea.u and Mr j Winston Churchill in recognition of their great work for an international revolution. LIFE IN PETROGRAD. SECRET SERVICE! REPORT. * AN ADVENTUROUS AUSTRALIAN. LONDON, April 9. Sergeant-major J. G. Gray, of Richmond, Melbourne, 'formerly *of the Bth Battery, has returned from' Russia, where lie was engaged in British secret service work mainlv in tho neighborhood of Petrograd, which he left a month ago. He describes the conditions as deplorable. There are practically no factories working. Food is verv scarce and verv coarse. A pound cf tea costs 600 roubles". Ine great majority of the men are stillunder arms. Red Women Guards, armed" to the teeth,- are also constantly patrollinjr tho streets* Even the smallest villages are under close supervision. Despite its appalling social condition* Petrograd is very gay The trams are running; there are the usual theatres, and dancing saloons are filled with vulgar crowds but gentlefolk are entirely absent The aristocrats seem almost" completely to have disappeared. A few are ocasionally encountered in humble surroundings in remote villages, but the majority have fled. Many high-born Russian ladies have taken refuge in Finland, where they are acting as governesses and clerks. It is impossible to estimate the extent of the anti-Bolshevik feeling in Russia The people appear to be afraid to express opinions, but open violence and outrages of which he saw many evidences and heard dreadful stories, appear to be less prevalent than formerly. Sergeant-major Gray wore a peasant'* clothes and escaped detection. Hi s care-lully-mameured nails once aroused suspicion, but his sound knowledge of the Russian language put the Bolsheviks off the"scent. , Sergeant-major Gray, with other mem-' bers of the party, on completion of their mission, returned to Finland across the trozen Finland Gulf on skis, and encountered a violent blizzard, with the temperature 42deg below zero. While skiing on Lake Ladoga he lost his direction for 11 nours. finally reaching a village in a state of collapse. His condition remained eenous even after his-arrival in England via Helsmgfors. at the end of March ' 'Sergeant-major Gray saw service abroad, and after tho armistice was on the roll on an Australian boat, when he decided to join the British lake flotilla, nroceednig to_Lake Onega. The flotilla consisted of six ooit motor boats and four 40ft ones .-sergeant-major Gray's boat was manned by four Australians, two South Africans aad- a New Zealander. Tho crew exchanged a bottle of whisky for an Australian ensign. They succeeded in capturing the first Bolshevik steamer (Azod), and hauled down the Bolshevik red fla* hoisting an Australian ensign. On one occasion the so-called "Aussie" boat backfired putting her out of action. ' The vessel drifted all night long and was posted as missing, but she was later discovered by an aeroplane, and succeeded in returning under her own nower Ser-geant-major Gray, after three" months on Lako Onega, returned to England, via Murmansk. When the British evacuation of Russia was undertaken Sergeant-major Gray arranged for his immediate repatriation to Australia and was proceeding oh board a boat, his luggage beinz already on board when m response to a telegram, he joined the Russian secret service mission