EXECUTIONS IN RUSSIA

Evening Star, Issue 20317, 28 October 1929, Page 9

EXECUTIONS IN RUSSIA

NATIONAL CLEAN-UP ALLEGATION AGAINST RELIGIOUS SECT Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. MOSCOW, October 25. On Thursday the Cheka, after secret trials, executed fifty-one persons, including i'ortv ringleaders, for alleged conspiracies to overthrow the Soviets throughout tho country. It also sentenced fifty people to long terms of imprisonment This is part of the national clean-up. The most sensational charges were against a religious sect with headquarters in the cliffs overlooking the Black Sea, near Sochi, where twelve people were executed, including tho Mother Superior of the Iberian Monastery, and twenty wealthy peasants, all Socialists, were shot at Krasnodra. Eleven peasants were shot at Samara for murdering commissars organising the grain levy. MOTHER SUPERIOR SHOT. LONDON, October 20. Tho Moscow correspondent of the ‘ Daily News ■’ says that the forty-five people executed by tho O.G.P.U. include Mayrs Markarofskia, formerly tho Mother Superior of the Invcrski Convent, who was intimate at the Imperial Court, and Gregoryovitch and other members of a religious sect called ‘ Praise His Name.’ Tliov lived in the Caucasus Mountains undoi monastic rules, and were managed by Gregoryovitcb, assisted by a council of twelve, apparently in memory of tbc twelve Apostles and tho Master. All thirteen were shot. The O.G.P.U. alleges that Gregoryovitch confessed that the monastery headquarters was a vast organisation for collecting arms for a rising.