AIMED AT CHICAGO

Evening Star, Issue 22630, 23 April 1937, Page 6

AIMED AT CHICAGO

RUSSIAN BOV'S STORY Gangsterism seems to have reared its ugly ’ head even in Soviet Russia (says the ‘ New York Times At any rate, there is the case of a boy of 15, named Vladimir Lintin, whose father did. not like his mother much any more, and would not bother about Vladimir. So Vladya, as they called him, ran wild in the streets and defied his mother when she said he was a naughty boy—and his father didn’t care. ■ This is the prologue for a crime at which the old Greeks declared the sun hid its face, namely, matricide, Vladya heard this or read that, and decided, with a friend his own age, to run off to be a gangster or bad man, or what not. ■ Thus far it is a child’s story—silly, if you like, but not unnatural. So these two kids bought belts and stuck knives in them and hoarded food and prepared to get away. . At the last moment Vladya’s mother came in when he was stealing her savings and he killed her with tne knife from his belt. For that he was being tried by a Moscow court*. Ho told the court he

had wanted" to escape to Chicago, where he had heard, “Judges and police and gangsters all work together in harmony.” The boy showed little compunction for his frightful crime. It is almost certain the court will not have him shot, because murder, however dreadful, does not carry the capital sentence in Russia. It probably will send him for 10 years to a penal colony. So where lies the blame—is Vladya guilty—or Chicago—or the Soviet regime, which in order to stress the Slierrors of the c.apjtalist system, allows publication of foreign gangster stories?