RUSSIAN ASSASSINATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 December 1934, Page 7

RUSSIAN ASSASSINATION

TRIAL AS HOLIDAY ACCUSED’S CONFESSION [by CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.] LONDON, December 28. The “Daily Express’s” Warsaw correspondent says: The trial of Nikolaev and thirteen others who are accused of the murder of Kirov was begun, by a Military Cpurt at the Smolny Institute in Leningrad. The Soviet, crime authorities, at the last minute, decided that it would be unwise for them to hold the trial at Moscow, as had been arranged. Two thousand soldiers surrounded the Institute. The prisoners were chained by the wrists and by the ankles. When asked how he pleaded, Nikolaev said: “I freed Russia from a low-down scoundrel! Others will finish my work!” Nikolaev then burst out laughing.

The day was treated as a holiday. Processions marched through streets demanding the deaths of all of the Zinoviev group. Journalists are now to be allowed to be present at the trial. Kaganovitch, one of M. Stalin’s chief liteutenants, came from Moscow to watch the trial. The station at Leningrad was cleared while he detrained.

The Moscow radio announced that a large mass of correspondence from M. Trotsky had been found, giving evidence of the existence of an organisation in Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Germany that had been plotting to upset, the Soviet Government.