POSE AS ARCTIC HERO

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 December 1934, Page 8

POSE AS ARCTIC HERO

TRIUMPHAL TOUR BY RUSSIAN. MOSCOW, November 13. Posing as one of the heroic castaways from the ill-fated Russian Arctic ship Cheluskin, an engaging rogue called Lee Makovich Jelly swindled the Bolshevik chiefs of Old Kazan and five other Volga, towns. But he now awaits an exemplary sentence by the High Court of Tartar, the autonomous republic. The gullibility of Russian provincial officials, and the artistry of Russian crooks are no less to-day than when Gogol wrote his immortal work, “The Government Inspector.” When the Soviet sent, the Cheluskin crew -and the brave airmen who saved them from the icefloes on a tour through the chief towns of Russia, Jellv, a former ballet master from Ufa, in" the Ural Mountains, toured the lesser towns with a Polar bear mascot in his buttonhole. He harangued th a local workers’ clubs, lectured in “parks of culture and rest,” and everywhere collected money on account for the “coming visit” of his fellow heroes of the Arctic. Official cars, bands, guards of honour, and banquets awaited him everywhere. But at last his picturesque name, which so stirred provincial imaginations, roused the curiosity of a travelling detective who consulted the published lists of the Cheluskin’s crew. Soviet officials do not like being made ridiculous, and Lee Makovich Jelly will be lucky if he escapes being shot.