OGPU FOUNDER HONOURED

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 September 1936, Page 7

OGPU FOUNDER HONOURED

“SWORD OF PROLETARIAT.’’ MOSCOW, July 20. A big monument to Felix Djerjinsky, “the flaming sword of the proletariat” and the celebrated Polish founder of the Cheka or Ogpu, the secret political police, is to be erected on Lubiankasquare, opposite the Chekist headquarters, which are now renamed the "Commissariat of the Interior.” A Government decree issued to-day orders this monument to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Djcrjinsky’s death. Two big factories •ind Gio great Kursk railway linking Moscow to Kharkoff, the Crimea and ihi- Caucasus, will also bo named after him. To-day’s papers publish pictures of "ialin with his arm round Djerjinsky’s neck, and all print panegyrics of this ■‘peerless knight without fear and without reproach.” The general line of 'omment taken by the official Press is hat Djerlnsky sent a great number of people to death because he was a “lover ;i humanity.” His action, it is argued, was psychologically compensated by his groat love for children, and especially for hundreds of thousands homeless waifs made orphans by .i.mino, terror and civil war, for whom ho later founded a model reformatory at Bolshevo, well known to foreign visitors. In compliance with the new “family life” drive, official propaganda now insists on the love for children of all the Bolshevik leaders and especially on tho child-saving and “character-re-building” work of the Ogpu chiefs.