RUSSIAN AFFAIRS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17696, 24 January 1918, Page 6

RUSSIAN AFFAIRS.

INTERNAL SITUATION

POLITICAL LEADERS MURDERED.

SEVERE BLOW TO THE CADETS! LONDON, January 22. The “Daily Chronicle’s” Petrograd correspondent states that M. Shingarev ex-Minister in the Provisional Government, and M. Kokoshkin, a Cadet leader, were murdered on January 20. They went to Petrograd to attend the Constituent Assembly, .and were arrested and confined in a fortress. Imprisonment resulted in illness, and they were removed at friends request to the Marie Hospital. They left the prison at eight o’clock in the evening, and were murdered the same nightThis is the heaviest - blow' to the Carets. ‘ * ■ M. Shingarev was a thorough Democrat and was scrupulously honest and single-minded.. M. Kokoshkin was a professor of political science, and', next to M. Miliukov, was the Cadet Party’s leading theorist. Friends of the other imprisoned Ministers continually feay that they will he lynched. '* An alarm has been raised . several times at night that the. Red Guards were demanding that the Ministers should be handed over for summary treatment. General Konovalov and M. Tretikov . have been transferred to hospital. M. Terestchenko, M. Kartashev, M. Bqrnatzky, M. Kishkin and M. Stepanov are still in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. PETROGRAD, January 22. The Red Guards murdered M. Shingarev and M. Kokoslikin, former 1 member of M. Kerensky’s Government, while lying in hospital suffering from illness which followed imprisonment. Both were Cadet leaders. M. Kokoshkin was asleep when murdered. £ M, Shinkarev, who protested, was riddled with bullets. >

THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. “ PARLIAMENTARY INSTITUTIONS A FETISH.” LONDON, January 22. The “ Daily Chronicle’s ” Petrograd correspondent says:— The Constituent Assembly came to a eomio end. At five o’clock in the morning a sailor mounted the tribune and demanded members to disperse, as the guard was tiredM- Chernov replied the deputies were tired too, but must do their duty to the people by carrying the great principle of land nationalisation. . The sailor insisted, and the deputies hastily passed a batch of resolutions and dispersed. -Later the Bolshevik commissary to the Assembly announced that the Assembly would not meet again, M. Skcorthov, the Bolshevik leader, stating that parliamentary institutions were only a fetish of the bourgeoisie.

RED GUARDS AND SAILORS IN CONTROL. LONDON, January 22. The Red Guards and sailors continue to patrol Petrograd. Some shooting oocurred. The fiercest snowstorm is raging.

" THE pOLSHEVIKS’ AIM. LONDON, January 22. The Petrograd correspondent- of the “Daily Chronicle” says:—“l cannot tell all the brutalities and excesses which are ravaging Russia from, end do end. Plunder and the cruellest forms of murder are so common that the liorr6rs pall. The tyranny is worse than under Nicholas 11. The Bolsheviks are a warning symbol of muttering volcanic forces and of the social upheaval loosened by the war. Their object is to enable the proletariat to capture the accumulated wealth of civilisation.”

INDEPENDENT OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS. (Received January 23, 5.5 p.m.) WASHINGTON, January. 22. The United Press Petrograd correspondent states that the Foreign Office has announced that the Bolshevik Government will not -seek recognition by foreign Governments, but desires the help of peoples looking for peace.