SOVIET INTRIGUE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 102, 30 March 1929, Page 7

SOVIET INTRIGUE

TCHITCHERIN TO GO. f STALIN’S PLANS. After getting rid of Trotsky, M. Stalin, head of the Central Soviet executive, is now planning to turn out M. Tchitcherin, the Soviet Foreign Secretary, according to the London Daily Mail’s diplomatic representative. M. Tchitcherin. who .was a highlyplaced aristocrat and intellectual before he became a Bolshevist, for a long time opposed M. Stalin’s foreign policy, urging more pacific measures, especially the curtailment of the Communist International propaganda and activities. He oven suggested the removal of the Prime Minister (M. Rykoff) and the War Minister (M. Vorshiloff) from the International’s executive. It was immediately after this that Stalin gave Tchitcherin “indefinite leave.’-' He went to Germany, and after months at a Frankfort nursing home, was transferred to Grunewall, near Berlin,' where he now is ostensibly a patient at a sanatorium. But that his illness is not serious is proved by the fact that he was repeatedly seen in Berlin conversing with nonCommunist Germans and non-Soviet Russians, though he paid no visits to the Soviet Embassy. Since his departure M. Litvinoff has been acting commissar for Foreign Affairs. It is now learned that Stalin proposes to promote him permanently to Tcliitcherin’s job.