MORE EXECUTIONS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 21 December 1937, Page 7

MORE EXECUTIONS

LEADING SOVIET OFFICIALS

ALLEGATIONS or ESPIONAGI

| UmtoiJ Press Association —Hy Eleetrlo T.;lc«r;i ph-Copy riK'itl

iliccrivcd 21s{ December, II a-in > MOSCOW. 20th December, r'lli 1 1 1 leading Soviet officials have been tried and executed fur high treason. terrorism and espionage. They

AT. Ycniikid/.c, former secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.R.R.

til, Leon Karnkhaii. former Com missar for Krirciun Affairs and Am bassndor to Turkey.

IVT. Qukcrman, former chief of the western Department at the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

AT. Steiger, unofficial head of the Soviet protocol. AT. Orakliclashvili, former chief of the Georgian Home Office secret police AT. Slicvaldiev, head of the Communist Thirty in the Azov region.

AT. Larin, Communist leader in the Rostov region.

AT. Alclclcv, who lias not been idcnli lied.

M. Vrinovsky, Vice-Commissar of Interna! Adairs, in "Pravda,” stales that M. Kuraklutn for many years deceived tlic Government by selling secrets ot exceptional importance to the Fascist intelligence service.

CAREERS OF VICTIMS (Received 21st December, !) a.m.) LONDON, 20th December. The Soviet executions caused a surprise, coming so soon after the elections.’ Nothing had been heard about the trial.

M. Karakhan, aged 50, was an expert in Oriental languages and was regarded as Russia's master spy in the East. He was one of the best-known and most outspoken of the Soviet diplomatists, fond of good clothes and tennis. He visited Wimbledon a few years ago.

M. Slicvaldiev was notorious for his merciless deportation of Kuban Cossacks in 1032 and his severity during the great famine of 1922. M. Yenukidze was formerly an old friend of M. Stalin.

M. Larin was a Jewish cripple, and an economic historian famous for his campaign against alcohol.