Russian Horrors

Opunake Times, Volume LVV, Issue 3675, 26 October 1923, Page 3

Russian Horrors

SOVIET OFFICIALS TRIED. PRISONS OVERFLOW. Abominablealrocities commited by Bolshevik officials have been brought to light at the trial at Paylograd, of a group of these officials, who have been guilty of a long series of shocking crimes against the population under their charge, inciuding murders, executions without trial. and robberies. In one case, according to Helsingfors "Praoda, " Nikitenko, president of the Soviet executive committee at Slavianka, with three militiamen,abducted a schoolmistress I and carried her to a Steppe, where ! they violated her, and then carried her through the village, naked, after being tarred. When Nikitenko heard that the woman intended to denounce the perpetrators of the outrages he had her arrested and strangled. The defence was the existence of civil law, which left officials no time to study law books; Th:; court refused to accept this plan.. ' Nikitenko and five others wen sentenced to death. Twenty militiamen were sentenced to imprisonment So zealous has the Soviet Government been in the administration of justice that it is now faced with the. problem of what to do with the enormous number of prisoners it has collected together. According to the* Russian correspondent of the "Morning Post, " the Soviet prisons are so overcrowed that weeding out has become necessary. There are 72,685 prisoners in Central Russia, of whom two thirds are political offenders. The Government intends to divide them into three groups. The first, consisting of ' unrepentant enemies of the Soviet Government and the [Communist party, serving sentences of over eight years, will be transferred to prisons in Siberia.' The second, serving five to eight years, will be exiled to outlying places in North Russia, where they will be under police observation. The third group, on shorter sentences will be sent to their usual places of residence, but without right to leave their homes until sentences have expired.,