RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS SEEK REFUGE

Southland Times, Issue 23380, 11 December 1937, Page 7

RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS SEEK REFUGE

ORDERS TO RETURN TO MOSCOW DEFIED LONDON, December 9. The Paris correspondent of The Times says that the Russian emigre newspaper Posfdnia Novosti reveals that Alexander Barmin, Counsellor at the Soviet Legation, Athens, since 1934, was not summoned to Moscow, but was merely ordered by a Communist, Gell, at the Athens Legation to take tea on board a Russian ship anchored at Piraeus. Barmin warily counter-invited the captain to the Legation as being more befitting so that the courtesies came to nothing. , , , , General Krivitsky, who also defied the orders to return to Moscow from France, fiercely condemns the trials and confessions which will ultimately be seen in their true light. The whereabouts of Barmin and Krivitsky are being kept secret. The latter says that a price has been set on his head.

Alexander Barmin arrived In France after an order to return to Moscow, with which he refused to comply. M.' Barmin asked the Government to allow him to stay as a political emigre. He also appealed to the centrial committee of the League for the Defence of the Rights of Man for energetic action to save the lives of numerous Soviet diplomatists now imprisoned in Moscow and also on behalf of those still at their posts abroad “who must choose between risking death in a Moscow prison if they return home or murder by secret agents if they stay abroad.”