THE SOVIET’S DECEPTION

Taranaki Daily News, 7 January 1927, Page 7

THE SOVIET’S DECEPTION

EXPOSURE OF SHAM SHOWS GULLING OF FOREIGNERS BRITISH SAILORS STORY By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. London, Jan. 5. The stage management of the Soviet’s sham show places is exposed in a Daily Mail interview, documentarily backed, with a Hartlepool sailor included in a party of 70 peasant Russian families who have arrived en route to Canada, forerunners of 13,000 families. An emotional thanksgiving service for the deliverance from wretchedness in Russia and invoking blessings on Engla-d and Canada was held on board on arrival of the ship at Gravesend. The Hartlepool man, whose name is not disclosed to avoid victimisation, was deported by the Soviet as a British spy. He was in hospital in Batoum in 1921 and married a Russian nurse, a farmer’s daughter. The Cheka arrested him for entering the country without a permit and compelled him, on the threat of exile, to become a propagandist, conducting foreigners to model clubs and factories and falsely asserting that they were typical. He told visiting seamen that they could have similar clubs if they became revolutionaries. Hospitality was lavish, the majority of the Russian frequenters of the clubs being supers repeating the deception daily. • Two genuine workers who told the truth to Britons were executed. The gulling of the British Trades’ Union Delegation was a laughing stock throughout Russia. > The Hartlepool man was imprisoned for telling British captains of the deception, but was released on the intervention of the British Charge d’Affaires.