FATE OF ZINOVIEV

Taranaki Daily News, 19 January 1933, Page 10

FATE OF ZINOVIEV

STARVED TO DEATH AT MOSCOW.

ONCE POWERFUL LEADER.

London, Nov. 30.

Reports which came from Russian sources announcing the death in Moscow of Zinoviev, the former Bolshevik leader, were , officially denied by the Russian Foreign Office. The Daily Express correspondent in Berlin, however, has received a report from a source which he has found to be extremely well informed concerning events behind the scenes in Russia. This report not only confirms the death of Zinoviev, but it relates circumstances of his death which render intelligible the Russian Government’s anxiety to keep the event a secret. Zinoviev —according to this report —has, since his second expulsion from the Communist Party six weeks ago, been slowly and remorselessly starved and frozen to death by his implacable enemy, the dictator Stalin. The once-mighty revolutionary, his health completely undermined, was undergoing treatment in the Kremlin hospital this autumn. The Kremlin hospital is the foremost institution of its kind in Russia, and only important members of the Communist Party are admitted to it. The doctors said that Zinoviev had every chance of making a good recovery, a . .. . FLUNG INTO STREET. The moment, however, the announcement of his expulsion from the Communist Party was published he was ordered to leave his bed and to dress, and was peremptorily flung out into the bitter cold of the Moscow streets. No doctors were henceforth allowed to attend him;, no medicine was forthcoming; he was not even allowed to go to his apartments—a comfortable furnished flat.. .

After wandering about the capital Zinoviev at last found shelter in a little wooden shanty on the outskirts of the city. The shanty was really intended as a summer-house, and was utterly unsuited to the rigors of the Russian winter. There was not even a stove to heat it. But Stalin ordered' that no money should be paid to him by the State pub? Ushers, who had printed Zinoviev’s books and pamphlets, on the revenues from which Zinoviev depended.

The beggar Zinoviev was now dependent for his subsistence on the charity of his friends. But here again Stalin’s long arm was mercilessly stretched out to cut off even this last resource from the man who had dared to question the wisdom of his policy ._ The agents of the 0.G.P.U., Stalin’s secret police, quickly made it clear to anyone venturing to befriend Zinoviev that he would have as his enemy the all-powerful Stalin.

And so Zinoviev, who, had he died but a year ago, would have had a statue erected to his memory in the Red Square, has died —racked by sickness which treatment could have cured —friendless, penniless, frozen and starving—and even his death has been denied.

Gregory Vzinoviev, or Apfelbaum, was 49. He became a member of the allpowerful Russian triumvirate when Lenin died in January, 1924. As President of the Communist International, it was his task to spread propaganda for a world revolution, and in this capacity he issued the famous “Red Letter,” which caused the defeat of the British Labour Government in October, 1924.