RUSSIANS ASK FOR DESERTER TO

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 November 1950, Page 5

RUSSIANS ASK FOR DESERTER TO

BE RETURNED They Hold Two Britons

LONDON, Nov. 16 (Recd. Bpm). The officer whose surrender Russia is demanding as a condition for the release of two Britons is 24-year-old Lieut. Alexandre Alexandrovitch-By-strov.

A British Foreign Office statement explained that his motives for deserting from the Soviet armed forces were mainly based on visual comparison of the living standards outside Russia with those he has known as a Soviet citizen. His first impression of Western standards, which was based on nothing better than the prevailing conditions in Eastern Germany—produced an enormous psychological • shock. Bystrov had a second shock when, in May, 1950, he spent six weeks’ leave in his home town, Gubakha, in the Urals. Having seen and experienced living conditions in Eastern Germany, he was doubly shocked by the utter poverty and misery in which his relatives lived.

Rostrov told the British authorities that he often thought about desertion, but did not act. Then, more or less on the spur of the moment, he decided to take the final step. His whole life in Russia had been one long fight against starvation. The town of Gubakha and surrounding districts were the centre of many forced labour camps in the Soviet Union. Prisoners, he said, were marched under heavy guard to and from work, with their hands folded on their backs. The death rate among workers in the Gubakha coke-works, where Bystrov worked until called up for military service, in 1946, was so high that a permanent detail of five men from the local cemetery each night collected the men who died during the day. They were buried without coffins, ‘‘like hogs,” Bystrov said.