RUSSIAN PURGE

Wairarapa Daily Times, 10 December 1937, Page 5

RUSSIAN PURGE

TRIALS FIERCELY CONDEMNED. (Received Friday, 9.55 a.m.) LONDON, Thursday. The “Times” Paris correspondent says the Russian emigre newspaper “Polsednia Novosti” reveals that M. Barmin was not summoned to Moscow but was merely ordered by Communist M. Cell of the Athens Legation to take tea aboard a Russian ship anchored at Piraeus. M. Barmin warily counterinvited the captain of the ship to the Legation, as more befitting, so the courtesies came to nothing. General Krivitsky, who also defied orders to return to Moscow from France, fiercely condemns the trials confessions which will ultimately seen true light The whereabouts of M. Barmin and General Krivitsky have been kept secret. The latter says a price has been set on his head. (A London cable on 6th December stated: The Paris correspondent of “The Times” says that following an order to Teturn to Moscow with which he refuses to comply, M. Alexander Barmin, counsellor at the Soviet Legation at Athens since 1934, has arrived in France, and asks the Government to allow him to stay as a political emigre. He has appealed to the Central Committee of the League for the Defence of the Rights of Man for energetic action to save the lives of the numerous Soviet diplomatists now imprisoned at Moscow. He also appeals 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.”)