PLOT AGAINST STALIN

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 84, 3 January 1935, Page 7

PLOT AGAINST STALIN

Consul’s Name Mentioned LATVIAN REPRESENTATIVE London, January 1. The Moscow correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” learns that the unnamed Consul allegedly concerned in the plot against Stalin was M. George Bissenieks, the Latvian Consul-General at Leningrad, who, with hi* English wife and their two daughters, departed for Riga on December 31. Latvia before the war was included in Russia, and M. Bissenieks was therefore a subject of the Tsar. Later he became the first Latvian Minister in London, where the' daughters were born. He was then associated with the Latvian Co-operative Movement, and went to Leningrad as Consul a year, ago. ANOTHER ARREST Well-known Communist ANTI-JEWISH FIGHTING' (Received January 2, 7.25 pin.) London, January 2. The Warsaw correspondent of the “Daily Express” says that M. Smirnov, one of the oldest Communist leaders, was arrested after a meeting at Moscow, allegedly for working with the Zinoviev faction, and imprisoned. Two members of the Ogpu arrived at Kiev to arrest M. Luplin, Chief Soviet Commissar. He was aware of their coming, shot them dead and escaped.

For the first time since the Soviet regime was established, antiJewish lighting occurred at Leningrad and Moscow. Young workers at a number of factories attacked Jewish fellow-workers, and many Jews were sent to hospital. The cause of the outburst was the belief that the assassination of M. Kirov was largely planned by Jews, as 40-per cent, of those arrested and executed were Jews, as are Zinoviev and Kameuev, Eight professors of the Marx Engels Institute, where the .Soviet economic and political arguments are evolved, were arrested and will be tried for assisting Trotsky’s propaganda. When Leningrad police tried to arrest Madame Shatsky and Madame Mandelsdam, widows of two men shot with Nikolaev, they flung themselves frpm fourth story windows into the street and were killed instantly. Numerous other suicides occurred among relatives and friends of the accused, who preferred death to possible arrest. Zinoviev and Kamenev, exBolshevik* leaders, who were arrested' last week, were secretly taken froni prison in Moscow to the railway, where a freight train was waiting to convey them to exile in the Arctic. They were sentenced to banishment on Solovetski Island, in the White Sea, where the temperature seldom rises above zero. The sentences were passed at a secret session without trial by M. Stalin and the Commissar of the Interior. Doubtless foreign opinion caused M. Stalin to flinch from the death sentence. The station was closed, when the prisoners entrained in separate trucks. Zinoviev, who was farewelled by his family, was allowed to take a large bundle of books. The train journey will take eight days and nights; and after that there will be six days in horse sleighs. Kamenev appeared happy and astonished to escape the death sentence, but as Zinoviev is in an advanced state of tuberculosis his sentence of exile is regarded as equivalent to death. No official announcement of the sentences has yet been made in Russia. The freight train carrying Zinoviev and Kamenev passed through Archangel. The train line was guarded. NO MORE BREAD QUEUES > Ration Cards Withdrawn Moscow, January 1. Bread queues, which have been a feature of the streets for six years, have disappeared following the withdrawal of bread ration cards, permitting unlimited purchases. Some shops are selling 100 different varieties, instead of 10, as formerly. The price of bread has risen from 60 kopecks to one rouble per kilogram. White bread has risen now to two roubles a kilogram, and fancy bread to 7} roubles a kilo. Wages of workers in Moscow have been increased by from 15 to 25 roubles a month.