EX-OGPU LEADER DISMISSED

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 67, 6 April 1937, Page 6

EX-OGPU LEADER DISMISSED

Te'egiaph— Preas Aasn.— Copyright.i

Expected to be -Tried as Criminal

MUCH-HATED MAN

(By

(Received 5, 2.10 p.m.) LONDON, April 4. Genrikh Yagoda, Soviet Commisa* for Communications, has been dismissed from his1 post. This is believed to be a preliminary to his trial for ' ' criminal activity. ' ' The Times Eiga correspondent says:' " Yagoda 's arrest has created'a greater sensation in Enssia than the shooting of Zinoviev and Kamenev. He Was) head of the Secret Police until Sep> tember and appeared all-powerful. Ha was the most hated man in Eussia sinca the death of Dzerzhinsky in 1926. Ha was feared. even by high Communists, He organised the Ogpu's notorioua fqrced labour gangs several hundred thousand strong, composed of recalcitrant peasants and members of the intelligentsia, with which was constructed the White Sea-Baltic Canal. .He began the Volga-Moscow canal, for which ha was given the title of CommissarGeneral, despito the blame attached' to the Secret « Police for not preventing th'e murder of Kiroff in 1934. He waa impeached and, degraded after Ihe execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev, but cleared himsrlf. "Apparantly his exoneration, liko Eykoff's and Bukharin's, was only a trick by his tmccessors, as they arrested many with whom Y'agoda was associ,ated after his exoneration. "Although he was not yet etigmatised a Trotskyist wrecker if is be* lieved that his downfall is largely due to the clash of leaders in the Eed Army, as Yagoda had. his own army of 200,000 frontier railway troops. Moreover, his secret agents meddled with the liberties of the military, his arresting of officers angering the High Command."