THE RED MURDER GANG

Hokitika Guardian, 13 August 1927, Page 4

THE RED MURDER GANG

(By Dr Edouard I.whuff, a leading ailthoritv on Russia ).

The Soviet O.G.P.G. —the renamed “Cheka/’ that “Extraordinary Commission'’ whose sole purpose is espionage and political murder—lias admitted that tho .snooting of 20 prison os without any real trial is the State’s reply to the increasing number assassinations of its leaders. In this the Soviet Republic has out C'casared Ceasar. Under the Czars, it is true, a political crime was irequently followed by mass arrests, and even by executions, hut in every ease the State produced undeniable evidence either ot the guilty or of the complicity of the prisoners in tho particular crime and, according to laws then in operation, gave them a trial. I will not and f cannot say that all the trials were fair lint at least the Czars did not descend to cold-blooded butchery. The Soviet leaders, however have always boon considered expert murderers and organisers of terror. Thus Stalin the present head ol the Soviet triumvrate, was the chici organiser of political assassination in the Caucasus, and in ibis capacity was responsible for the death by violence ol many officials in Tifßs. Trotzky was for some time a leading member of the Odessa terrorist battalion, the lntunhcr of whose crimes was never correctly ascertained, in spite of the work of several investigating commissions. Bukharin was the leader ol the Moscow terrorist group tip to 1911. while Lit vinotf. or as lie was then called \ aiakh, was both organiser of assassination and the buyer of arms and bombs. Litivnolf came to London, in 1900 alter bong deported from Paris, where lie .supplied arms to a group of Bolsheviks operating in Russia, and specialising in the murder of Treasury officials for the money in their care. On being arrested in Baris on January •!. lf)08. Litviuoir was found to have in his possession twelve 500 rouble note-, the number* ol which were identified as the remnant of the haul made in Tiflis ill 190(5. organised hv .Stalin and assisted by Krassiii. In these ways the Bolsheiks generally made political assassination a source ol profit. Lozovsky, aiiol her prominent Bolshevik it should he noted that “Bolshevik 1 ' means the. “big er a majoiil;. party, which is just what the Bolsheviks are not —was also a political assassin, and had he not escaped abroad would have been, htinge din 1908 lor the murder of an official in Kimrkofi. teklolf. the funner editor of the official .Moscow newspaper “Tzve.-liia," was also a terrorist, and in a speech made in Paris in 1905 insisted on the approval by l lie party of plans made by him for the murder ol the Czar and his family. Sverdlofi', who was himself as-sas-inafed in Moscow early in tf)P was an active terrorist and the loader of a group of assassins who ejerat.d in Ivieff and the Ukraine. The murder of 51. Shiugan If and M. Kokosliin. two ministers in the Provisional Government, while in hospital was rite first act of tho Bolshevist Cheka.

Among Rttsian political as-a-rin-nlions must he included the murder of Count von Minbach. ihe German Ambassador at .Moscow, on July 5. 19.18. Then mi duly 10 came the murder of the Czar and hi.s family, organised hy Yedkoff and others. Yoikoff lias also admitted that in 1905 he fried to assassinate an official named Dumbadge at Yalta, in the Crimea, and then bulled to Switzerland. As for the Bolsheviks u Ito have themselves been assassinated. tlijc number of the smaller eommessars and Cheka agents is very large. Iml so faith:’ loading oflieils have been more fortunate. Two attempts were made on Lenin, and his death is partly ascribed to the effects of the second attrmpL. Vorovsky was shot in Switzerland by CVmradi, whose parents .and friends suffered at the hands of the Bolsheviks; Urifczky was shot at Petrogad and Yoikoff al Warsaw. Ollier

til tempts have been made on the lives of Krnssm, R-akovsky. and Kresiin.sky, Zinovieff, Katnmeneff. and Kalinin among ihe leaders; and, according to Soviet reports, against Rvi-ofl. Stalin, and Bukharin, of the S iviet Government. The assailants were Russian* Germans, and Armenians.

The Soviet leaders hope that their present panicky executions will diminish the dangers of assassination, hut it is obvious that they will actually increase them. Murder breeds murder, all terror notwithstanding.