RUSSIAN HOAX

Hokitika Guardian, 2 March 1933, Page 2

RUSSIAN HOAX

TW(f MEN FOOL OFFICIALS,

MYTHICAL POLAR. EXPEDITION

Odrinsky and Ragozjn have been sentenced,.±o be shot- by the Moscow City Court. Both former tradesmen, they had played practical jokes at the expense of official vanity and credulity (reports tiie Moscow correspondent of tho “Sunday Times”): lin tilli-s. (ooutfUry, where 'you can barely look out of a window, without getting a chit stamped, signed, and countersigned, Odrinsky passed liimi.seilf off for months as Even-gotf, Chief of the , Kara Sea Arctic Expedition.

Nqt- ;on!y were bumpkins hoaxed by him,, but also the Peopled Commissariat for Light Industry, the People’s Co-nun is, ariat for Supply, and even the heads of the Office for the North a State Department in charge of the organising of all Arctic exploration, research, and communications. "With an imagination as fertile as that of Sir John de Mandeville and a bright eye to the main chance, Odrinsky had only to talk of Polar bears; sea-lions, and other hyperborean fauna, and high officials signed away to him truckloads of the rarest things here. In this wav, although he had not even seen a Polar bear in the Zoo, lie obtained boots, sweater's, greatcoat®, and stoves, without once bemg asktyl to show his credentials. His accomplice, Rogozin, meanwhile used to chant: “My! How cold it is there, and what bears! You can’t ,go to tho Kara in clippers, you know.” At the mere 'sight of .a. faked telegram signed Professor Samoilovich (the ,famous Arctic explorer), the Commissariat of Supply re-clothed “the entire crew of the icebreaker Rioustemoff,” surprising even Odrinsky by their generosity. The Office for the, "North, enthralled by his bear stories, - gave him a chit for two complete, cinema outfits. Odd in®ky would' doubtless have made his fortune if a cloakroom attendant had not given him a wrong number for his goloshes and then refused to return them without a certificate from Odrinsky’s place of employment. Thus two rogues who had profited by a 'stupid absence of red tape were finally caught in a stupid bit of it.