RUSSIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 January 1918, Page 5

RUSSIA.

MURDER AND ANARCHY. LYNCHING FEARED. ASSEMBLY COUNSEL ENDED. UNPARALLELED TYRANNY. J/nulon, .Tan. 22. The Petrograd correspondent of tlu Dally Chronicle-states tllat M. Shingaroff, (?\-Minister in tlie Provisional Government, and M. Kokoßhkin, Cadet leaders, were murdered on January 20. They canip to Petrograd to attend the Constituent Assembly. They were arrested and confined in a fortress. The imprisonment resulted in illness and they were removed at a friend's request to the Marie Hospital. They left the prison at 8 o'clock in the evening and were murdered the same night. This is a very heavy blow to the Cadets. M. Shingareff was a thorough /democrat; scrupulously honest and singleminded. M. Kokoshkin was a professor of political science and, next to M. Milikoff, was the leading theorist of the Cadet party. Friends of other imprisoned Ministers continually fear they will be lynched. The alarm has been raised several times (hat the Bed Guards were demanding that the Ministers be handed over for summary treatment. MM. Konovaloff and Tretiakoff have been transferred to a hospital, but MM. Terestcheiiko, Kartasheff, Bernatzky, Kishlin and Stepanoff nre "till in the fortress of Peter and Paul. Tihe Constituent Assembly came to a comic end. At five o'clock in the morning a'sailor mounted the tribune and demanded that the members disperse, as the guard was tired. M. Chernoff replied that the deputies were tired too, but must do their duty to the people by carrying the great principle of land nationalisation. The sailor insisted, so the deputies hastily passed a batch of resolutions and dispersed. Later the Bolshevik Commissary to tilie Assembly announced that the Assembly would not meet again, M. Skvorthoff, the Bolshevik leader, stating that Parliamentary institutions were only a fetish of the bourgeoisie. The, Red Guards and sailors continue to patrol Petrograd. Some shooting has occurred, but a very fierce snowstorm is raging. The correspondent) adds: "I cannot tell all the brutalities and excesses which are ravaging Russia from end to end. Plunder and the cruellest forms of murder are so common that horrors pall. The tyranny is worse than under Nicholas It. The Bolsheviks are a warning symbol of the muttering volcanic forces of social upheaval loosened by the war. Their object is to enable the proletariat to capture the accumulated wealth of civilisation." Reeeived Jan. 23, 5.5 p.m . ' Petrograd, Jan. 22. The Red Guards murdered Shingarieff and Xokoshkjen, the former being a member of Kerensky's Government, while lying in hospital through illness followimprisonment. Both were Cadet leaders. Kokoshkien was asleep when murdered. Shingarieff protested, but was riddled with bullets.