SOVIET DISTURBED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1939, Page 5

SOVIET DISTURBED

ALARMING REPORTS SAID TO BE CIRCULATING SERIOUS CONDITIONS IN ARMY. HEAVY CASUALTIES REPORTED. MOSCOW, December 27. Alarming reports are beginning to circulate. The Red Army casualties are stated to be 25.000 to 30,000 dead and 30,000 to 40,000 wounded, frost-bitten, ill, captured and deserted. Such figures are not a calamity for an army of such a size, but they create talk not redounding to the credit of the regime. Reports that the Russians are illclothed are causing surprise, because the Russian Government has previously boasted concerning this matter. A lack of gloves is reported to be preventing the use of rifles in the freezing weather. It is also whispered that too many shells and bombs do not explode. The communiques continue to give the impression that the activity is confined to patrolling and skirmishing. The “Pravda" publishes the names of a number of factory managers and workers who have been summoned to appear before the Moscow People’s Tribunal. WAR COUNCIL EMERGENCY MEETING CALLED. It was announced in a Daventry broadcast last night that the Soviet War Council had called an emergency meeting—By radio. FLECTION RESULT OFFICIAL CANDIDATES RETURNED. MOSCOW, December 26. The first returns in the elections for local soviets show that. 99.81 per cent of the electors voted in Moscow, 98.99 per cent of them for official candidates. Polling was nearly as high in Leningrad, Kiev and Minsk. Official candidates were elected in all areas. M. Stalin was elected unopposed to the Moscow City Soviet. —By radio.