RUSSIAN ROUND-UP

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20505, 23 May 1938, Page 3

RUSSIAN ROUND-UP

800 ARRESTS REPORTED LIBTENED-IN TO RADIO (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, April 24. Eight hundred men and women have been arrested in Soviet Russia for listening-in to the secret anti-Stalin radio station, whose broadcasts nightly are terrifying Stalin and his chiefs, says the Warsaw correspondent of the Sunday Express. Stalin’s Ogpu (secret police) chief Yeshov has issued a decree by which any person who is guilty of listeningin to this secret station will be banished immediately to Siberia for ten years. Any person who organises groups of persons to listen-in to the station will be shot. On the evp of this decree the secret radio •station broadcast on Friday night:— “ The slayers of Stalin's Ogpu are trying to find us, but they will not get us. although we are broadcasting from the heart of Soviet Russia. "We can announce to-night that Stalin, the Georgian hound, has shot our comrade General Dybienko in the Ogpu prison Lubyanka.” General Dybienko was formerly chief of the Leningrad garrison, and recently arrested. Coded Orders “Stalin, we accuse you of murder In the first degree. To-day we bombard you with words, to-morrow it will be bullets." The secret broadcast announcer then addressed Stalin’s War Lord, Voroshilov, and said: “Voroshilov, your only chanoe to save yourself and save tha Red Army Is to send Stalin, the Georgian dog, to hell.” The broadcast ended with the words: “You will hear from us agaiO on Saturday night at 11.30 (Central European time) . . Following this, coded orders were sent out to alleged terror groups throughout the Soviet Union. These were given by a woman announcer. Broadcasts from this secret station started early in January. Yeshov sent 25 anti-spy squad radio vans to the Minsk district and concentrated 2000 men there, but the broadcasts went on. Days Numbered “Here is the illegal radio station on Russian soil,” came the voice of a woman one day. “We are the liberators of Russia. “Stalin,” she cried, raising her voice, “your days are numbered. Youfr death will be more terrible than the death of Marshal Tukhachevsky” (the executed Soviet army leader). Yeshov himself has conducted inquiries, but tlie secret radio station cannot be found, and its broadcasts continue.