NEW SOVIET PURGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 208, 3 August 1937, Page 9

NEW SOVIET PURGE.

PROMINENT MEN ARRESTED. BELA KUN INVOLVED. LONDON, Aug. 1. The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that M. Bela Kun, former Communist dictator of Hungary, is among the latest persons arrested in M. Stalin’s great purge, which the police are still continuing in unprecedented secrecy, exploiting papers of the author Maxim Gorki, which were impounded on the day of his death. The victims are also believed to include M. Moskvin, a prominent member of the Third International, who opposed M. Stalin’s new policy of fraternising with foreign Socialists; M. A. Chernov, Commissar for Agriculture; Mme. Nathalia Satz, manageress of the famous Moscow Children’s Theatre; M. Arosiev, head of the Department of Foreign Cultural Relations, wht.se wife has also been arrested; M. Feehner, head of the department dealing with Scandinavia, the Baltic and Poland; and numerous officials of the Communist Party in Moscow, the Ukraine and elsewhere. It is even rumoured that M. N. V. Krilenko, Minister of Justice, .has been arrested, while M. Newmann, the Foreign Minister’s chief assistant in dealing with Britain and other Western States, has mysteriously taken leave.

Bishop Nikiforov, 12 priests, and other religious persons are among 30 who were arrested at Orel for allegedly using church services to organise Fascism.