Prince Among Bolsheviks

Deaf was President Roosevelt last week to numerous petitions asking him to protest Dictator Stalin's current indulgence in pure Bolshevik terror (TIME, Dec. 17). The number of Russians shot in simple vengeance for the assassination of Stalin's "Dear Friend Sergei" Kirov mounted slowly to 103. But none of the dead so far was accused of complicity in the crime.

Assassin Nikolaev himself was still alive and the Government was not ready to tell Russia why a Communist little wig had shot a Communist bigwig. As a diversion, the Soviet Press was filled with astonishing tales. It was announced, for example, that "Prince Machizariani," said to have been an officer in one of Tsar Nicholas' crack imperial regiments, has been living and prospering all these years in Bolshevikland.

In Stalingrad, namesake city of the Dictator, a Red prosecutor charged the Prince with corrupting innumerable Communist railway clerks. They were supposed to have falsified bills of lading and sold him for ridiculously small bribes 200,000 rubles worth of state property.

The Prince, too, remained alive last week, though placed under sentence of Death. He still had the usual right of appeal to the ZIK (Soviet Parliament), a right denied to the hapless Russians picked arbitrarily and shot to avenge "Dear Friend Sergei."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.