RUSSIA: Bloodthirsty Beasts

Six glum-looking men, formally described as "bloodthirsty beasts" by the Soviet court which condemned them, were placed before a Moscow firing squad last week, shot.

They had bootlegged meat, fowl, milk, cheese, potatoes, eggs. To obtain these edibles they had forged government food cards wholesale. Guilty of "private trading," they had incurred what Soviet citizens call "the highest measure of social defense": execution.

Meanwhile one Aaron Kopman, a U. S. citizen sentenced to a Soviet forced-labor camp for selling things in Russia, but released through the efforts of the British Diplomatic Mission at Moscow, told a Hearst correspondent last week more about the crime of "private trade."

At his camp (Wishery) was a woman condemned for selling six pairs of silk stockings. Her sister in San Francisco had sent her the stockings. In Vladivostok, where she was living then, a pair of silk stockings would fetch 15 roubles ($7.50) and she was poor. After her arrest, carrying her 3-year-old daughter, she had traveled, largely on foot, some 15,000 mi. to the camp.

Continuing, Aaron Kopman did not mince his horrors:

"The Wishery camp [on the Wishery River] consists of about 27 sq. mi. of Siberian territory. Within this area were about 17 convict stations and barracks. . . .

"We worked every day. There were no Sundays for us. ...

"Each group of three had to prepare 14 logs of heavy timber each day. The logs were at least three feet in diameter and at least 33 ft. long. To heap the logs in even piles took us sometimes as long as 14 hours. . . .

"The trimmer in our party was a 17-year-old girl, whose name was Elvira Kukel. She was a frail, pretty, sympathetic girl, who had the misfortune of being the daughter of Col. Kukel, of the former Imperial Guards. . . .

"On many occasions I would hear the cries of girls in various parts of the camp. But nothing could be done. The guards were armed and the prisoners were cowed into a state of hopeless subjection. While I was at Wishery six girl prisoners gave birth to infants. . . .

"It was a common sight to see unfortunates in the last stages of a contagious disease sleeping side by side with perfectly healthy prisoners. Diseases of this nature spread from prisoner to prisoner. . . .

"It is under these conditions that Soviet lumber is produced which is now flooding the world markets."

Until alleged Eye-witness Aaron Kopman spoke last week, such charges anent Soviet "lumber hells" had been chiefly heard as "rumors," carried in notoriously sensational "despatches from Riga," hurled into the ether from such professionally anti-Red radio stations as Manhattan's WHAP.