RUSSIA: Crazy Governor

Open-mouthed crowds in Moscow's Supreme Court sat hour after hour last week on uncomfortable wooden benches while Soviet prosecutors and judges in ill-fitting business suits wove one of Red Russia's most exciting murder cases around the shifty-eyed figure of Konstantin Semenchuk, 49, for the past two years Governor of Wrangel Island. Murder is not a very serious crime in Russia, carrying a maximum penalty of only ten years imprisonment. Horrified as the testimony piled up against Semenchuk, prosecutors quickly changed the charge to "banditry," i.e., willful destruction of Soviet property, for which...