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Trotsky’s Exile to Turkey, Berlin Hears, Deliberate Move to Jeopardize Him

February 3, 1929
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As further despatches from Moscow confirm the report that Leon Trotsky is actually on his way from the Soviet Union to Constantinople, in accordance with an arrangement between the Soviet government and Kemal Pasha, speculation is rife in Russian circles abroad as to why Constantinople was chosen as Trotsky’s place of refuge.

Well founded reports from Moscow indicate that Constantinople was selected not without a reason. Faced with the dilemma of letting a Soviet court deal summarily with him, which would make him a martyr, or of permitting him to go abroad where he might have greater opportunity for increasing his following against Stalin, Stalin decided to permit Trotsky to leave Russia but to direct his steps to such a place where the worst that could happen to him would not place the responsibility on his former comrades and present foes.

It is pointed out in well informed Russian Soviet circles that Trotsky’s stay in Constantinople will bring him into the danger of assassination as Constantinople is full of Czaristic emigres who took a leading part in the Russian civil war in the White Army’s combat against the Red Army of which Trotsky was then the leader.

The new postal rates of the Post Office Department of Canada includes Palestine in the British Imperial Letter Rate, which means that a letter sent at present from Canada to Palestine needs only a two cent stamp instead of the former eight cents stamp, which was in force since Palestine has been under he British mandate.

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