Josef Stalin’s crusade against the followers of Leon Trotsky led to the arrest of Karl Radek, Communist propagandist and early associate of Lenin and Trotsky in the Soviet revolution; Christian Rakovsky, former Soviet ambassador to Paris; and a number of other outstanding. Communists who are followers of the Trotsky doctrine, it became known here today.
It is declared that Josef Stalin has demanded of Radek, Rakovsky and the other prisoners, a personal pledge to cease issuing proclamations and letters to the Trotsky followers. They were threatened with expatriation if this pledge is not given. The case of Christian Rakovsky, a native Roumanian, is arousing particular interest in view of the fact that Rakovsky has against him a death sentence in his native country, and if expelled from Russia is liable to extradition to Roumania and execution.
According to all appearances, Stalin
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is making a strenuous effort to annihilate the Trotsky movement in Soviet Russia. According to reliable information, the chiefs of the various departments of the Gepu, Soviet secret police, were called by Stalin to a conference several weks ago when they were instructed to find the secret presses being operated by the Trotsky followers and the machinery they established for the propagation of their views. As a result of this order, 1,500 persons, not 150 as was previously reported, were placed under arrest. No presses were discovered, however, by the Gepu agents, allegedly because there are many Trotsky-ists among the Gepu workers and among the officials in all Soviet departments.
Authoritative sources of information in Moscow further insisted today that Leon Trotsky has already been brought to Constantinople, arriving on January 26. He made the trip on a Soviet cruiser with Angora apparently as his destination.
According to a rumor current here among the Trotskyists, Leon Trotsky refused to leave Alma Ata. Turkestan, where he had been exiled, and was taken forcibly into an automobile, which brought him to the nearest railway. His family was left behind. The reports that Trotsky was taken from Alma Ata by aeropalne or that Constantinople is his final destination were declared here to be unfounded.
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