Word: ogpu
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...most popular figures is "Klim," the Minister of the Army, Navy and Air Force, Comrade Klimentiy Efremovich Voroshilov (V). The Red Army is numerically the second strongest in the world (562,000) but Stalin takes no chances. Attached to his nationwide espionage service, the Gay-Pay-Oo, or OGPU, are 110,000 picked troops, the praetorians of the Dictatorship. Never seen on so conspicuous a spot as Lenin's tomb is the Chief of the Gay-Pay-Oo, dyspeptic Viacheslav Rudolphovich Menzhinsky (below at left). The Gay-Pay-Oo have the right to seize anyone without a warrant...
...Russian government for its determination to try several English engineers accused of sabotage and bribery. Having obviously failed to budge the Kremlin by threats of a trade break-off unless the prisoners were unconditionally released, the English embassy has concentrated its attention on horror stories of inquisitionary OGPU tactics...
While four British engineers protested in Soviet jails (see above), no protest was heard last week from 35 Soviet officials jailed at the same time on charges of sabotage. All were dead. Of the guilt of 34 there would have been some doubt in any but a Soviet Ogpu court. But on one, Vice Commissar for Agriculture Feodor M. Konar, Soviet justice was willing to go before the world...
...Every Ogpu man dreams about a man like Konar. In 1920 he was expelled from the Communist Party on charges of sabotage. Replied he, "Oh, you must mean Polashchuk." He was reinstated. Moving to Moscow to live with his "brother," he became a tower of orthodoxy while honest men fell on every side for peccadillos of opinion or efficiency. Konar rose rapidly. In his apartment gathered the "true blue incorruptibles" of Communism. Last month by blind chance the Ogpu discovered that Konar was on too excellent terms with "a prominent foreign diplomat." When police came for him, he told them...
Four of the other British chelovyeks were not quite so chestny. Though treated almost as well, they remained in jail. Ambassador Ovey was allowed to see them once, in the presence of OGPU officials. Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov declared that they would be given a fair and public trial in April, with Russian lawyers assigned to their defense. Meanwhile, panic seized U. S. engineers in Russia who had no embassies at all to defend them. From Moscow a General Electric official telephoned Berlin that he was "unable to hold the men." Hardly had he rung off before...