Word: semenchuk
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...September 1934 a new group of white colonists was sent to Wrangel Island. Leader was Konstantin Semenchuk, who had been transferred from a comfortable diplomatic post in Iran. With him went his wife Nadejda, as strange and sultry a character as he. Colonists got their first inkling of what was coming when Governor Semenchuk assembled them upon arrival, shouted: "Up here I am everything. I have all the rights, up to shooting people...
Outsiders got their first idea that everything was not right on Wrangel Island from a radio message relayed during the winter of 1935. Governor Semenchuk asked for another doctor to cope with an outbreak of typhus and scurvy. Professor Schmidt was puzzled. Balanced rations for two years should have prevented any outbreak of scurvy. He had never heard of typhus in the Arctic. Then Wrangel's radio operator passed on another message: Mrs. Wulfson, wife of the Island's doctor, was being returned as a "counterrevolutionary, a dangerous woman." Mrs. Wulfson had a fine record in the Communist...
Agent Zherdiev discovered enough material for a season of Grand Guignol. Crazy Governor Semenchuk and his sadistic wife had kept the entire colony in terror through two Arctic winters. Semenchuk indulged in long drunken orgies with a thick-headed sledge driver named Startzev, raped Eskimo girls, sent indignant Dr. Wulfson off on a long sledge expedition, sent Startzev after him to kill him, then tried to poison Startzev. The widow Wulf-son managed to administer a life-saving antidote to Startzev. Mrs. Semenchuk whipped Eskimo men, who were first forbidden to fish, then denied use of the Island...
...important did Soviet authorities con-sider the case last week that Chief Public Prosecutor André Vishinsky conducted it himself. Though Semenchuk cried shrilly that he was a visitor from Mars, manifested other symptoms of madness. Prosecutor Vishinsky was clearly out to make Wrangel's Governor an example to other remote Red bosses prone to autocracy...
...five hours Supreme Court Justice Berman and his two assistants remained closeted with bundles of testimony. Finally they reached their verdict, carefully written out in Judge Berman's own hand: Crazy Governor Semenchuk and Sledge Driver Startzev were sentenced to "the highest measure of social defense," death before a firing squad...