The Soviet Phenomenon

One distinction cannot be denied the Soviet Union: it is the only country in the world whose civil servants keep darting out of the night, shouting that the Russian secret police are at their heels and that they are in danger of assassination. The latest escapist in this series* is Kirill M. Alexeev, for the last two years acting commercial attache of the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, before that an engineer who had constructed important war plants in Russia.

From an undisclosed address in the U.S., where he was hiding with his wife and two children, Alexeev last week issued a brief statement: "All my life I have . . . worked for the Russian people. . . . But it has become clear to me that my work, like that of the whole Russian people, is beneficial to the Soviet regime and not to themselves. No nation is more exploited or rather enslaved. . . . Millions of guiltless men . . . have been put into concentration camps. . . . Actually, the entire Soviet Union is a concentration camp. . . . Even men belonging to the closest entourage of the dictator do not feel safe. . . . This is why the great majority of the Russian people hate the Soviet regime. . . . And this is the reason why I cannot return to my homeland and doom my family."

Formerly, in such cases, Soviet officials abroad used to deny that they knew anything about the fugitive or declare that he was a person of no importance whatever. Meanwhile, the local Communist press reported that he was a thief, a blackmailer, a spy, etc. This time, the Russian Government charged Alexeev with embezzlement and treason, demanded that the U.S. Government turn him over for trial in Russia. This concern led observers to conclude that Fugitive Alexeev was a somewhat bigger bug than he himself had admitted, and that his comments on Soviet life and notables might prove interesting.

One of them was promptly forthcoming. It concerned Professor S. P. Alexandrov, Soviet adviser to the Soviet delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission. Said Alexeev: "It was hardly of his own free will that Professor Alexandrov, known in America, a prominent expert in metallurgy and former director of the Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals, accepted in 1936 the job of chief engineer of the GULAG (Department of Concentration Camps)."

* Some others: Alexander Barmine (former Soviet charge d'affaires in Athens, now a U.S. citizen); Victor Kravchenko (former member of the Soviet Purchasing Commission in Washington); Fedor F. Raskolnikov (former Soviet minister to Bulgaria, died in suspicious circumstances on the French Riviera); Walter G. Krivitsky (former chief of Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe, died in suspicious circumstances in Washington); Ignace Reiss (former assistant chief of Soviet Military Intelligence in Central Europe, murdered in Switzerland).

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