Executions Ussr

Josef Stalin's feared police chief, Lavrenti P. Beria, went on a hunger strike before his 1953 trial and begged on his knees for mercy before he was shot, a government newspaper reported over the weekend. Eyewitness accounts, published in the weekend supplement of Izvestia, provided dramatic details never before released of the fall of the man known as "the Kremlin Monster" and said that unlike many of Stalin's purge victims, he refused to plead guilty.

The Soviet Union under dictator Josef Stalin "summarily executed" some American prisoners after World War II and forced others, some of whom are still alive, to renounce their citizenship, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said in a letter to a Senate committee Wednesday.

The Soviet Union under dictator Josef Stalin "summarily executed" some American prisoners after World War II and forced others, some of whom are still alive, to renounce their citizenship, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said in a letter to a Senate committee Wednesday.

A small makeshift cross in a birch forest near this Urals village points to the end of one of Europe's great mysteries. Here, in a small marshy clearing, lies a mass grave with nine bodies, believed to be those of Russia's last czar, Nicholas II; his wife, Alexandra; three of his four daughters and four servants--massacred by a Bolshevik execution squad in the heat of the Communist revolution 73 years ago.

Fyodor Fedorenko, the first person to be deported from the United States to the Soviet Union to face charges that he committed Nazi war crimes, has been executed, the official news agency Tass reported Monday. Fedorenko, 79, was sentenced to death by a court in the Crimea in the Soviet Ukraine in June, 1986, on charges of treason and taking part in mass executions at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. The Tass account did not say when he was executed or provide any other details.

The weekly Moscow News on Thursday printed a shocking description of mass executions conducted by Josef Stalin's secret police, describing how 100,000 Soviet citizens were systematically murdered in the southwestern Byelorussian republic before the 1941 Nazi invasion. Until now, Soviet historians have blamed the wholesale executions on German forces that occupied the area during World War II.

The skull and bones of Russia's last czar, previously believed to have been destroyed by acid in an attempt to prevent his veneration by loyal subjects, were found a decade ago by a Soviet writer who did not dare disclose the discovery until now, the weekly Moscow News reported Wednesday. Czar Nicholas II was summarily executed along with his wife, Alexandra, their five children and four servants by the Bolsheviks in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg, now called Sverdlosk, on July 16, 1918, but their bodies were never found.

Soviet readers were told for the first time Sunday that dictator Joseph Stalin's infamous secret police chief Nikolai I. Yezhov was executed almost 48 years ago. Yezhov, who headed the secret police, known as the NKVD, from 1936 to 1938 at the height of the great purges, was removed by Stalin in July, 1938, to signify an end to the Stalinist terror in which millions perished. From police chief, Yezhov went on to lead the Commission of Water Transport--thought to be a joke by Stalin.

The Russian Orthodox Church is planning to build a shrine to the "martyrs" of the Bolshevik Revolution on the site where Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, was executed by the Communists in 1918. Nikolai P. Kalinin, warden of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Sverdlovsk, said Tuesday that a large chapel will be built and regular services held to honor Nicholas, his family and servants, and other "martyrs unjustly executed" in the past seven decades of Communist rule.

At least six Russian citizens working secretly for U.S. intelligence agencies within the Soviet Union have been arrested and executed since late 1985, apparently because of security compromises at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, government sources said Friday. The deaths, which American officials say they learned about during the course of more than a year, effectively ended some of the United States' most productive and well-placed intelligence operations inside Soviet borders, those sources said.

The Russian Orthodox Church is planning to build a shrine to the "martyrs" of the Bolshevik Revolution on the site where Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, was executed by the Communists in 1918. Nikolai P. Kalinin, warden of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Sverdlovsk, said Tuesday that a large chapel will be built and regular services held to honor Nicholas, his family and servants, and other "martyrs unjustly executed" in the past seven decades of Communist rule.

The Soviet Union each year executes about 300 criminals, most of them convicted murderers, a senior government official disclosed Monday. Gennady G. Cheremnykh, the chief of the clemency appeals department at the Supreme Soviet, the country's legislature, said that a committee of seven deputies hears 25 to 30 appeals a month but grants clemency only in 3% to 5% of the cases.

As Dmitri A. Volkogonov opened the long-sealed boxes and pored over the dusty papers inside, he realized with a sudden horror that he was reading the meticulously compiled lists of Soviet Communist Party officials who were to be executed on the personal orders of the dictator Josef Stalin. "They were some of our best people of the time, outstanding party leaders, and they were listed for annihilation," Volkogonov recalled Tuesday.

The skull and bones of Russia's last czar, previously believed to have been destroyed by acid in an attempt to prevent his veneration by loyal subjects, were found a decade ago by a Soviet writer who did not dare disclose the discovery until now, the weekly Moscow News reported Wednesday. Czar Nicholas II was summarily executed along with his wife, Alexandra, their five children and four servants by the Bolsheviks in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg, now called Sverdlosk, on July 16, 1918, but their bodies were never found.

The weekly Moscow News on Thursday printed a shocking description of mass executions conducted by Josef Stalin's secret police, describing how 100,000 Soviet citizens were systematically murdered in the southwestern Byelorussian republic before the 1941 Nazi invasion. Until now, Soviet historians have blamed the wholesale executions on German forces that occupied the area during World War II.

Josef Stalin's feared police chief, Lavrenti P. Beria, went on a hunger strike before his 1953 trial and begged on his knees for mercy before he was shot, a government newspaper reported over the weekend. Eyewitness accounts, published in the weekend supplement of Izvestia, provided dramatic details never before released of the fall of the man known as "the Kremlin Monster" and said that unlike many of Stalin's purge victims, he refused to plead guilty.

The widow of Nikolai I. Bukharin, a leading Bolshevik who was executed in the last of the Stalin show trials, has asked Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev for a full Communist Party rehabilitation of her late husband. Excerpts from the letter of Anna M. Larina, along with her recollections of Bukharin's relationship with Josef Stalin, were printed Sunday in the current issue of Ogonyok, an outspoken weekly magazine.

A small makeshift cross in a birch forest near this Urals village points to the end of one of Europe's great mysteries. Here, in a small marshy clearing, lies a mass grave with nine bodies, believed to be those of Russia's last czar, Nicholas II; his wife, Alexandra; three of his four daughters and four servants--massacred by a Bolshevik execution squad in the heat of the Communist revolution 73 years ago.

Soviet readers were told for the first time Sunday that dictator Joseph Stalin's infamous secret police chief Nikolai I. Yezhov was executed almost 48 years ago. Yezhov, who headed the secret police, known as the NKVD, from 1936 to 1938 at the height of the great purges, was removed by Stalin in July, 1938, to signify an end to the Stalinist terror in which millions perished. From police chief, Yezhov went on to lead the Commission of Water Transport--thought to be a joke by Stalin.

The widow of Nikolai I. Bukharin, a leading Bolshevik who was executed in the last of the Stalin show trials, has asked Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev for a full Communist Party rehabilitation of her late husband. Excerpts from the letter of Anna M. Larina, along with her recollections of Bukharin's relationship with Josef Stalin, were printed Sunday in the current issue of Ogonyok, an outspoken weekly magazine.