RUSSIA: Hard Soil Singer

Hero of the on-time completion of Moscow's new subway was until last week Chief Hard-Soil Excavation Engineer Mikhail Ifremov.

"I am a very cheerful man—that's why I am always fortunate!" Engineer Ifremov explained to a Soviet Court before which he was accused of wholesale embezzlement.

Witnesses testified that Cheerful Ifremov squandered 4,200 embezzled rubles —no great sum (see col. 3)—on taxi rides to and from a farm on which he kept pigeons.

"Frequently he would put aside his blueprints," testified another witness. "Then he would take all the telephone receivers off their hooks...

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