RUSSIA: Refugees

A Red Army plane, chased by other Soviet craft and fired at by Soviet frontier guards, skimmed across the border and came down last week in southern Estonia. Out climbed Soviet Lieutenants Vladimir Umishevsky and Nikolai Gurjev, ashen-faced. After a three-hour flight from Luga, south of Leningrad, their gasoline was exhausted and they had just got across the frontier. They told that Joseph Stalin was purging the Red Air Force, that hundreds of Soviet military pilots had mysteriously vanished in Russia, that they had chosen the desperate risk of flight.

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