A 19-year-old high school youth fired a revolver six times, in Warsaw, last week, and threw the Soviet Government into a state of such excitement that the official Soviet newspaper Isvestia soon accused Chancellor of the British Exchequer Winston S. Churchill of directing a secret band of assassins pledged to exterminate Soviet officials. Isvestia added, explanatorily: "London is a nest of murderers." Soviet War Minister Clemence Voroshilov declared: "The British maintain a band of murderers and brigands in our country." What banal and sordid crime provoked these flamboyant charges?
Into the Central Station at Warsaw glided a long sleeping -car train from Berlin. It bore Comrade* A. P. Rosengolz, expelled Soviet Charge d'Affaires to Great Britain, who was en route last week back to Moscow (TIME, May 13). Stepping from the train, M. Rosengolz was greeted warmly by Comrade Peter Lazarevitch Vojkov, Soviet Minister to Poland, very generally believed to be an official who signed the death warrants of the late Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Arm in arm, the two Comrades entered the station buffet, ordered tall glasses of steaming tea. The train would wait an hour, then carry them both on to Moscow. . . .
Half an hour later MM. Rosengolz and Vojkov were pacing up and down the platform deep in talk. Suddenly a youth accosted them. He was a high school student of Vilna . . . Boris Kovenko, he _ said. Would Soviet Minister Vojkov please grant him a passport to enter Russia? He had applied often at the Soviet Legation, but had been refused for no reason that he could understand. Would not the Soviet Minister grant his request? . . .
Comrades Rosenholz and Vojkov, thus interrupted, resumed their walk without replying to Boris Kovenko. He, snubbed, drew a revolver and fired at M. Vojkov. The Soviet Minister whipped out his own revolver, but sagged to the ground before he could wound Boris Kovenko, who continued methodically to empty all six chambers of his revolver into the crumpled body of M. Vojkov. When two policemen sprinted up, the assassin carelessly surrendered his revolver, saying only: "I killed Vojkov. ... I acted from idealistic motives."
Two newspapers frankly condoned the murder. At Vilna, Poland, home city of Murderer Kovenko, the White Russian newspaper Novaia Rossia appealed for contributions wherewith to retain able defense attorneys in his behalf. Immediately the Polish Government suppressed Novaia Rossia, placed the editor in jail. In London Lord Rothermere's violently anti-red Evening News declared: "The slain man (Vojkov) signed the death warrants of Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial family. By Vojkov's assassination at the hand of a royalist, retribution has come to one of the chief perpetrators of one of the foulest murders in history."
Meanwhile at Warsaw, President Ignatz Moscicki of Poland personally telegraphed to Chairman Michael Ivanovitch Kalinin of the Union Central Executive Committee,— at Moscow:
"Very deeply shocked and indignant over the outrageous murder of M. Vojkov. I beg you to be good enough to accept this expression of my most sincere condolences."
The Polish Government officially despatched a note of similar tone to the Soviet Government. What would Moscow reply?*