MRS. SHENINA TO MR. PUTIN: TAMARA ROKHLINA’S LIFE HANGS BY A THREAD

Oleg Shenin, chairman of the Council of Communist Parties of CIS and first secretary of the Russia-Belarus Communist Party, has a very active and restless wife. She has just made public his open letter to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. This is already 3d formal letter which a wife of a member of the disgraced State of Emergency Committee has written in favour of combat General Rokhlin’s widow. The first two letters were addressed to procurator generals Skuratov and Ustinov, but she only got formal replies. “It is naive to think that leaders of the so-called patriotic opposition will stand up for unrightfully accused Tamara Pavlovna. That very Communist faction in the Duma, guided by the Kremilin, jointly voted to dismiss Lev Yakovlevich from the post of the Defence Committee chairman. Nobody from the Duma’s opposition helped her when she for one and a half years was pining in prison. She was betrayed by her husband’s former friends who did not take trouble to bring a sweet to her sick son. The Defence Ministry also makes itself scarce complacently looking on a wooden cross on the grave of General Rokhin who battled in two wars,” this relentless woman told our corespondent handing over the copy of he letter.