FRANCE: Murder Done?

When beardless, 32-year-old Leon Sedov, editor of a violently anti-Stalin Paris Russian-language paper, and son of the world’s No. 1 exile, tuft-bearded Leon Trotsky,* died last week in Paris following an operation for an “intestinal obstruction.” the world press was less interested in the death than in what heavy-hearted Trotsky had to say.

“It is not true that my son suffered from a chronic intestinal disease,” complained Trotsky from his Mexican refuge. “I don’t have direct data that the death of L. Sedov is the handiwork of the GPU [Soviet secret police]. . . . At the disposal of the GPU there are very exceptional scientists and technical means, which makes the problem of medical examination very difficult.”

In Paris an autopsy was cautiously ordered on Leon Sedov’s remains, but the results were not announced by week’s end.

* Trotsky, through two marriages, the second apparently never publicly recorded, has had four children, now all dead or imprisoned. Daughter Nina died in Russia in 1928, Daughter Zinaida committed suicide in Berlin in 1933 after the Russian arrest of her husband, elder Son Leon died last week and Son Sergei, Soviet engineer, was “arrested” year ago, has not been heard of since.