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Daily Double: Stalinism east to west

November 26th, 2011 Headsman

It’s a trivial observation that Russia is really big, but it does bear noticing that Russia is really big. Nine time zones big, after cutting back from eleven.

As a consequence, when the boss goes off the rails — as such characters have been wont to do — and given the transport and communications infrastructure of an industrial state, one man’s paranoia in Moscow can wreck lives from the Dnieper to the Pacific.

Two dates this weekend from the height of Stalin’s 1937 purges see a Mongolian and a Finn who each thought themselves good communists destroyed in Moscow by the system they supported.

• Nov. 26, 1937: Peljidiin Genden
• Nov. 27, 1937: Eero Haapalainen

Also on this date

• 1678: William Staley, "the prologue to the bloody tragedy"
• 1940: Jilava Massacre
• 1600: Hansel Pappenheimer, following his family
• 1849: Sheikh Bouzian, defending Zaatcha
• 1919: Felipe Angeles

Entry Filed under: Daily Doubles