On this date in 1937, Finnish communist Eero Haapalainen was shot in Moscow.

Haapalainen (English Wikipedia entry | Finnish) was a prominent socialist, trade unionist, and journalist when World War I tipped Finland into civil war.

Despite a lack of military experience, Haapalainen had momentary command of the Red Guards in that brief but bloody struggle. The Reds lost, necessitating Haapalainen’s escape by motorboat to St. Petersburg in May 1918.

There he settled in for a couple of decades’ middle-management service to the revolution: writing, teaching, paper-pushing.

The almost inevitable end came with stunning speed in the autumn of 1937. Arrested exactly one month before his execution, Haapalainen denied the charges of counterrevolutionary activity under NKVD torture.

Denial, confession … it all amounted to the same thing. Eleven other Finns (Finnish link) got it with Haapalainen at the very same time: Saimi Virtanen, Väinö Turunen, Urho Pitkälahti, Armas Raasu, Anselm Mäkelin, Mikko Lehmus, Toivo Rantanen, Aino Forsten, Väinö Savander, Rauno Koivistoinen, Eskil Kyllänen, Anton Uotinen.

The next year, Eero Haapalainen’s son Toivo, an engineer, was also purged. Father and son were both rehabilitated in the Krushchev era.

Part of the Daily Double: Stalinism East and West.

On this day..

• 1620: Michal Piekarski, warhammer wielder
• 1943: Floyd McKinney
• 1927: Three Saragossa robbers
• Themed Set: Sexual Deviance
• 1702: David Myles, incestuous
• 1512: Five young Ottoman princes
• 1802: Captain William Codlin, maritime insurance scammer
• 602: Emperor Maurice and all his heirs
• 1835: John Smith and James Pratt, the last hanged for sodomy in Great Britain
• 1674: The Chevalier de Rohan and Franciscus van den Enden
• 1911: Ah Q
• 1871: Eight Cuban medical students
• 1987: Jacek Lazar condemned