On this date in 1905,* the druzhinniki (militia) of Moscow’s insurrectionary Red Presnia district barged into the apartment of 37-year-old police detective A.I. Volioshnikov.

In front of his shrieking children, “they read the verdict of the Revolutionary Committee, according to which Volioshnikov had to be shot” — as a police spy surveilling rebels, according to Trotsky — then taken outside and executed directly at the Prokhorovka textile factory.**

The tsar’s artillery began barraging Red Presnia the very next day, and had overrun it — complete with summary executions of their own — before the calendar turned over to 1906.

* December 28 per the Gregorian calendar; it was December 15 per the Julian calendar still in use at the time in Russia.

** There’s a “Druzhinniki Street” in Moscow near the Krasnopresnenskaya metro station — and the Prokhorovka factory (dating to 1799) still stands nearby.

On this day..

• 1866: John Roberson
• 1763: John Brannon, Joseph Jervis, Charles Riley, and Mary Robinson
• 1888: Leong Sing
• 2006: Qiu Xinghua, temple fury
• 1022: Medieval Europe's first heresy executions
• 1868: Priscilla Biggadike, exonerated Stickney murderess
• 2010: Two Iranian political prisoners
• 1888: Prado, before Gauguin
• c. 560 B.C.E.: Aesop, fabulist
• 1894: Chief Two Sticks, Ghost Dancer
• 1827: Levi Kelley