Finnish parliamentarian Herman Hurmevaara was shot during Stalin’s purges on this date in 1938.
Hurmevaara (English Wikipedia entry | the more detailed Finnish) sat in parliament for the Social Democrats from 1917 to 1919, which was also the period when long-restive Finland broke away from Russia’s grasp while the latter was preoccupied with deposing its tsar.
This rupture brought Finland into a nasty Whites-versus-Reds civil war. The Whites won, and Hurmevaara ended up knocking about in exile in Sweden and (after expulsion in 1930) the USSR. There, he worked in publishing.
Shot as a spy in the capital of Russia’s Finland-adjacent Karelian Republic, he was among numerous emigre Finns destroyed during the late 1930s nadir of Stalinism. Hurmevaara was posthumously rehabilitated in the Khrushchev era.
On this day..
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- 1894: Joe Dick, "allowed to go anywhere he desired" - 2015
- 1318: Dukes Erik and Valdemar Magnusson - 2014
- 1943: Toralf Berg, Norwegian resistance member - 2013
- 1912: Thomas Jennings, fingerprinted - 2012
- 1939: The only triple execution in Manitoba - 2011
- 1535: Etienne de la Forge, John Calvin's friend - 2010
- 1495: William Stanley, Lord Chamberlain - 2009
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