Talk:Yrjö Sirola

Latest comment: 15 years ago by Ap4k in topic Death in the Purge?

Untitled edit

Could anyone who speaks Finnish please expand this article. I suggest by translating the longer article about Yrjö Sirola, that already exists in the Finnish Wikipedia. Thank you. User:Bronks September 15, 2005.

  • I have translated it. It still needs proofreading by someone who is more familiar with the Finland-related articles on the English Wikipedia. JIP | Talk 16:57, 15 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • Thank you, good work. Good start! User:Bronks September 15, 2005.

WikiProject class rating edit

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 17:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC)Reply


Death in the Purge? edit

My database indicates that Sirola died of natural causes in 1936. Unfortunately, I don't have a record of where I gathered that tidbit, but I will point out that the Ezhovshchina (Great Terror) in the USSR that obliterated over 1 million people (and which struck with particular severity three groups to which Sirola belonged -- Communists, Comintern functionaries, and Finns) seems to have been green-lighted by Stalin, Molotov & Co. at the Feb.-March 1937 joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Committee of the Russian Communist Party. In other words, Sirola's death apparently PRECEDED the Great Terror, which was essentially a 1937-38 phenomenon.

While it is not impossible that Sirola died in secret police custody in 1936, I would like to see a documented arrest date before I would jump to that conclusion or to commit to that outcome in print. I've removed reference to his death in the Great Terror pending this research and will look myself for some sort of definitive details about cause of death myself.

Tim Davenport -- Early American Marxism website -- Corvallis, OR -- Carrite (talk) 19:09, 17 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

"Sirola's death was natural. According to his biographer, Erkki Salomaa, charges were being collected against him while he was still living, but he died before arrest." (Jukka Paastela: Finnish Communism under Soviet Totalitarianism Kikimora 2003, p. 114–115.) Sirola had been ill for few months before he died of stroke. (Erkki Salomaa: Yrjö Sirola Kansankulttuuri 1966, p. 345–348.)--Ap4k (talk) 14:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply