when did moscow burn?
1812 Fire of Moscow
neutral
 Both German and Soviet casualties during the battle of Moscow have been a subject of debate , as various sources provide somewhat different estimates . Not all historians agree on what should be considered the " Battle of Moscow " in the timeline of World War II . While the start of the battle is usually regarded as the beginning of Operation Typhoon on 30 September 1941 ( or sometimes on 2 October 1941 ) , there are two different dates for the end of the offensive . In particular , some sources ( such as Erickson and Glantz ) exclude the Rzhev offensive from the scope of the battle , considering it as a distinct operation and making the Moscow offensive " stop " on 7 January 1942 — thus lowering the number of casualties . 

contradiction
 Hayes and Komisarjevsky fled the scene using the Petit family car . They were immediately spotted by police surveillance , pursued , and arrested one block away . The whole invasion lasted seven hours . 

neutral
 The events that took place in the western regions of the USSR occupied by Nazi Germany in the first weeks after the German invasion , including Lithuania , marked the sharp intensification of the Holocaust . 

neutral
 In 1947 the Soviet Union established a smallpox weapons factory in the city of Zagorsk , 75 km to the northeast of Moscow . An outbreak of weaponized smallpox occurred during testing at a facility on an island in the Aral Sea in 1971 . General Prof. Peter Burgasov , former Chief Sanitary Physician of the Soviet Army and a senior researcher within the Soviet program of biological weapons , described the incident : 

neutral
 In November 2010 , the Russian State Duma approved a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for having personally ordered the massacre . 
