Your donation to The Moscow Times directly supports the last independent English-language news source within Russia. Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today. By Jonathan Waterlow. Jonathan Waterlow JonWaterlow. Read more. The article confirms in remarkable detail the picture of the murder and subsequent investigation that has emerged in recent years from the newly released archival documents.
Nikolaev was a psychologically unbalanced lone assassin who longed to go down in history as a hero. Stalin used the murder to put his rivals out of the way. This confirmation is of an early date — , and from a reliable source. He wrote outside the Soviet Union from an anti-Stalin perspective. We can see that it is very unlikely that Stalin had a hand in ordering the assassination, just as we can see that he used it to fabricate false and murderous charges against thousands of Soviet subjects, inside and outside the party.
At the 17th Party Congress in , when Sergei Kirov stepped up to the podium he was greeted by spontaneous applause that equalled that which was required to be given to Joseph Stalin. In his speech he put forward a policy of reconciliation. He argued that people should be released from prison who had opposed the government's policy on collective farms and industrialization.
The members of the Congress gave Kirov a vote of confidence by electing him to the influential Central Committee Secretariat. Stalin now found himself in a minority in the Politburo. After years of arranging for the removal of his opponents from the party, Stalin realized he still could not rely on the total support of the people whom he had replaced them with.
Stalin no doubt began to wonder if Kirov was willing to wait for his mentor to die before becoming leader of the party. Stalin was particularly concerned by Kirov's willingness to argue with him in public. He feared that this would undermine his authority in the party.
As usual, that summer Kirov and Stalin went on holiday together. Stalin, who treated Kirov like a son, used this opportunity to try to persuade him to remain loyal to his leadership.
Stalin asked him to leave Leningrad to join him in Moscow. Stalin wanted Kirov in a place where he could keep a close eye on him. He selected a young man, Leonid Nikolayev , as a possible candidate. Nikolayev had recently been expelled from the Communist Party and had vowed his revenge by claiming that he intended to assassinate a leading government figure. Zaporozhets met Nikolayev and when he discovered he was of low intelligence and appeared to be a person who could be easily manipulated, he decided that he was the ideal candidate as assassin.
Zaporozhets provided him with a pistol and gave him instructions to kill Kirov in the Smolny Institute in Leningrad. However, soon after entering the building he was arrested. Zaporozhets had to use his influence to get him released. On 1st December, , Nikolayev, got past the guards and was able to shoot Kirov dead.
Nikolayev was immediately arrested and after being tortured by Genrikh Yagoda he signed a statement saying that Gregory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev had been the leaders of the conspiracy to assassinate Kirov. According to Alexander Orlov : "Stalin decided to arrange for the assassination of Kirov and to lay the crime at the door of the former leaders of the opposition and thus with one blow do away with Lenin's former comrades. Stalin came to the conclusion that, if he could prove that Zinoviev and Kamenev and other leaders of the opposition had shed the blood of Kirov".
Victor Kravchenko has pointed out: "Hundreds of suspects in Leningrad were rounded up and shot summarily, without trial. Hundreds of others, dragged from prison cells where they had been confined for years, were executed in a gesture of official vengeance against the Party's enemies. The first accounts of Kirov's death said that the assassin had acted as a tool of dastardly foreigners - Estonian, Polish, German and finally British.
Then came a series of official reports vaguely linking Nikolayev with present and past followers of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and other dissident old Bolsheviks. Walter Duranty , the New York Times correspondent based in Moscow , was willing to accept this story.
A widespread plot against the Kremlin was discovered, whose ramifications included not merely former oppositionists but agents of the Nazi Gestapo. As the investigation continued, the Kremlin's conviction deepened that Trotsky and his friends abroad had built up an anti-Stalinist organisation in close collaboration with their associates in Russia, who formed a nucleus or centre around which gradually rallied divers elements of discontent and disloyalty.
The actual conspirators were comparatively few in number, but as the plot thickened they did not hesitate to seek the aid of foreign enemies in order to compensate for the lack of popular support at home. Robin Page Arnot , a member of the British Communist Party , also did his best to promote the theory that the conspiracy to kill Kirov had been led by Leon Trotsky : "In December one of the groups carried through the assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Subsequent investigations revealed that behind the first group of assassins was a second group, an Organisation of Trotskyists headed by Zinoviev and Kamenev. Further investigations brought to light definite counter-revolutionary activities of the Rights Bukharin-Rykov organisations and their joint working with the Trotskyists. The prison library was quite satisfactory, and in addition one was able to receive all the legal writings of the time.
Stalin devised a plan to deal with Kirov's dangerous eminence, proposing his recall from Leningrad to become one of the four Secretaries, thereby cleverly satisfying those who wanted him promoted to the Secretariat: on paper, a big promotion; in reality, this would bring him under Stalin's observation, cutting him off from his Leningrad clientele. In Stalin's entourage, a promotion to the centre was a mixed blessing. Kirov was neither the first nor the last to protest vigorously - but, in Stalin's eyes, a refusal meant placing personal power above Party loyalty, a mortal sin.
Kirov's request to stay in Leningrad for another two years was supported by Sergo and Kuibyshev. Stalin petulantly stalked out in a huff. Sergo and Kuibyshev advised Kirov to compromise with Stalin: Kirov became the third Secretary but remained temporarily in Leningrad. Since he would have little time for Moscow, Stalin reached out to another newly elected CC member who would become the closest to Stalin of all the leaders: Andrei Zhdanov, boss of Gorky Nizhny Novgorod , moved to Moscow as the fourth Secretary.
Kirov staggered back to Leningrad, suffering from flu, congestion in his right lung and palpitations. In March, Sergo wrote to him: "Listen my friend, you must rest. Really and truly, nothing is going to happen there without you there for days Our fellow countryman their codename for Stalin considers you a healthy man Yet Stalin was even more suffocatingly friendly, insisting that they constantly meet in Moscow. It was Sergo, not Stalin, with whom Kirov really needed to discuss his apprehensions.
There were hints of Kirov's scepticism about Stalin's cult: on 15 July , Kirov wrote formally to "Comrade Stalin" not the usual Koba that portraits of Stalin's photograph had been printed in Leningrad on rather "thin paper".
Unfortunately they could not do any better. One can imagine Kirov and Sergo mocking Stalin's vanity. In private, Kirov imitated Stalin's accent to his Leningraders. When Kirov visited Stalin in Moscow, they were boon companions but Artyom remembers a competitive edge to their jokes.
The theory posits that Stalin's motive was to do away with a "moderate" politician and possible rival there are rumors that Kirov received more support than Stalin at the 17th Party Congress. According to Knight, Stalin's complicity has been rejected by revisionist historians who concentrated on societal themes and the deeds of the ordinary citizen rather than elite politics. It has also been rejected by Soviet and some Russian historians. In order to determine the validity of the allegations, Knight's research focused on the circumstances surrounding the murder and the relationship between Stalin and Kirov.
Knight offered several examples of inconsistencies surrounding the murder. Although it was commonly assumed that Kirov had arrived unexpectedly at the Smolny Institute, in fact one of his bodyguards had called at least one-half hour before his arrival, leaving limited time for the plan to be set in motion.
Strangely, the assassin was found unconscious at the scene. Witnesses in the hallway provided conflicting stories that were never investigated by the NKVD; moreover, the police did not close off the building immediately after the murder. Archival evidence also lends credence to Stalin's motive. There was considerable tension between the two comrades.
Knight showed how, upon his transfer at the order of Stalin from Azerbaijan to Leningrad, Kirov bitterly complained about the situation in letters to his wife. Kirov's letters show that he was very unhappy to have been called to vacation with Stalin in Sochi in the summer of Knight's research also led to a typed archival transcript of a previously unpublished speech Kirov gave around the time of Stalin's fiftieth birthday.
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