The Real Plot

 “Who Killed Kirov – The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery” by Amy Knight, 1999

Forget all those random detective series. Like the assassinations of Olaf Palme, Dag Hammarskjold, Malcolm X, MLK, Paul Wellstone, Huey Long and the Kennedy's, political assassinations actually mean something on a broader scale. The killing of Sergei Kirov in December 1934 is such an event, as it led to the liquidation of the leading elements of the Bolshevik Party. Associates of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and the “Leningrad Center” were first accused of the assassination, after which they lost their position in the Party, and later their heads. It led to the 1930's purge trials, executions and imprisonment of ten's of thousands of top 'Old Bolshevik' cadre, to be replaced by hand-picked supporters of the new Party leadership.

I've been to Kirov's fourth floor apartment museum in the Petrograd District of St. Petersburg tended by some old ladies. It contained his vast collection of books, his hunting gear and guns, his expansive work / dining table and a picture of him, Stalin and Kirov's good friend Sergo Ordzhonikidze on one high wall. Knight used Russian archives that were first made available after 1991. These help reveal who is the most likely candidate for murderer. Knight is no leftist, but she is a reporter and researcher. This is her analysis.

There are several theories on the December 1, 1934 assassination. #1) Disgruntled, unemployed individual, Leonid Nikolaev. #2) A dastardly plot by the Zinovievites, Kamenev and later Bukharin. This was the Party line at the time. #3) An NKVD assassination orchestrated by Stalin. In 1988 the Soviet Union legally rejected the Zinoviev plot thesis though the murder had been in review since 1955. Re #1, even if it was true, it did not justify the subsequent bloodletting and destruction of the actual Bolshevik Party, turning it into a bureaucratic hierarchy.  Later Soviet commissions zig-zagged over Stalin's responsibility depending on who was in power, with one in 1960 saying Stalin was behind the murder. Knight examines the possible logic behind #3.

Caught in a Vice

Kirov was a self-educated intellectual, tireless worker, a popular speaker and personality. He was assigned to police Leningrad by Stalin against the supporters of Nicolai Bukharin, who wanted to continue the NEP. Bukharin opposed Stalin's plans for forced collectivization, grain requisitions, deportations and breaking the 'scissors' with the peasants, as a 'war on the kulaks' was becoming a war on the peasantry. Kirov himself sympathized with Bukharin's position and went 'easy' on his Leningrad comrades in 1929, which put him in disfavor in Moscow. The Leningrad District lagged far behind other areas in collectivization because Kirov refused to use force. He held to this idea through 1934.

However Kirov was also a sometimes Stalinist. He initiated the decimation of the Leningrad Academy of Sciences, which later led to prison sentences and executions – though he might not have expected that. After being assigned to the Politburo he denounced the Bukarinites as 'capitalist restorationists' but still stayed on friendly terms with them. The brutal construction of the Baltic-White Sea Canal with prison labor was also carried out under his watch, though one journalist reported that Kirov was against its use of forced labor. The secret police OPGU was in direct command. In another instance he publicly maintained theft from kolkhozs or cooperative stores should be punished by death, then criticized local police for putting 'half of Russia in jail.' Similarly, while supporting expelling Martem'ium Riutin from the Party in 1932 for his group's Left criticisms of Stalin, in the Politburo he publicly opposed executing him. That, however, was Stalin's proposal. Kirov began to suffer from various physical complaints – heart, fatigue, nerves, etc. due to the conflicted situation in the Party, country and no doubt himself.

So Kirov was someone who 'wobbled' on the issue of brutality. Stalin's method of showing 'comradeship' towards people like Bukharin in 1935 only hid his future plans. This might also have been true of Kirov after he publicly opposed him in the Politburo. Kirov himself heard a tirade by Stalin at a dinner in 1926, where Stalin maintained that what Russia's people wanted was a new 'Tsar,' so he was not clueless about Stalin's goals. Kirov was not the only Party leader who was ambivalent about the 'great leader.'

Many old Bolsheviks wanted Stalin gone, especially at the Seventeenth Congress in 1934. Kirov was their suggested replacement at a private meeting and Stalin found out about it. At the 1934 Seventeenth Congress you will be surprised to learn that actual votes were taken by delegates for members in the Central Committee. Current U.S. 'Marxist-Leninist' groups won't even vote on who will be their coffee mule. However in this case some votes were not counted, negative votes against Stalin disappeared and still Kirov was within one vote of Stalin. At that same Congress Kirov warned about the threat of fascism in Germany and Japan and advocated preparing for invasions. Stalin was mulling a bloc with Hitler, but later endorsed an anti-fascist 'popular' front. So there were many 'rubs' in Stalin's relations with Kirov.

Kirov was actually shot from behind

Questions

In late 1934 Kirov had 9 NKVD bodyguards. On December 1, the day he was killed, all but one guard were downstairs from his third floor office in the Smolny. The last bodyguard, M.D. Borisov, was down the hall when Kirov was supposedly shot by Nikolaev. As Knight notes, facts from official reports and witnesses contrasted and some 'official facts' were inaccurate. There were other people in the hallway and offices, yet the NKVD did not interview witnesses or secure the area. One key person disappeared. Stalin, between the short period of time of hearing of the murder and boarding a train for Leningrad, had time to draft a new penal code procedure. It was: 10 day investigation; charges conveyed to defendant 24 hours before trial; case heard without defendant or his counsel; no clemency appeals allowed; death sentence carried out immediately. So it was a form of summary justice. A convenient ruling. He immediately told witnesses that a 'Zinovievite' was the killer. This murder led to almost 2 million executed or sent to labor camps in the Great Purges.

Leningrad NKVD officers, especially those guarding Kirov, were lightly punished for negligence, including prior times they questioned Nikolaev without searching him - though he had a gun on him. Oddly the 2 bullets and cartridges were not compared to Nicolaev's Nagant revolver. Somehow Nikolaev got past the third floor guard station, which would have required a party card and an employee pass, neither of which he had at the time. Prior to this Kirov had an office right next to the guard desk but his office was moved way down the hall and around a corner. Nor was it known by anyone except the NKVD that Kirov would be in the building that day, which was not a regular work day. Nicolaev was immediately taken by the NKVD after the murder, as he was still alive. He was repeatedly hysterical, then mute, a 5-foot bag of bones dressed in shabby clothing according to witnesses. Yet a possibly fabricated written 'plot' plan was found on him by the NKVD. Not one witness actually saw the death shot, or said they did.

The next day Borisov, held by the NKVD along with the other guards, was told he was going to be interviewed by Stalin and 30 minutes later was returned dead to the NKVD medical unit. The stories vary - some said he was thrown from the van; a doctor said he had two contusions on his skull; another that the driver purposely slammed into a wall; another that it was 'just an accident' even though the guard in the back of the van was not hurt.

The 'Plot' Sickens

From there, people associated with Nikolaev were arrested as part of a terrorist cell called the 'Leningrad Center,' especially if they were Zinovievites or had prior contact with Trotskyists. Nikolaev had been a Party member and had worked in the Peasant's Inspectorate but was thrown out and lost his job. The NKVD used forced confessions with fabrications or torture to patch together a plot. After Stalin's arrival, their plot line changed from 'lone nut' to conspiracy triggerman. An hour after sentencing 14 defendants were shot. Family members were either executed later or sent to labor camps.

Zinoviev prison photo

The dragnet spread to a 'terrorist' “Moscow Center” as Zinoviev and Kamenev were arrested and tried in 1935.  At first there was no evidence, but the NKVD got someone to rat, fabricated confessions and suddenly there was a 'case.' The group was accused of “political and moral responsibility for the murder of Kirov.” If this seems laughable, it's not. Stalin considered the group 'White Guards' but only had them jailed for 5-10 years at this point. He then wrote that all left oppositionists had to be put behind bars. The terror had begun.

One Leningrad NKVD officer, Medved, after talking with Stalin, told his brother-in-law that Stalin knew 'Yagoda and Zaporozhets' were behind the killing – both top NKVD officers. The NKVD officers initially 'punished' by prison in Kolyma had it easy – good positions, quarters and were able to bring family - as if their sentencing was for show. Ultimately Knight concludes that what happened in that corridor that day is suspect on many levels – another shooter, the NKVD using Nicolaev and getting him in the corridor, the delay of his guard Borisov, the shabby investigation, missing evidence, dead witnesses. She contends: “The crucial issue is whether Stalin had a reason for ordering the murder of Kirov.” The answer to that question is obvious because of their many political differences – yes.

Already in late December, 1934 books started appearing lionizing Kirov as a secular saint, serving Stalin's purpose in the purges. Ordzhonikidze, Kirov's good friend, was most shattered by the killing and aftermath. Any opposition to Stalin's opinion was now punishable by death or gulag. He could not help friends caught up in the dragnet. One of his best Party friends committed suicide over the oppression. He followed in 1937 after many disagreements with Stalin's method of executing so-called industrial 'wreckers' and shot himself. 

Kirov's wife received condolences from Bukharin. Bukharin followed many others' fates in 1938 by being executed after a fake trial. The rest of the book discusses the reaction of the workers in Leningrad, their disbelief in the official story, and Stalin's war on Leningrad as a nest of subversives, arresting or exiling 90,000 people. Many of Kirov's Leningrad Party allies were demoted, then denounced as enemies. Knight reports that later Bukharin realized Stalin was behind the murder, retailed in conversations in Paris with an exiled friend.  When his name was associated with the 'plotters' and Trotsky as the 'master-string puller,' he knew where things were headed.  Stalinist NKVD Chief Yagoda was also executed along with Bukharin, Rykov and others for being part of a "Zinovievite-Trotskyite" terrorist group.

A true and riveting tale only sketched here. If all these facts remind you of other political assassinations, congratulations. A patsy, bad police work, missing facts, a government's suspicious narrative, a captive press, witness killings, a moved office, corrupt cops, a useful outcome – its all there.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Wellstone, Huey Long, Olaf Palme or “Petrograd District – Monday,” “Radek,” “Fear” (Rybakov); “Beethoven and Shostakovich” (Woods); “Lenin's Last Struggle” (Lewin); “The Struggle for Power” (Vilkova); “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives” (Cohen); “Dear Comrades,” “The Ghost of Stalin” (Sartre); “Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth?” “Did Someone Say Totalitarianism? (Zizek); “October” (Mieville).

May Day Books as many volumes on the USSR.

And I got it at the Public Library!

Red Frog / April 19, 2024