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Sergei Kirov Серге́й Миро́нович Ки́ров
Leader of the Azerbaijani Communist Party
In office 1921–1926
Leader of the Leningrad Branch of the Communist Party
In office 1926–1934
Personal details
Born	(1886-03-27)March 27, 1886 Urzhum, Russian Empire
Died	December 1, 1934(1934-12-01) (aged 48) Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian

Sergei Mironovich Kirov (Russian: Серге́й Миро́нович Ки́ров; 27 March [O.S. 15 March] 1886 – 1 December 1934), born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union. Kirov rose through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad. Kirov was seen as a focal point of opposition to some policies of Joseph Stalin, and as a counterbalance to the increasing concentration of power in Stalin's hands.^{[citation needed]}

On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute. Some historians place the blame for his assassination at the hands of Stalin and believe the NKVD organised its execution, but any evidence for this claim remains elusive.^[1] Kirov's death served as one of the pretexts for Stalin's escalation of repression against dissident elements of the Party, culminating in the Great Purge of the late 1930s in which many of the Old Bolsheviks were arrested, expelled from the Party, and executed.^[2] Complicity in Kirov's assassination was a common charge to which the accused confessed in the show trials of the era.

The cities of Kirov, Kirovohrad, Kirovakan, and Kirovabad were renamed in Kirov's honor after his assassination. Following the collapse of Soviet Union Kirovakan and Kirovabad returned to their original names: Vanadzor and Ganja, respectively.

Youth[link]

Born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov (Ко́стриков) to a poor family in Urzhum, Russia, Kirov lost his parents when he was young. His father, Miron Kostrikov, had left him at a tender age; his mother, Yekaterina Kitun Kostrikova, also died the following year. Sergey was brought up by his grandmother before being sent to an orphanage at seven years of age.^[3] In 1901 a group of wealthy benefactors provided a scholarship for him to attend an industrial school at Kazan. After gaining his degree in Engineering he moved to Tomsk. As Russian society went into crisis, Kirov became a Marxist and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1904.^[4]

Russian revolutions[link]

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Kirov took part in the Russian Revolution of 1905, and was arrested and later released. He joined with the Bolsheviks soon after being released from prison. In 1906, Kirov was arrested once again, but this time jailed for over three years, charged with printing illegal literature. Soon after his release, he again took part in revolutionary activity. Once again being arrested for printing illegal literature, after a year of custody, Kostrikov moved to the Caucasus, where he stayed until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.

By this time, Sergei Kostrikov had changed his name to Kirov in order to make his name easier to remember, a practice common among Russian revolutionaries of the time. One theory is that the name Kir reminded him of the ancient Persian leader Cyrus the Great while another is that he took his name from St. Kir after seeing a calendar of Russian Orthodox saints. ^[5]

Kirov became commander of the Bolshevik military administration in Astrakhan. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he fought in the Russian Civil War until 1920. Simon Sebag Montefiore writes: "During the Civil War, Kirov was one of the swashbuckling commissars in the North Caucasus beside Sergo and Mikoyan. In Astrakhan he enforced Bolshevik power in March 1919 with liberal blood-letting: over four thousand were killed. When a bourgeois was caught hiding his own furniture, Kirov ordered him shot."^[6]

Career[link]

Soviet photo of Kirov

In 1921, he became manager of the Azerbaijan party organization. Kirov supported Joseph Stalin loyally, and in 1926 he was rewarded with the command of the Leningrad party. Kirov was widely admired in the Communist party for his efficiency as administrator of the Leningrad District, and his willingness to stand up to Stalin^{[citation needed]}. He was seen as one of the adherents of the Opposition Movement to Stalin, along with Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Abram Prigozhin, and others^{[citation needed]}. When the Leningrad branch of the OGPU began to harass Opposition dissidents in Leningrad, Kirov gave orders that they were not to be harassed by the police^{[citation needed]}. In 1933, Kirov successfully opposed^{[citation needed]} Stalin's demand for the imposition of the death penalty against a Party leader, Martemyan Ryutin (1890–1937, Рютин Мартемьян Никитич), a former supporter of Stalin who had recently circulated in party circles a 200-page anti-Stalin document demanding the abandonment of forced collectivization, the reduction of investment in industry, and the removal of Stalin, "the grave digger of the Revolution and of Russia," from his post as head of the Communist Party.^[7][8]

As a result, Kirov drew the unwelcome attention of Stalin, particularly after the 1934 party congress, where delegates voting for new Central Committee membership elected Kirov with just votes against. Supposedly, Stalin received far more negative votes than Kirov, although the historical records are not entirely clear. Kirov was close friends with Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and together they formed a moderate bloc to oppose Stalin and campaign for a policy of reconciliation and toleration of dissident voices in the Politburo and in the Party^{[citation needed]}. After the party congress, Stalin asked Kirov to work for him in Moscow, assisting the Politburo, but then repeatedly postponed Kirov's transfer, stating that Kirov was temporarily required in Leningrad to finish important party business.^[9] Kirov was not invited to certain Politburo meetings, and was kept in Leningrad for over nine months.^[9] Kirov's influence continued to grow, and at a plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1934 Kirov urged the adoption of further conciliatory measures by the party in favor of party dissidents, which won enthusiastic applause and approval among the delegates.^[9]

Assassination, Aftermath, and Conspiracy Theories[link]

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The Leningrad office of the NKVD - headed by Kirov’s close friend, Feodor Medved - looked after Kirov’s security. Stalin reportedly ordered the NKVD Commissar, Genrikh Yagoda, to replace Medved with Grigory Yeremeyevich Yevdokimov, a close associate of Stalin. However, Kirov intervened and had the order countermanded. According to Alexander Orlov, Stalin then ordered Yagoda to arrange the assassination. Yagoda ordered Medved’s deputy, Vania Zaporozhets, to undertake the job. Zaporozhets returned to Leningrad in search of an assassin; in reviewing the files he found the name of Leonid Nikolaev.^[10]

Leonid Nikolaev was well-known to the NKVD, which had arrested him for various petty offences in recent years. Various accounts of his life agree that he was an expelled Party member and failed junior functionary with a murderous grudge and an indifference towards his own survival. He was unemployed, with a wife and child, and in financial difficulties. According to Orlov, Nikolayev had allegedly expressed to a 'friend' a desire to kill the head of the party control commission that had expelled him. His friend reported this to the NKVD.^[10]

Zaporozhets then allegedly enlisted Nikolayev’s 'friend' to contact him, giving him money and a loaded 7.62 mm Nagant M1895 revolver.^[10] However, Nikolaev's first attempt at killing Kirov failed. On 15 October 1934, Nikolaev packed his Nagant revolver in a briefcase and entered the Smolny Institute where Kirov worked. Although he was initially passed by the main security desk at Smolny, he was arrested after an alert guard asked to examine his briefcase, which was found to contain the revolver.^[10] A few hours later, Nikolayev’s briefcase and loaded revolver were returned to him, and he was told to leave the building. Though Nikolaev had clearly broken Soviet laws, the security police had inexplicably released him from custody; he was even permitted to retain his loaded pistol.^[11]

With Stalin's approval, the NKVD had previously withdrawn all but four police bodyguards assigned to Kirov. These four guards accompanied Kirov each day to his offices at the Smolny Institute, and then left. On 1 December 1934, the usual guard post at the entrance to Kirov's offices was left unmanned, even though the building served as the chief offices of the Leningrad party apparatus and as the seat of the local government.^[10][12] According to some reports, only a single friend and unarmed bodyguard of Kirov's, Commissar Borisov, remained.^[12][13] Other sources^[who?] state that there may have been as many as nine NKVD guards in the building. Whatever the case, given the circumstances of Kirov's death, as former Soviet official and author Alexander Barmine noted, "the negligence of the NKVD in protecting such a high party official was without precedent in the Soviet Union."^[11]

On the afternoon of 1 December Nikolaev arrived at the Smolny Institute offices. Unopposed, he made his way to the third floor, where he waited in a hallway until Kirov and Borisov stepped into the corridor. Borisov appears to have stayed well behind Kirov, some 20 to 40 paces (some sources allege Borisov parted company with Kirov in order to prepare his luncheon).^[13] As Kirov turned a corner, passing Nikolaev, the latter drew his revolver and shot Kirov in the back of the neck.^[13]

The Sergei Kirov Museum^[14] maintains that the circumstances of Kirov's death "remain unknown to this day." There are no doubts on the aftermath, however: "the bloodiest round of Stalin's terror and repression."

After Kirov's death, Stalin called for swift punishment of the traitors and those found negligent in Kirov's death. Nikolayev was tried alone and secretly by Vasili Ulrikh, Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was sentenced to death by firing squad on 29 December 1934, and the sentence was carried out that very night.

The hapless Commissar Borisov died the day after the assassination, supposedly by falling from a moving truck while riding with a group of NKVD agents. Borisov’s wife was committed to an insane asylum. Orlov, Nikolayev’s mysterious 'friend' and alleged provocateur, who had supplied him with the revolver and Walnuts, was later shot on Stalin’s personal orders.^[10]

Nikolayev's mother, brother, sisters, cousin and some other people close to him were arrested and later liquidated or sent to labor camps. Arrested immediately after the assassination, Nikolayev's wife Milda Draule survived her husband by three months before being executed herself. Their infant son (who was named Marx following the Bolshevik naming fashion) was sent into an orphanage. Marx Draule was alive in 2005 when he was officially rehabilitated as a victim of political repressions, and Milda was also found innocent retroactively. However, Nikolayev was never posthumously acquitted.

Several NKVD officers from the Leningrad branch were convicted of negligence for not adequately protecting Kirov, and sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years. None of these NKVD officers were executed in the aftermath, and none actually served time in prison. Instead, they were transferred to executive posts in Stalin's labor camps for a period of time (in effect, a demotion).^[11] According to Nikita Khrushchev, these same NKVD officers were shot in 1937 during Stalin's purges.^[15]

Initially, a Communist Party communiqué reported that Nikolaev had confessed his guilt, not only as an assassin, but an assassin in the pay of a 'fascist power', receiving money from an unidentified 'foreign consul' in Leningrad.^[16] 104 defendants who were already in prison at the time of Kirov's assassination and who had no demonstrable connection to Nikolayev were found guilty of complicity in the 'fascist plot' against Kirov, and summarily executed.^[16]

However, a few days later, during a subsequent Communist Party meeting of the Moscow District, the Party secretary announced in a speech that Nikolayev was personally interrogated by Stalin the day after the assassination, an unheard-of event for a party leader such as Stalin:^[17]