chief lieutenants. As party boss of Leningrad, Kirov assured Stalin’s
control of the country’s second city by purging the party of Trot-
skyitesand other dissidents. At the 17th party congress, Kirov
emerged as the favorite of the party, garnering more votes in a secret
ballot for Central Committee membership than even Stalin. Kirov,
however, made no effort to lead a revolt against Stalin, who some be-
lieved had lost control of the country and was responsible for the
famine of 1932–1933, which claimed 5–7 million lives.
Stalin, who had previously been close to Kirov, apparently decided
to remove him from his power base in Leningrad. He offered Kirov
a position in the Central Committee Secretariat in Moscow. More
ominously, at Stalin’s command major changes were made in the
NKVDin Leningrad and in Kirov’s security detail. On 1 December
1934, Leonid Nikolaev, a minor party official, shot Kirov to death in
the Leningrad headquarters of the party.
Stalin left Moscow for Leningrad with an entourage of security
personnel almost immediately on hearing of Kirov’s death. He per-
sonally interrogated Nikolaev and upbraided Fillip Medved, chief
of the Leningrad NKVD, who was subsequently sentenced to three
years in a labor camp. More importantly, he issued a new coun-
terterrorismdecree allowing the NKVD to try and execute ene-
mies of the peoplewithout defense counsel or appeal for mercy. In
Leningrad, this led to the executionof 6,501 people in December
1934 alone. This also led to plans for show trialsof Old Bolshe-
viks, colleagues of Lenin, who were accused of complicity in
Kirov’s murder. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens perished
in 1934–1938 as a result of 1 December 1934 and the events that
followed.
In his Secret Speechin February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev
hinted that Stalin was responsible for Kirov’s death. Modern scholars
remain divided as to how much—if any—responsibility Stalin bears
for the killing. No memos in the files show Stalin’s guilt. Historians
point out that Stalin was jealous of Kirov’s authority within the party
and apparently wanted him out of Leningrad. Moreover, he benefited
from the killing, using it to institutionalize the tactics of terror and en-
hance his own political power. Others believe that Stalin would never
have used anyone as unstable as Nikolaev, and that Kirov’s death was
simply a killing Stalin took advantage of to purge the Soviet Union.KIROV, SERGEI MIRONOVICH (1880–1934)• 13306-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 133