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Stalin and the Kirov Murder

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Stalin hatched a devious plot to assassinate his comrade in arms Sergei Kirov. The " Congress of Victors" , that is the Congress of the Communist Party which celebrated the fulfillment of the First 5-year Plan, convened and secretly voted to have Stalin replaced. This was a secret protest vote against the brutality used enforcing Stalin's 5-year plan, which involved the starvation of 7 million in the Ukraine, millions more sent to the gulag to perish in slave labor, as well as millions of deportations of peoples to remote resettlement areas. All the while the Soviet regime was exporting grain in exchange for Western industrial expertise and machinery in order to comply with Stalin's massive heavy industrial buildup. It is for these reasons that the Congress secretly voted for Sergei Kirov to replace Stalin as the leader of the Bolshevik regime. Stalin's leadership was considered disastrous. Kirov was one of the most popular Bolshevik leaders, and therefore wa! ! s the choice of the Congress. Stalin had the vote falsified, and after the Congress adjourned, plotted to avenge himself against the 1000 members of the Congress and against Kirov personally. He plotted with his secret police, and then carried out an incredibly bold assassination of Kirov. He then launched one phony investigation after another in which he blamed the act of terror on different groups. He created an hysterical witchhunt atmosphere, which he used as the basis for his purges and show-trials of the thirties. All in all, there were four different phony explanations that were carefully laid out one after the other over time to explain Kirov's assassination. But the real criminal was none other than Stalin himself. During the purges of the thirties, almost every member of the "Congress of Victors" was murdered, thus earning them the title "Congress of Victims". This book puts the issue of Stalin's guilt, long suspected, beyond doubt, and is also ! ! a fascinating crime story. Robert Conquest is one of the to! p scholars of the Stalinist tyranny. Since the book was written before the fall of communism, the newly opened secret Russian archives will supply fascinating confirmation of this book.

As a brutal manipulator of people, there are few historical figures that can match Joseph Stalin. However, there was a time when he was not absolute ruler of Russia. There was a key point in the early thirties when the block of remaining old Bolsheviks seemed to be coming together with some of the newer figures to mount attacks on Stalin to reduce his power or even have him removed as leader. This opposition was jelling around Sergei Kirov, the leader of the Leningrad party and a member of the ruling Politburo. In 1934, Kirov was assassinated by a dissident party member, thereby removing the focus of the anti Stalin opposition.
In this book, the author describes the events of the crime in great detail, including how, in a very short time, the witnesses also began dying, as well as those who witnessed their dying. After describing the events, Conquest goes to great lengths to present an even-handed reconstruction and finally conclude that the murder and subsequent deaths of all others involved were at the orders of Stalin himself. While you cannot help but admire his principles in avoiding any leap to the result, there is no question Stalin was the force behind the events and that conclusion can be reached well before the author does.
In criminal trials, circumstantial evidence can be very convincing and in this case it is overwhelmingly so. The pattern of deaths and forced confessions of high ranking officials is clearly one that could not have been managed by anyone not possessing power on the order of Stalin. Having Kirov murdered was the first step in his final movement to absolute power and he of course succeeded, with consequences that destroyed many people.
Stalin was responsible for the death of millions of Soviet citizens at the hands of their fellow citizens, all directly traceable to his policies. However, there is one death that stands out and made more difference than all the others. This is an account of how that death took place, and is an example of how power can be executed by a policy of execution. It is an excellent example of how the Soviet Union was governed under one of the most brutal men the human race has produced.

In 1934 Sergei Kirov, friend and colleague of Stalin, member of the Moscow Politburo and Secretary of the Leningrad Party Organization was shot down and killed by a gunman. Stalin, terribly upset by the death of his comrade, organized all the power of the state and Party to hunt down the killers.

Of course, as always with Stalin, there was a subplot. Bolshevist leaders from all over the Soviet Empire had voted to replace the frightening Stalin with the supposedly more moderate Kirov. Anyway, Kirov was dead and the raging Stalin set about systematically and cynically to ferret out the antirevolutionary killers. It was much like throwing a stone into the water. There's the initial splash and then rings of wavelets spread out from the center. There are the initial arrests with torture, confessions and executions. The next tier of suspects are arrested with torture, confessions and executions. Then the third tier ad infinitum. Before it is over, more than one million Communist Party members die and the Soviet officer corps--with the death of 50% of the officer class--are dead, lubricating the way for the Nazi invasion.

How could it happen? It happened with the death of Kirov. Conquest offers fascinating evidence that Kirov's murder--and the murder of hundreds of thousands--was Stalin's doing.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels, "Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God", on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

Mr. Conquest develops a well-reasoned theory on how the Kirov murder was planned and executed and how it was later used by Stalin to get himself rid of the opposition or anyone believed to belong to it. The book is well structured and easy to read, the logic is sound. Unfortunately (and may be inevitably), Mr. Conquest bases his analysis and conclusions on unsatisfactory evidence (probably all that was available at the time the book was published): defectors depositions, exiles' versions, indirect accounts, etc, as well as in official data. Though the conclusions are convincing, I miss some more real "hard" facts in their support and a few less deductions, however logical...

Summarising, if you are looking for a brief overview of what the Kirov muder MIGHT have been as deduced by the available evidence in the late 1980's, read this book. If you are looking for a solidly documented analysis of the murder and its use by Stalin and his supporters, try looking for a book written after the Soviet archives were open in the late 80's and early 90's.

Robert Conquest did a credible job of examination re the Kirov Murder which took place on December 1, 1934. This book, which Robert Conquest readily admitted, is based on incomplete but compelling sources and deserves to be read and carefully studied. Events leading to W.W. I released demons upon Europe, and the Kirov Murder helped unleash unspeakable horror and tragedy in the U.S.S.R.

Conquest began this book with a brief summary of Kirov's murder. Conquest also raises troubling questions re this murder such as why Kirov's NKVD body guards were mysteriously absent during the assassination. Conquest asked the same question when he wrote, "Or, to put it another way, who gave him (the assassin) his chance, and why?"

Conquest gave a brief pricise of Kirov, the popular Soviet leader in Leningrad. According to Conquest and then contemporary Soviet officials there was a fierce political brawl brewing between older Bolsheviks and Stalin for power. According to Conquest dissention arose over the mass famine deaths in the Ukraine between 1928-1934 and failed Five Year Plans especially The Baltic/White Sea Canal project which achieved little at the expense of thousands of lives. In other words, there were good political reasons for Stalin wanting to get rid of Kirov and the Old Bolsheviks. Readers can glean from this book that Stalin's enemies vastly underestimated Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness. As an aside, Stalin's enemies should have been more alert as they were all partners in crime.

Conquest then dealt with the trial of Nicolayev who assassinated Kirov. When Nicolayev was asked why he committed the murder, he is supposed to have answered, "Ask them," meaning members of the Leningrad NKVD (the Soviet Secret Police). According to the record, Nicolayev was silenced. Other witnesses who may have presented embarrassing evidence died in mysterious auto accidents which NKVD men later admitted over twenty years later were staged murders. An interesting side bar that Conquest made is that Nicolayev was twice arrested for carrying a hand gun only to be released without formal charges. A good question is why, prior to murdeing Kirov, was Nicolayev not prosecuted for these law violations.

Immediately after Kirov's "trial" Soviet state police investigations expanded which resulted in over 1600 of Lenin's followers facing staged trials and excutions. Some of those accused were charged with being White Guards (supporters of the Czar), Trotsky's supporters, etc. Many of these "trials" were held In Camera or in secret because of fears that public trials would be too embarrassing at the time (1935). As Conquest noted, the trials got little attention from the Soviet Press (Pravda). Yet the number of arrests grew to over a hundred thousand which was mild compared to what was to come.

While some of those arrested were tortured and shot or sent to what are known as the Gulag Archepelago (the Siberian concentrqtion camps), a few important defendants were treated very well even though they lived in the Kolyma Camp in far Eastern Siberian. These few "convicts" lived well and were treated almost as honored guests. Their sentence to Kolyma was political because of little chance of contact with the "outside" world. Yet, when the Soviet purges gained full strenght in 1937, these prisoners were shot.

As Conquest made clear, the trials and purges from 1937-1953 were more carefully planned. Up to 1935, there were embarrassing contradictions whereby defendants were plotting at two different places at the ssme time. Conquest wrote that one allgeged plot was started in a Copenhagan, Denmark hotel which was actually demolished in 1917 long before the alleged plot was hatched. Defendants were often promised that if they lied and perjured themselves, their lives would be spared. Yet, they were shot. The situation was so dangerous that a 1935 law held family members guilty for what relatives did even if the family members were ignorant of any "crimes." As one Soviet citizen noted, peoples' lips were frozen for fear of false reports to the secret police. One poor soul was arrested when he finally heard that Kirov was killed a few years earlier. This unforunate fellow responded that someone died every day. He was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in a concentration camp because this innocent statement was construed as a threat to Stalin's life.

With the expansion of the purge trials and concentration camp brutality, there were few public trials. Most of those arrested were secretly arrested and shot. Or they were tortured to death. One noted Old Bolshevik who was publicly tried and shot was Bukharin. When Stalin was once asked about the contradictions and obvious perjury being reported in the Western Press, Stalin's response was, "They'll swallow it." Unfortunately Stalin was right.

The late sections of the book treated the actual events re Kirov's murder and subsequent events. Khrushchev revealed some of the truth in his fameous 1956 Secret Speech and in a more public presentation in 1961. Samizdat presses in the Soviet Union and Easter Europe plus Medevev's book LET HISTORY JUDGE further implicated Stalin in Kirov's murder. Conquest was clear that the Cui Bono (Who Benefits) theory alone did not implicate Stalin. However, other events and the logic of events that followed clearly implicated Stalin in Kirov's Murder. Some have questioned Stalin's guilt re the Kirov Murder because those accused later were going to shot regardless of their testimony. However, as Conquest wryly noted, they knew that being shot was much more preferable to being tortured to death.

Robert Conquests' book STALIN AND THE KIROV MURDER is a good case study that those in political power will resort to anything to enhance political power. This was not new in Russian History. To get some understnading of Stalin, the Kirov Murder, mass terror, etc. one should read Thucydides' (c. 460 BC-c. 400 BC) to understand how desire for political power will override family relations and destroy civilized behavior. This book was published in the 1980s, and the fall of Big Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe may produce sources and documents that will confirm Robert Conquest's book titled STALIN AND THE KIROV MURDER.