Who Killed Kirov?: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery [Hardcover]

Amy Knight (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

An exciting new analysis of the crime of the century, the assassination of Stalin's greatest rival.

On December 4, 1934, the Red Arrow chugged from Leningrad through the freezing dawn to Moscow's October Railway Station. Inside was a coffin containing the bullet-scarred body of Sergei Kirov, former Leningrad Party Chief, Politburo member, and prize orator of the Stalin regime. Kirov's murder, allegedly by a lone gunman, sparked the brutal purges that characterized the Stalin regime, and speculation about it still fascinates the Russians, much as the Kennedy assassination fascinates Americans.

Kirov was charismatic and approachable, so popular that many Russians believed he was the only real threat to Stalin's power. Who murdered him, and why? Stalin, disaffected political opponents, a jealous husband? And if Kirov had lived, would the Soviet Union have become a totalitarian police state or something quite different indeed? Scholars throughout the world see Kirov as the key to understanding Stalin, and for years have argued about various pieces of the story-but definitive evidence has eluded them. Now Amy Knight has combed the recently opened Russian archives to reconstruct this haunting crime and analyze its impact on the Russian people. The result is at once a breathtaking murder mystery and a definitive piece of scholarship that sheds new light on Stalin's politics.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In contrast to the brusque, standoffish Stalin, Leningrad party chief and Politburo member Sergei Kirov was charismatic and approachable--a real muzhnik, or man of the people. His rise through the ranks of the communist party to become the prize orator of Stalin's regime was aided by his popularity and his devotion to the cause. The question of who killed Kirov has perplexed Russian bureaucrats and historians alike since the apparent murder took place in December 1934. Although the Stalin regime immediately accused and brutally killed alleged suspects--and then used the murders as a catalyst for massive purges of its enemies--lack of definitive evidence continues to shroud the case in mystery and keeps it rife with speculation to this day. In Who Killed Kirov? The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery, Amy Knight draws on compelling new evidence and presents the most convincing account to date of the Kirov murder and the momentous events surrounding it.

In order fully to understand the murder, according to Knight, the reader must learn what kind of man Kirov was, how he rose to power within the Soviet political system, and how Stalin came to dominate that system. Consequently, she devotes much of the book to Kirov's personal story, his role in forging the Bolshevik regime, and his relationships with key party leaders. Although Kirov's murder and its tragic aftermath remain the narrative's focal point, Knight successfully broadens her readers' understanding of the entire Stalinist era.

A research associate at George Washington University and author of two additional studies of Russian politics, Knight supplements her 270-page study with maps, illustrations, chronologies, a glossary of names, diagrams of the Soviet political hierarchy, and ample notes. Well researched and thoroughly documented, Who Killed Kirov? remains accessible to the general reader. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

From Publishers Weekly

The 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad Communist Party chief and a rising star in Stalin's inner circle, marked the beginning of one of the darkest periods of Russian historyAStalin's Great Terror, in which millions of Soviet citizens were imprisoned, exiled or killed. While it was initially rumored that Kirov had been killed by a frustrated political rival, many believedAand many still believeAthat Stalin himself orchestrated Kirov's death in order to justify his crackdown. Knight (Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB's Successors and Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant) goes beyond the usual questions about the Kremlin's greatest mystery to take a closer look at the people and events that enabled Stalin to not only authorize the murder of a respected colleague but also to repeat the tactic without any kind of personal repercussion. Knight expertly unravels the layers of the Kirov coverup in which newly empowered party and police officials found themselves compelled to discard fact for fiction in a vain attempt to escape the ubiquitous brand of "traitor" or "collaborator." Even now, 65 years later and after more than a full decade of glasnost, the Kirov affair is still a delicate issue in Russia, where even the loudest decriers of the police state have shied away from a full disclosure of facts. While decades of forced testimonies and altered archival evidence make the truth elusive, Knight notes that people's lingering fears of being found guilty of past crimes remain a strong impediment to discovering the truth. 26 b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 331 pages
• Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub; First Edition edition (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809064049
• ISBN-13: 978-0809064045
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,591,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best for the casual reader, June 14, 2001

By 

jrmspnc (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Killed Kirov?: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery (Hardcover)

It should be clear from the sensational title that Knight's book is aimed at those with but a casual interest in Russian history. A scan of the reviews submitted bears that out; it appears that those with great familiarity with Russian history pan the book, while those with passing knowledge rave about it.

I agree with all those who take exception to the title; this is more a biography of Kirov than it is a "whodunnit?" Knight's treatment of Kirov's life and times is dry at times but adequate. When she turns her attention to the murder itself, the book begins to take hold. Knight lays out a great many facts, and shows what inferences can be drawn from those facts, and yet her leap from those inferences to her conclusion remains unsatisfying. For example, she quotes Trotsky's initial reaction to the murder; Trotsky was of the view that Stalin did not order the killing, but would sure as heck take advantage of it. Knight says Trotsky was wrong, but her arguments as to why are unconvincing.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read, July 16, 2000

By 

Craig McHaffie - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Killed Kirov?: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery (Paperback)

Despite a slow start, and having to get used to the author's somewhat patronizing writing style, I enjoyed the book and found myself thinking about it for days after I finished reading it. I had known that Kirov was something of a maverick in the context of a Soviet leader, however I had no idea he was so outspoken in his speeches, letters, etc. towards Stalin. Granted his hands were by no means clean, however he appears to have had more of a " human face " and connection with the poeple than most of his contemporaries. Asking the question " Who benefited from his Death ? ", there is only one answer: Stalin. Not only was a potential ( and very popular ) opponent eliminated, it also gave Stalin the opporuntity to decimate the Lenningrad party officialdom, and also to do away with Zinoviev, Kamenev et al.

I was surprised Ms Knight made no real reference to the fact that Nikolaev, with neither emotional nor physical training in assasination, was able to not only calmly shoot a man to death accurately, but do it close enough to more than liklely have his brains splattered across his ( Nikolaev's ) face. The manner in which Kirov was murdered, a single bullet in the back of the head / neck is almost exactly the method used by the NKVD during their executions.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A misleading title, January 9, 2000

By 

Antonio Calabria "Cavaglione" (San Antonio, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Killed Kirov?: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery (Hardcover)

If this book carried a proper title, like "A Stalinist Life," or something like that, it would probably be read only by a handful of people. That would be a shame, because the book is valuable as a rich biography of a Stalinist cadre and as a readable and informative entry into a difficult period of modern history. But as a key to the mystery of Kirov's assassination, or even as a contribution to the literature on that murder, the book is a huge disappointment. It does not merit the great trumpeting about that it has received. In the absence of incontrovertible evidence, Knight has to fall back on a "solution" that is actually pretty standard fare: if Stalin did not inspire the murder, he fully took advantage of it. Amen and thank you very much. Even the reconstruction of the murder itself is thin and shoddy, and for that, if perhaps not for the clear political design imputed to Stalin, one still cannot do much better than Conquest's older book on the subject.