Thousands in Leningrad and Moscow would be implicated in the "conspiracy. Knight went on to explain that the murder, although it occurred over sixty-five years ago, continues to be a subject of controversy and debate by historians. Some historians have put forth the theory that Stalin himself was involved in the assassination by ordering the NKVD chief to arrange for the murder.
Knight explained that the suspicions arose from the unusual circumstances of the crime: the floor on which he was killed had restricted access; Kirov's bodyguard was too far behind him to be of assistance, and was killed the next day in a mysterious truck accident; and the shooter had been caught by the NKVD at least once prior to the assassination in possession of a handgun and released.
The theory posits that Stalin's motive was to do away with a "moderate" politician and possible rival there are rumors that Kirov received more support than Stalin at the 17th Party Congress.
According to Knight, Stalin's complicity has been rejected by revisionist historians who concentrated on societal themes and the deeds of the ordinary citizen rather than elite politics. It has also been rejected by Soviet and some Russian historians. In order to determine the validity of the allegations, Knight's research focused on the circumstances surrounding the murder and the relationship between Stalin and Kirov.
Knight offered several examples of inconsistencies surrounding the murder. Although it was commonly assumed that Kirov had arrived unexpectedly at the Smolny Institute, in fact one of his bodyguards had called at least one-half hour before his arrival, leaving limited time for the plan to be set in motion. Strangely, the assassin was found unconscious at the scene. Witnesses in the hallway provided conflicting stories that were never investigated by the NKVD; moreover, the police did not close off the building immediately after the murder.
Archival evidence also lends credence to Stalin's motive. There were hints of Kirov's scepticism about Stalin's cult: on 15 July , Kirov wrote formally to "Comrade Stalin" not the usual Koba that portraits of Stalin's photograph had been printed in Leningrad on rather "thin paper".
Unfortunately they could not do any better. One can imagine Kirov and Sergo mocking Stalin's vanity. In private, Kirov imitated Stalin's accent to his Leningraders. When Kirov visited Stalin in Moscow, they were boon companions but Artyom remembers a competitive edge to their jokes. Once at a family dinner, they made mock toasts:. I'm a busy man but I've probably forgotten some of the other great things you've done too! Kirov could speak to Stalin in a way unthinkable to Beria or Khrushchev.
Even the tipsy banter between Stalin and Kirov was pregnant with ill-concealed anger and resentment, yet no one in the family circle noticed that they were anything but the most loving of friends. That's a deed of some skill! Stalin decided to arrange for the assassination of Kirov and to lay the crime at the door of the former leaders of the opposition and thus with one blow do away with Lenin's former comrades. Stalin came to the conclusion that, if he could prove that Zinoviev and Kamenev and other leaders of the opposition had shed the blood of Kirov, "the beloved son of the party", a member of the Politburo, he then would be justified in demanding blood for blood.
The details of Kirov's assassination at first pointed to a personal motive, which may indeed have existed, but investigation showed that, as commonly happens in such cases, the assassin Nikolaiev had been made the instrument of forces whose aims were treasonable and political.
In other words, the whole set of trials and investigations from that of Kirov's assassin and his accomplices up to that of the generals in June , have not been separate incidents but part of a continuous process which has revealed step by step the development of a conspiracy in which Trotsky and the foreign enemies of Russia had not only the strongest of incentives but ample opportunity to co-operate with the conspirators. If one accepts these premises, it is obvious that both Trotsky and the foreign enemies would use every means in their power to deny and discredit the evidence produced at the trials.
In this they have been aided by Western unfamiliarity with Soviet mentality and methods, and to no small degree, by Soviet unfamiliarity with Western mentality and methods.
Thus, at the very outset, the Western world was shocked by the harshness of the reprisals which followed Kirov's murder, and already the cry was raised abroad that this wave of killings and arrests was a sign of panic on the part of the Kremlin or that Stalin and his associates were taking advantage of an "accident" to rid themselves of political opponents.
The later "treason trials" of the Kamenev-Zinoviev and Piatakov-Radek groups were used by Stalin's enemies to confirm these two assertions and to deepen the scepticism with which the extraordinary to Western minds nature of the confessions had been received abroad.
In the fog of denials and declarations that the confessions were elicited by drugs, torture, pressure upon relatives, hypnotism or other nefarious devices of the G. The second trial established the fact of personal contact between several of the accused and foreign - i.
This in itself meant little because Piatakov received dozens of foreigners every week in his official position, the accused railway managers of the Far Eastern lines had similar official contact with Japanese consuls and business men, and Radek was a familiar figure at most of the diplomatic receptions in Moscow. Nevertheless the element of opportunity was thus introduced to buttress the prosecution's charge of treasonable and hostile motives that led to collusion.
Up to last Sunday persons had been executed in Soviet Russia as the direct result of the Kirov assassination. To what extent are Zinoviev and Kamenev implicated in the plot. The hysteria of Karl Radek's and Nikolai Bukharin's charges against them in Pravda and Izvestia fails to carry conviction. Russia's right to crush Nazi-White Guard conspiracies or other plots of murder and arson no one questions; few have anything but approval for it.
What is in question is the guilt of particular persons who have not been tried in an open court of law. Further investigations brought to light definite counter-revolutionary activities of the Rights Bucharin-Rykov organisations and their joint working with the Trotskyists.
The group of fourteen constituting the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre were brought to trial in Moscow in August , found guilty, and executed. In Siberia a trial, held in November, revealed that the Kemerovo mine had been deliberately wrecked and a number of miners killed by a subordinate group of wreckers and terrorists. A second Moscow trial, held in January , revealed the wider ramifications of the conspiracy. The volume of evidence brought forward at this trial was sufficient to convince the most sceptical that these men, in conjunction with Trotsky and with the Fascist Powers, had carried through a series of abominable crimes involving loss of life and wreckage on a very considerable scale.
With the exceptions of Radek, Sokolnikov, and two others, to whom lighter sentences were given, these spies and traitors suffered the death penalty. The same fate was meted out to Tukhachevsky, and seven other general officers who were tried in June on a charge of treason. In the case of Trotsky the trials showed that opposition to the line of Lenin for fifteen years outside the Bolshevik Party, plus opposition to the line of Lenin inside the Bolshevik Party for ten years, had in the last decade reached its finality in the camp of counter-revolution, as ally and tool of Fascism.
Hundreds of suspects in Leningrad were rounded up and shot summarily, without trial. Almost hourly the circle of those supposedly implicated, directly or "morally", was widened until it embraced anyone and everyone who had ever raised a doubt about any Stalinist policy.
Poskrebyshev answered Stalin's telephone in his office. Kirov's deputy, Chudov, broke the terrible news from Leningrad. Poskrebyshev tried Stalin's phone line but he could not get an answer, sending a secretary to find him. The hozhd, according to his journal, was meeting with Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Zhdanov, but hurriedly called Leningrad, insisting on interrogating the Georgian doctor in his native language.
Then he rang back to ask what the assassin was wearing. A cap? Were there foreign items on him? Yagoda, who had already called to demand whether any foreign objects had been found on the assassin, arrived at Stalin's office at 5. Mikoyan, Sergo and Bukharin arrived quickly. Mikoyan specifically remembered that 'Stalin announced that Kirov had been assassinated and on the spot, without any investigation, he said the supporters of Zinoviev the former leader of Leningrad and the Left opposition to Stalin had started a terror against the Party.
Sergo and Mikoyan, who were so close to Kirov, were particularly appalled since Sergo had missed seeing his friend for the last time. Kaganovich noticed that Stalin 'was shocked at first'. Stalin, now showing no emotion, ordered Yenukidze as Secretary of the Central Executive Committee to sign an emergency law that decreed the trial of accused terrorists within ten days and immediate execution without appeal after judgement.
Stalin must have drafted it himself. This 1st December Law - or rather the two directives of that night - was the equivalent of Hitler's Enabling Act because it laid the foundation for a random terror without even the pretence of a rule of law.
Within three years, two million people had been sentenced to death or labour camps in its name. Civil Rights Movement. US Government. Great Britain. Art, Literature, and Film History. Cold War. Sign Up. Civil War. However, the link between it and what is known as the Great Terror seems more circumstantial than direct. As analyzed by historians who recently gained access to them, they indicate that many people attributed the act to dark forces in some versions, the Jews , looked forward to Stalin sharing the same fate, and were more concerned about the return of food shortages than the political fallout.
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