Home » History » Stalin » The Kirov Murder: Part I

The Kirov Murder: Part I

© Nick Bendel

"On 1 December, at 16:30," Pravda wrote on December 2, 1934, "in the city of Leningrad in the building of the Leningrad Soviet (former Smolny), at the hands of a murderer, a concealed enemy of the working class, died Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Committees of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) and member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, Comrade Sergei Mironovich Kirov. The gunman has been arrested. His identity is being established."

Kirov arrived at the Smolny on December 1, at about 4:30pm- when it was already dark- to confer with some colleagues. Kirov climbed to the third floor where the assassin, Nikolayev, was waiting. Nikolayev had earlier worked in the Smolny, so he knew the complex well. He apparently hid in the toilet from where he could see the arrival of Kirov's car. As Kirov walked along the corridor to his office, the assassin emerged from behind and shot him in the back of the neck.

From this brief description, some obvious questions emerge. Firstly, how was an armed stranger allowed to penetrate the security so easily? The answer was that there had been a Stalin-ordered conspiracy to murder Kirov. Why, then, did Stalin take the highly risky step of murdering a senior and popular figure in the Soviet government? And what compelled Nikolayev to such a drastic action?

The answer to that final question can be found in Nikolayev's personality. In writings he deliberately left to be discovered by the police, Nikolayev revealed his work to be, "a personal act of desperation and dissatisfaction arising out of his straitened material circumstances and as a protest against the unjust attitude of certain members of the government towards a live person." One of his chief interrogators found that, "Nikolayev lacked balance, he had many problems. In short, he was dissatisfied with life. He was convinced that he was capable of any work. He also felt he was hard to understand. He was always discontented, and did not get on with people easily...All his efforts led to his losing his official positions. This attitude on the part of society drove him to the belief that the problem was not in his personal faults, but in the institutions. This discontent in turn drove him into his scheme to assassinate some important figure in the Party. Through this act he wished to protest against the bureaucratism and heartlessness of the Party organs."