The Murder of Sergei Kirov and The Ryutin affair

The Ryutin affair

In 1932, Martemyan Ryutin published two documents of around 200 pages each denouncing Stalin and the affect his policies were having on the peasantry. He outlined the insane pace and lack of planning around collectivisation as the biggest issues. He was arrested in 1932, but only sentenced to 10 years hard labour after appeals from the politburo most notably from Kirov not to execute him. Knowledge of the document’s content was considered a criminal offence. In 1937 he was recalled to Moscow, retried and executed, for being a saboteur as part of the Great terror.

Sergei Kirov’s opposition to Stalin

Kirov had stood up to Stalin on the issue of the Ryutin affair and prevented him from executing Ryutin. BY 1934 he also argued for a slowed pace of industrialisation, and reconciliation with the peasantry which would have included downgrading the powers of the NKVD. Stalin and Kirov had completely fallen out by summer 1934.

The Congress of Victors 1934 (17th party congress)

The aim of this congress was to celebrate the success of the first five year plan. Instead Kirov presented criticisms about the five year plans and was urged by delegates to replace Stalin as general secretary and the vote that day was massively in Kirov’s favour, but he declined to accept. This is also known as the ‘Congress of the Condemned’ as 1,108/1,996 delegates were arrested and 2/3 were executed in three years.

Suspicious activity before the murder

The head of the Leningrad NKVD was Medved; his deputy was Zaporozhets. Z brought in personnel from Moscow which he refused to remove even after being told to by Medved and Kirov. Kirov asked Stalin to remove them, but he refused. Z had previously worked with Yagoda. Nikolayev was arrested with a gun and a ma of the route most taken by Kirov in the institute, but was released under instruction from Yagoda who was likely under instruction from Stalin and Zaporozhets was told not to put any obstacles in the way of a terrorist attack against Kirov.

The murder

At just past 4pm on 2nd of December 1934 Kirov entered the Smolny institute - Leningrad headquarters - leaving mis bodyguard downstairs. He did not notice the normal guards weren’t present. Leonid Nikolayev then emerged from the toilet and shot Kirov in the back of the head and fainted next to him. Kirov soon died and Nikolayev was arrested.

The assasin

Leonid Nikolayev, a man of ill health and a nervous disposition, had joined the party at 16 in 1920 and was suspended in march 1934 for disciplinary issues but was later reinstated. He developed a hatred for party bureaucracy and his wife, Milde Draule, was a secretary at Smolny and may have been having an affair with Kirov. A detailed plan and short manifesto were found in the briefcase he was carrying at the time of the murder.

Sergei Kirov

Born in 1886 to a lower middle class family, he lost his parents at a young age. He went to a vocational school where he met radicals and moved to Tomsk to join the Socialist Democratic party. He was instrumental in the October revolution and the consolidation of Bolshevik rule in the Caucuses. He was elected to the central committee in 1923 and became Leningrad secretary after the ousting of Zinoviev. He was popular in the party making him a threat to Stalin.

After the murder

Stalin came to Leningrad to question Nikolayev. When asked for his motive he pointed to the NKVD men and said ask them. Borisov the bodyguard was to be interrogated as well, but was killed in an ‘accident’ on the road to the station. All the NKVD men involved were sentenced to short labour terms with amazing conditions and the title of ‘assistant’ giving them power over other prisoners, but they were all shot in the late 1930's. Not one person there that day wasn’t purged.