Subject: Re: ASSASSINATON OF KIROV
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 19:31:07 -0400
From: martin Ryle 
Reply-To: H-Net Russian History list 
To: H-RUSSIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU

Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 12:06:11 -0700
From: Arch Getty 

-- Walt McIntosh wrote:

* Mr. Kreisel is correct when he points out that
* Nikolaiev was not acting directly under Stalin's
* orders, however Stalin did arrange for this man, who
* nursed a deep grievance for being kicked out of the
* party, to be systematically incited to the murder as a
* protest against bureaucratic injustice. Stalin did
* replace the head of Leningrad Security from a Kirov
* loyalist to one loyal to Stalin, Stalin did arrange for
* Nikolayev's pistol to be returned to him after it was
* confiscated in a routine security check. Orlov's
* account of Stalin's role in this murder is convincing.

This thread has drifted a bit, but under the original rubric of "western
knowledge of purges" broadly defined, we might include our knowledge today.
Along these lines, I join others who want to set historical records
straight.

Neither Rogovin nor Orlov are anything like reliable sources on these
matters.  Rogovin (and Kreisel) take Trotsky's wild and unsuported
speculations as historical fact, and we now know that Orlov was wrong on
almost every relevant detail.  To wit, with apologies for a longish post:

On Kirov, and in no particular order:

1.  Over the years, there were three, and perhaps four, "blue ribbon"
investigations of the Kirov killing.  Each was commissioned by the
Politburo's General Secretary and each, in true Soviet fashion, started with
a desired conclusion in advance.  Stalin wanted to pin it on Zinoviev and
Trotsky; Khrushchev and Gorbachev wanted to pin it on Stalin and all of them
handpicked their investigators accordingly.  Having been able to acquaint
myself with archival materials from these efforts, it is clear that none of
the three investigations produced the desired conclusions.  In particular,
the Khrushchev and Gorbachev-era efforts involved massive combing of
archives and interviews and failed to conclude that Stalin was behind the
killing.  Stalin's effort, of course, concluded that the opposition did it
and was the basis for the Moscow trials.  But aside from the incredible
confessions of the accused, there was no evidence to support this a priori
conclusion either.

2.  NKVD chief Yagoda was never Stalin's puppet.  Stalin never liked or
trusted him, and it was necessary to replace him with Yezhov in 1936 to
secure Stalin's control over the police.  In 1934, following the Kirov
killing, Yagoda was immediately removed from the investigation, which was
carried out by two people who were critical and jealous of Yagoda: Iakov
Agranov and Nikolai Yezhov.  Later events would show that they were in fact
eager to smear or even implicate Yagoda: there is good evidence that both in
fact wanted his job.  Archival documents now show that they conducted a
wide-ranging investigation, including interrogations of scores of Leningrad
NKVD men about any connections they may have had with assassin Nikolaev.
Eventually, Yezhov transferred, demoted, or otherwise censured more than 200
Leningrad NKVD officers for incompetence.  If some among them "knew too much
about Stalin's involvement" they would have been silenced permanently and,
more importantly, immediately.  Instead, they were left free for more than
two years to tell the tale, whatever it was.  None ever did, because there
was no tale to tell.

For the scenario that Stalin procured the killing through a trusted
co-conspirator Yagoda to make sense, it would have been better to leave
Yagoda in charge of the post-killing "spin".   Instead, his rivals had a
free hand.  And, would Stalin have launched such a delicate and potentially
disastrous operation through someone he didn't trust?

3.  Nikolaev was indeed detained by the Leningrad NKVD before he killed
Kirov.  But it was a routine street stopping of a suspicious loiterer and a
quite common practice for NKVD bodyguards.  Nikolaev was never searched; no
gun was found or confiscated.  Nikolaev had  owned the gun he used to kill
Kirov legally since 1930.  It was never "provided" to him by anyone.

4.  During Nikolaev's interogation, Agranov, Liushkov, Yezhov and others
tried to squeeze out the names of any Leningrad NKVD men Nikolaev knew.
They pushed hard, because they (and Stalin) suspected NKVD involvement in
the killing because of the ease with which Nikolaev pulled it off.  Nikolaev
gave two names of chekists he knew only through family connections.  The two
were hauled in and grilled, but the lead went nowhere.  Lots of "outside"
(non-Leningrad) NKVD men were involved in these interrogations and
investigations; this would have been far too risky if Stalin or Yezhov had
anything to hide.  The investigation documents indicate that they were
probing hard, rather than trying to cover something up.

5.  Nikolaev was not stalking Kirov.  On the day of the killing, he was in
party headquarters trying (unsuccessfully) to get a pass to the regional
party conference.  Kirov was not expected in the office that day, neither by
the party staff or the NKVD, and when he appeared unexpectedly, Nikolaev
acted on impulse.

6.  A new NKVD staff was indeed appointed to Leningrad before the killing.
But this was routine, and anyone familiar with police personnel policies
knows that such rotations were routine.  Provincial party secretaries
frequently protested the out-transfer of NKVD officers they liked or could
dominate; Kirov was no different.  But this transfer was one among dozens
and carries no significance.  The NKVD officer, Zaporozhets, that many
believe cultivated the assassin Nikolaev, had not even arrived in Leningrad
yet and in the months before the shooting was not in the city at all.

7.  Nikolaev did not die in a "suspicious traffic accident."  (He was tried
in secret and shot in December 1934).   Kirov's bodyguard did, but for what
it's worth the investigation of the accident and the autopsy of the
bodyguard in the archives suggest no foul play.  And at the time, Agranov
and Yezhov were looking for NKVD foul play.

In sum, the assassin was an unbalanced and frustrated nobody: a
"disappointed office-seeker", as they say.  He was a paranoid who carried a
gun and went from office to office looking for work, but the word was out on
him and he never got a good job.  He was mad at the world.  At his trial, he
was clearly disoriented and babbled a variety of stories about his wife's
family, secret chests of conspiratorial documents buried in the woods, his
friends among the opposition and his own sad past.  He was allowed to ramble
on from topic to topic, and if he had been aimed at Kirov by someone, this
could/would have come out in his ravings.  If there were such a terrible
secret, he would have not been allowed to prattle on.

On the other hand, Nikolaev had friends among former Leningrad
oppositionists (who admitted knowing him and vice-versa).  Some of the
Leningrad oppositionists admitted that Nikolaev had long wanted to kill
somebody in authority: anybody.  Nikolaev also had suspicious foreign
connections: he was able to pick the Latvian consul out of a spread of
photographs at his interrogation.  This made him an ideal tool for Stalin
who, surprised at the assassination, quickly found a way to turn it to his
political advantage against his political enemies.  Even so, Nikolaev failed
to fulfill this program: he didn't directly incriminate Zinoviev, Kamenev,
or Trotsky.  If this had been Stalin's plan from the beginning (i.e., before
the killing), he would have found a better tool or would have faked or
forged Nikolaev's testimony.  He didn't.

Admittedly, much of this evidence is ambiguous and can be read in different
ways.  But the stories adduced by Trotsky, Rogovin, and Orlov are among the
least probable, in terms of the facts we have, and require the greatest
leaps in logic.  Sometimes the simplest and most obvious explanations are
the best.

Arch Getty
getty@ucla.edu

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