Sergey Kirov
Encyclopedia
Sergei Mironovich Kirov born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik
leader in the Soviet Union
. Kirov rose through the Communist Party
ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad
. Kirov was seen as a focal point of opposition to the more extreme policies of Joseph Stalin
, and as a counterbalance to the increasing concentration of power in Stalin's hands.
On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed
by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute. Blame for his assassination has been directly attributed to Stalin and its facilitation by the NKVD
, but hard evidence for this claim remains elusive. Kirov's death served as a pretext for Stalin's escalation of repression
against dissident elements of the Party, culminating in the Great Purge
of the late 1930s in which many of the Old Bolshevik
s were arrested, expelled from the Party, and executed. Complicity in Kirov's assassination was a common charge to which the accused confessed in the show trials of the era
.
The cities of Kirov
, Kirovohrad
, Kirovakan, and Kirovabad
were renamed in Kirov's honor after his assassination. Following the collapse of Soviet Union
Kirovakan and Kirovabad returned to their original names: Vanadzor and Ganja, respectively.
, Russia
, Kirov lost his parents when he was young. His father, Miron Kostrikov, had left him at a tender age; his mother,
Yekaterina Kitun Kostrikova, also died the following year. Sergey was brought up by his grandmother before being sent to an orphanage
at seven years of age. In 1901 a group of wealthy benefactors provided a scholarship for him to attend an industrial school at Kazan
. After gaining his degree in Engineering
he moved to Tomsk
. As Russian society went into crisis, Kirov became a Marxist and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1904.
, and was arrested and later released. He joined with the Bolshevik
s soon after being released from prison. In 1906, Kirov was arrested once again, but this time jailed for over three years, charged with printing illegal literature. Soon after his release, he again took part in revolutionary activity. Once again being arrested for printing illegal literature, after a year of custody, Kostrikov moved to the Caucasus
, where he stayed until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II
.
By this time, Sergei Kostrikov had changed his name to Kirov in order to make his name easier to remember, a practice common among Russian revolutionaries of the time. The name Kir reminded him of the ancient Persian leader Cyrus the Great
. Kirov became commander of the Bolshevik military administration in Astrakhan
. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917
, he fought in the Russian Civil War
until 1920. Simon Sebag Montefiore
writes: "During the Civil War, Kirov was one of the swashbuckling commissars in the North Caucasus beside Sergo
and Mikoyan
. In Astrakhan
he enforced Bolshevik power in March 1919 with liberal blood-letting: over four thousand were killed. When a bourgeois was caught hiding his own furniture, Kirov ordered him shot."
party organization. Kirov supported Joseph Stalin
loyally, and in 1926 he was rewarded with the command of the Leningrad
party. Kirov was widely admired in the Communist party for his efficiency as administrator of the Leningrad District, and his willingness to stand up to Stalin. He was seen as one of the adherents of the Opposition Movement to Stalin, along with Grigory Zinoviev
, Lev Kamenev
, Abram Prigozhin, and others. When the Leningrad branch of the OGPU began to harass Opposition dissidents in Leningrad, Kirov gave orders that they were not to be harassed by the police. In 1933, Kirov successfully opposed Stalin's demand for the imposition of the death penalty against a Party leader, Martemyan Ryutin
(1890–1937, Рютин Мартемьян Никитич), a former supporter of Stalin who had recently circulated in party circles a 200-page anti-Stalin document
demanding the abandonment of forced collectivization, the reduction of investment
in industry, and the removal of Stalin, "the grave digger of the Revolution and of Russia," from his post as head of the Communist Party.
As a result, Kirov drew the unwelcome attention of Stalin, particularly after the 1934 party congress, where delegates voting for new Central Committee membership elected Kirov, who received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 negative votes. Kirov was close friends with Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and together they formed a moderate bloc to oppose Stalin and campaign for a policy of reconciliation
and toleration of dissident voices in the Politburo and in the Party. After the party congress, Stalin asked Kirov to work for him in Moscow
, assisting the Politburo, but then repeatedly postponed Kirov's transfer, stating that Kirov was temporarily required in Leningrad to finish important party business. Kirov was not invited to certain Politburo meetings, and was kept in Leningrad for over nine months. Kirov's influence continued to grow, and at a plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1934 Kirov urged the adoption of further conciliatory measures by the party in favor of party dissidents, which won enthusiastic applause and approval by the delegates.
- headed by Kirov’s close friend, Feodor Medved - looked after Kirov’s security. Stalin reportedly ordered the NKVD Commissar, Genrikh Yagoda
, to replace Medved with Grigory Yeremeyevich Yevdokimov, a close associate of Stalin. However, Kirov intervened and had the order countermanded. According to Alexander Orlov, Stalin then ordered Yagoda to arrange the assassination. Yagoda ordered Medved’s deputy, Vania Zaporozhets, to undertake the job. Zaporozhets returned to Leningrad in search of an assassin; in reviewing the files he found the name of Leonid Nikolaev
.
Leonid Nikolaev was well-known to the NKVD, which had arrested him for various petty offences in recent years. Various accounts of his life agree that he was an expelled Party member and failed junior functionary with a murderous grudge and an indifference towards his own survival. He was unemployed, with a wife and child, and in financial difficulties. According to Orlov, Nikolayev had allegedly expressed to a 'friend' a desire to kill the head of the party control commission that had expelled him. His friend reported this to the NKVD.
Zaporozhets then allegedly enlisted Nikolayev’s 'friend' to contact him, giving him Walnuts and a loaded 7.62 mm Nagant M1895
revolver. However, Nikolaev's first attempt at killing Kirov failed. On 15 October 1934, Nikolaev packed his Nagant revolver in a briefcase and entered the Smolny Institute where Kirov worked. Although he was initially passed by the main security desk at Smolny, he was arrested after an alert guard asked to examine his briefcase, which was found to contain the revolver. A few hours later, Nikolayev’s briefcase and loaded revolver were returned to him, and he was told to leave the building. Though Nikolaev had clearly broken Soviet laws, the security police had inexplicably released him from custody; he was even permitted to retain his loaded pistol.
With Stalin's approval, the NKVD had previously withdrawn all but four police bodyguards assigned to Kirov. These four guards accompanied Kirov each day to his offices at the Smolny Institute, and then left. On 1 December 1934, the usual guard post at the entrance to Kirov's offices was left unmanned, even though the building served as the chief offices of the Leningrad party apparatus and as the seat of the local government. According to some reports, only a single friend and unarmed bodyguard of Kirov's, Commissar Borisov, remained. Other sources state that there may have been as many as nine NKVD guards in the building. Whatever the case, given the circumstances of Kirov's death, as former Soviet official and author Alexander Barmine
noted, "the negligence of the NKVD in protecting such a high party official was without precedent in the Soviet Union."
On the afternoon of 1 December Nikolaev arrived at the Smolny Institute offices. Unopposed, he made his way to the third floor, where he waited in a hallway until Kirov and Borisov stepped into the corridor. Borisov appears to have stayed well behind Kirov, some 20 to 40 paces (some sources allege Borisov parted company with Kirov in order to prepare his luncheon). As Kirov turned a corner, passing Nikolaev, the latter drew his revolver and shot Kirov in the back of the neck.
After Kirov's death, Stalin called for swift punishment of the traitors and those found negligent in Kirov's death. Nikolayev was tried alone and secretly by Vasili Ulrikh
, Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR
. He was sentenced to death by firing squad on 29 December 1934, and the sentence was carried out that very night.
The hapless Commissar Borisov died the day after the assassination, supposedly by falling from a moving truck while riding with a group of NKVD agents. Borisov’s wife was committed to an insane asylum. Orlov, Nikolayev’s mysterious 'friend' and alleged provocateur, who had supplied him with the revolver and Walnuts, was later shot on Stalin’s personal orders.
Nikolayev's mother, brother, sisters, cousin and some other people close to him were arrested and later liquidated or sent to labor camps. Arrested immediately after the assassination, Nikolayev's wife Milda Draule survived her husband by three months before being executed herself. Their infant son (who was named Marx following the Bolshevik naming fashion) was sent into an orphanage. Marx Draule was alive in 2005 when he was officially rehabilitated as a victim of political repressions, and Milda was also found innocent retroactively. However, Nikolayev was never posthumously acquitted.
Several NKVD officers from the Leningrad branch were convicted of negligence for not adequately protecting Kirov, and sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years. None of these NKVD officers were executed in the aftermath, and none actually served time in prison. Instead, they were transferred to executive posts in Stalin's labor camps for a period of time (in effect, a demotion). According to Nikita Khrushchev
, these same NKVD officers were shot in 1937 during Stalin's purges.
Initially, a Communist Party communiqué reported that Nikolaev had confessed his guilt, not only as an assassin, but an assassin in the pay of a 'fascist power', receiving money from an unidentified 'foreign consul' in Leningrad. 104 defendants who were already in prison at the time of Kirov's assassination and who had no demonstrable connection to Nikolayev were found guilty of complicity in the 'fascist plot' against Kirov, and summarily executed.
However, a few days later, during a subsequent Communist Party meeting of the Moscow District, the Party secretary announced in a speech that Nikolayev was personally interrogated by Stalin the day after the assassination, an unheard-of event for a party leader such as Stalin:
Other speakers duly rose to condemn the Opposition: "The Central Committee must be pitiless - the Party must be purged... the record of every member must be scrutinized...." No one at the meeting mentioned the initial theory of fascist agents. Later, Stalin even used the Kirov assassination to eliminate the remainder of the Opposition leadership against him, accusing Grigory Zinoviev
, Lev Kamenev
, Abram Prigozhin, and others who had stood with Kirov in opposing Stalin (or simply failed to acquiesce to Stalin's views), of being 'morally responsible' for Kirov's murder, and as such were guilty of complicity. All were removed from the Party apparatus and given prison sentences. While serving their sentences, the Opposition leaders were charged with new crimes, for which they were sentenced to death and shot.
After Nikolayev's death, there was some speculation that his motivation in killing Kirov may have been more personal. His wife, Milda Draule, worked at the Smolny, and unsubstantiated rumors surfaced that she was having an affair with Kirov. It is unknown whether these had a basis in fact, or were deliberately fostered by the NKVD
. Nikolayev's wife, Milda Draule, was noted for her physical plainness, while Kirov preferred liaisons with ballerinas and other Soviet women of notable beauty and grace. Nikolaev, allegedly a deranged party hack with no connection to the NKVD, in the heat of anger over his wife's affair, carefully shoot her lover in the back of the neck, a target specifically employed by NKVD executioners for its 'quick kill' results. Soviet courts convicted and executed Nikolayev's wife for Kirov's death. This can be explained however in her being a Latvian national and thus used as the key in a fabricated plot between her husband and the Latvian government, Zinovievites within the Leningrad party, and other foreign intelligence services.
assumed control of the Party, the Presidium of the Central Committee (CPSU) entrusted P. N. Pospelov, Secretary of the Central Committee, to form a commission
to investigate the repression of the 1930s (this was the same Pospelov who drafted the famous 'Secret Speech' of Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress). Khrushchev stated:
Pospelov subsequently spoke to Dr. Kirchakov and former nurse Trunina, former members of the party, who had been mentioned in a letter by another member of the commission, (Olga Shatunovskaya
), as having knowledge of the Kirov murder. Dr. Kirchakov confirmed that he did talk to Shatunovskaya and Trunina about some of the unexplained aspects of the Kirov murder case, and agreed to provide the Commission with a written deposition. He stressed that his statement was based on the testimony of one Comrade Olskii, a former NKVD officer who was demoted after Kirov's murder and transferred in 1931 to the People's Supply System.
In his deposition, Dr. Kirchakov wrote that he had discussed the murder of Kirov and the role of Feodor Medved with Olskii. Olskii was of the firm opinion that Medved, Kirov's friend and NKVD security chief of the Leningrad branch, was innocent of the murder. Olskii also told Kirchakov that Medved had been barred from the NKVD Kirov assassination investigation. Instead, the investigation was carried out by a senior NKVD chief, Yakov Agranov
, and later by another NKVD bureau officer, whose name he did not remember. During one of the committee sessions, Olskii related he was present when Stalin asked Leonid Nikolaev why Comrade Kirov had been killed. To this Nikolaev replied that he carried out the instruction of the 'Chekists' [NKVD] and pointed towards the group of 'Chekists' [NKVD officers] standing in the room; Medved was not amongst them.
Khrushchev's Report, On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences was later read at closed-door Party meetings. Afterward, new material was received by the Pospelov committee, including the statement of Kirov's chauffeur, Kuzin, that Commissar Borisov, Kirov's friend and bodyguard, who was responsible for Kirov's round the clock security at Smolny, was intentionally killed, and that his death in a road accident was not at all natural.
, a Soviet official who knew both Stalin and Kirov, asserted that Stalin arranged the murder with the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, who armed Nikolaev and sent him to assassinate Kirov. This theory is bolstered by the fantastic and nearly unbelievable allegations of fascist plots that accompanied Nikolaev's alleged confession, followed by an abrupt announcement only a few days later that the Opposition had in fact been responsible, a fact learned during an interrogation supposedly conducted by Stalin himself. According to this new theory, Nikolaev was part of a larger conspiracy led by Leon Trotsky
against the Soviet government. This conspiracy theory in turn resulted in the arrest and execution of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and fourteen other Opposition leaders in 1936. The death of Kirov also served to ignite the Great Purge
, where supporters of Trotsky and other suspected enemies of the state were arrested. Stalin's tolerance of opposition to his control of the party, or even dissident voices, ended with Kirov's death. As author and Marxist scholar Boris Nikolaevsky pointed out:
In support of the contrary view, Nikolaev's diaries show him to be a loner and a person who viewed himself to be an oppressed genius and who despaired of having to exist on his wife's income once dismissed from his post in the party, as well as containing plans, shot angles and escape routes for once he had shot Kirov .
In Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956, Khrushchev laid the accusation that Stalin personally ordered Kirov's murder, but such accusations should not be confused with evidence.
in a state funeral
, with Stalin personally carrying his coffin. Many cities, streets and factories took his name, including the cities of Kirov
(formerly Vyatka), Kirovsk
(Murmansk Oblast
), Kirovograd (Kirovohrad
in Ukrainian
), Kirovabad (today Ganja, Azerbaijan
) and Kirovakan (today Vanadzor
, Armenia
), the station Kirovskaya of the Moscow Metro
(now Chistiye Prudy), Kirov Ballet
, and the massive Kirov industrial plant
in Saint Petersburg.
In the city of Kirov
a speedskating match, the Priz Imeni S.M. Kirova, was named for him.
This match is the longest enduring annual organised race in speedskating apart from the World Speed Skating Championships
and the European Speed Skating Championships
.
For many years, a huge statue of Kirov in granite and bronze dominated the panorama of the city of Baku
. The monument was erected on a hill in 1939 and was dismantled in January 1992, after Azerbaijan
gained its independence. The Kirov class
of battlecruisers is named in his honor, though the first-of-class vessel originally named Kirov has since been renamed Admiral Ushakov
.
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
leader in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Kirov rose through the Communist Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
. Kirov was seen as a focal point of opposition to the more extreme policies of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, and as a counterbalance to the increasing concentration of power in Stalin's hands.
On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute. Blame for his assassination has been directly attributed to Stalin and its facilitation by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, but hard evidence for this claim remains elusive. Kirov's death served as a pretext for Stalin's escalation of repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
against dissident elements of the Party, culminating in the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
of the late 1930s in which many of the Old Bolshevik
Old Bolshevik
Old Bolshevik , also Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, was an unofficial designation for those who were members of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of whom were either tried and executed by the NKVD during Stalin era purges or died under suspicious...
s were arrested, expelled from the Party, and executed. Complicity in Kirov's assassination was a common charge to which the accused confessed in the show trials of the era
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
.
The cities of Kirov
Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Kirov , formerly known as Vyatka and Khlynov, is a city in northeastern European Russia, on the Vyatka River, and the administrative center of Kirov Oblast. Population: -History:...
, Kirovohrad
Kirovohrad
Kirovohrad , formerly Yelisavetgrad, is a city in central Ukraine. It is located on the Inhul River. It is a motorway junction. Pop. 239,400 ....
, Kirovakan, and Kirovabad
Kirovabad
Kirovabad can refer to:* The former name of Ganja, the second largest city in Azerbaijan.* The former name of Panj or Pyandzh a city in Tajikistan.* Kirovabad pogrom - pogrom in Kirovabad formerly Ganja....
were renamed in Kirov's honor after his assassination. Following the collapse of Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
Kirovakan and Kirovabad returned to their original names: Vanadzor and Ganja, respectively.
Youth
Born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov to a poor family in UrzhumUrzhum
Urzhum is a town and the administrative center of Urzhumsky District of Kirov Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Urzhumka River about from its confluence with the Vyatka River. Population: -History:...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Kirov lost his parents when he was young. His father, Miron Kostrikov, had left him at a tender age; his mother,
Yekaterina Kitun Kostrikova, also died the following year. Sergey was brought up by his grandmother before being sent to an orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
at seven years of age. In 1901 a group of wealthy benefactors provided a scholarship for him to attend an industrial school at Kazan
Kazan
Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...
. After gaining his degree in Engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
he moved to Tomsk
Tomsk
Tomsk is a city and the administrative center of Tomsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Tom River. One of the oldest towns in Siberia, Tomsk celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2004...
. As Russian society went into crisis, Kirov became a Marxist and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1904.
Russian revolutions
Kirov took part in the Russian Revolution of 1905Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
, and was arrested and later released. He joined with the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s soon after being released from prison. In 1906, Kirov was arrested once again, but this time jailed for over three years, charged with printing illegal literature. Soon after his release, he again took part in revolutionary activity. Once again being arrested for printing illegal literature, after a year of custody, Kostrikov moved to the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
, where he stayed until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
.
By this time, Sergei Kostrikov had changed his name to Kirov in order to make his name easier to remember, a practice common among Russian revolutionaries of the time. The name Kir reminded him of the ancient Persian leader Cyrus the Great
Cyrus the Great
Cyrus II of Persia , commonly known as Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus the Elder, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Southwest Asia and much...
. Kirov became commander of the Bolshevik military administration in Astrakhan
Astrakhan
Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...
. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, he fought in the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
until 1920. Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore is a British historian and writer.-Family history:Simon's father, a doctor, is descended from a famous line of wealthy Sephardic Jews who became diplomats and bankers all over Europe...
writes: "During the Civil War, Kirov was one of the swashbuckling commissars in the North Caucasus beside Sergo
Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze
Grigol Ordzhonikidze ორჯონიკიძე - Grigol Orjonikidze, , generally known as Sergo Ordzhonikidze ; – February 18, 1937) was a Georgian Bolshevik, later member of the CPSU Politburo and close friend to Joseph Stalin...
and Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....
. In Astrakhan
Astrakhan
Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...
he enforced Bolshevik power in March 1919 with liberal blood-letting: over four thousand were killed. When a bourgeois was caught hiding his own furniture, Kirov ordered him shot."
Career
In 1921, he became manager of the AzerbaijanAzerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
party organization. Kirov supported Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
loyally, and in 1926 he was rewarded with the command of the Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
party. Kirov was widely admired in the Communist party for his efficiency as administrator of the Leningrad District, and his willingness to stand up to Stalin. He was seen as one of the adherents of the Opposition Movement to Stalin, along with Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
, Lev Kamenev
Lev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev , born Rozenfeld , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly head of state of the new republic in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Lenin's life....
, Abram Prigozhin, and others. When the Leningrad branch of the OGPU began to harass Opposition dissidents in Leningrad, Kirov gave orders that they were not to be harassed by the police. In 1933, Kirov successfully opposed Stalin's demand for the imposition of the death penalty against a Party leader, Martemyan Ryutin
Martemyan Ryutin
Martemyan Nikitich Ryutin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and a political functionary of the Russian Communist Party. Ryutin is best remembered as the leader of a pro-peasant political faction organized against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s and as the primary author of a 200...
(1890–1937, Рютин Мартемьян Никитич), a former supporter of Stalin who had recently circulated in party circles a 200-page anti-Stalin document
Ryutin Affair
The Ryutin Affair was one of the last attempts to oppose the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin within the Soviet Communist Party.Martemyan Ryutin was an Old Bolshevik and a secretary of the Moscow City Communist Party Committee in the 1920s...
demanding the abandonment of forced collectivization, the reduction of investment
Investment
Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...
in industry, and the removal of Stalin, "the grave digger of the Revolution and of Russia," from his post as head of the Communist Party.
As a result, Kirov drew the unwelcome attention of Stalin, particularly after the 1934 party congress, where delegates voting for new Central Committee membership elected Kirov, who received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 negative votes. Kirov was close friends with Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and together they formed a moderate bloc to oppose Stalin and campaign for a policy of reconciliation
Reconciliation
Reconciliation may variously refer to:* Bank reconciliation* Truth and reconciliation commission-Religion:* Sacrament of Penance , also known as Reconciliation...
and toleration of dissident voices in the Politburo and in the Party. After the party congress, Stalin asked Kirov to work for him in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, assisting the Politburo, but then repeatedly postponed Kirov's transfer, stating that Kirov was temporarily required in Leningrad to finish important party business. Kirov was not invited to certain Politburo meetings, and was kept in Leningrad for over nine months. Kirov's influence continued to grow, and at a plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1934 Kirov urged the adoption of further conciliatory measures by the party in favor of party dissidents, which won enthusiastic applause and approval by the delegates.
The Kirov Assassination
The Leningrad office of the NKVDNKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
- headed by Kirov’s close friend, Feodor Medved - looked after Kirov’s security. Stalin reportedly ordered the NKVD Commissar, Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda , born Enokh Gershevich Ieguda , was a Soviet state security official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's Stalin-era security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936...
, to replace Medved with Grigory Yeremeyevich Yevdokimov, a close associate of Stalin. However, Kirov intervened and had the order countermanded. According to Alexander Orlov, Stalin then ordered Yagoda to arrange the assassination. Yagoda ordered Medved’s deputy, Vania Zaporozhets, to undertake the job. Zaporozhets returned to Leningrad in search of an assassin; in reviewing the files he found the name of Leonid Nikolaev
Leonid Nikolaev
Leonid Nikolaev was the assassin of Sergei Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad branch of the Communist Party.-Early life:...
.
Leonid Nikolaev was well-known to the NKVD, which had arrested him for various petty offences in recent years. Various accounts of his life agree that he was an expelled Party member and failed junior functionary with a murderous grudge and an indifference towards his own survival. He was unemployed, with a wife and child, and in financial difficulties. According to Orlov, Nikolayev had allegedly expressed to a 'friend' a desire to kill the head of the party control commission that had expelled him. His friend reported this to the NKVD.
Zaporozhets then allegedly enlisted Nikolayev’s 'friend' to contact him, giving him Walnuts and a loaded 7.62 mm Nagant M1895
Nagant M1895
The Nagant M1895 Revolver is a seven-shot, gas-seal revolver designed and produced by Belgian industrialist Léon Nagant for the Russian Empire. The Nagant M1895 was chambered for a proprietary cartridge, 7.62x38R, and featured an unusual "gas-seal" system in which the cylinder moved forward when...
revolver. However, Nikolaev's first attempt at killing Kirov failed. On 15 October 1934, Nikolaev packed his Nagant revolver in a briefcase and entered the Smolny Institute where Kirov worked. Although he was initially passed by the main security desk at Smolny, he was arrested after an alert guard asked to examine his briefcase, which was found to contain the revolver. A few hours later, Nikolayev’s briefcase and loaded revolver were returned to him, and he was told to leave the building. Though Nikolaev had clearly broken Soviet laws, the security police had inexplicably released him from custody; he was even permitted to retain his loaded pistol.
With Stalin's approval, the NKVD had previously withdrawn all but four police bodyguards assigned to Kirov. These four guards accompanied Kirov each day to his offices at the Smolny Institute, and then left. On 1 December 1934, the usual guard post at the entrance to Kirov's offices was left unmanned, even though the building served as the chief offices of the Leningrad party apparatus and as the seat of the local government. According to some reports, only a single friend and unarmed bodyguard of Kirov's, Commissar Borisov, remained. Other sources state that there may have been as many as nine NKVD guards in the building. Whatever the case, given the circumstances of Kirov's death, as former Soviet official and author Alexander Barmine
Alexander Barmine
Alexander Gregory Barmine was an officer in the Soviet Army who fled the purges of the Joseph Stalin era. After settling in France, he later moved to the United States where he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private during World War II as an anti-aircraft gunner, later joining the Office of...
noted, "the negligence of the NKVD in protecting such a high party official was without precedent in the Soviet Union."
On the afternoon of 1 December Nikolaev arrived at the Smolny Institute offices. Unopposed, he made his way to the third floor, where he waited in a hallway until Kirov and Borisov stepped into the corridor. Borisov appears to have stayed well behind Kirov, some 20 to 40 paces (some sources allege Borisov parted company with Kirov in order to prepare his luncheon). As Kirov turned a corner, passing Nikolaev, the latter drew his revolver and shot Kirov in the back of the neck.
Aftermath and responsibility for Kirov's death
The Sergei Kirov Museum maintains that the circumstances of Kirov's death "remain unknown to this day." There are no doubts on the aftermath, however: "the bloodiest round of Stalin's terror and repression."After Kirov's death, Stalin called for swift punishment of the traitors and those found negligent in Kirov's death. Nikolayev was tried alone and secretly by Vasili Ulrikh
Vasili Ulrikh
Vasiliy Vasilievich Ulrikh was a senior judge of the Soviet Union during most of the regime of Joseph Stalin. In this capacity, Ulrikh served as the presiding judge at many of the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union.-Early life:Vasili Ulrikh was born in Riga, Latvia, then a...
, Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR was created in 1924 to the Supreme Court of the USSR as a court for the higher military and political personnel of Red Army and Fleet...
. He was sentenced to death by firing squad on 29 December 1934, and the sentence was carried out that very night.
The hapless Commissar Borisov died the day after the assassination, supposedly by falling from a moving truck while riding with a group of NKVD agents. Borisov’s wife was committed to an insane asylum. Orlov, Nikolayev’s mysterious 'friend' and alleged provocateur, who had supplied him with the revolver and Walnuts, was later shot on Stalin’s personal orders.
Nikolayev's mother, brother, sisters, cousin and some other people close to him were arrested and later liquidated or sent to labor camps. Arrested immediately after the assassination, Nikolayev's wife Milda Draule survived her husband by three months before being executed herself. Their infant son (who was named Marx following the Bolshevik naming fashion) was sent into an orphanage. Marx Draule was alive in 2005 when he was officially rehabilitated as a victim of political repressions, and Milda was also found innocent retroactively. However, Nikolayev was never posthumously acquitted.
Several NKVD officers from the Leningrad branch were convicted of negligence for not adequately protecting Kirov, and sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years. None of these NKVD officers were executed in the aftermath, and none actually served time in prison. Instead, they were transferred to executive posts in Stalin's labor camps for a period of time (in effect, a demotion). According to Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
, these same NKVD officers were shot in 1937 during Stalin's purges.
Initially, a Communist Party communiqué reported that Nikolaev had confessed his guilt, not only as an assassin, but an assassin in the pay of a 'fascist power', receiving money from an unidentified 'foreign consul' in Leningrad. 104 defendants who were already in prison at the time of Kirov's assassination and who had no demonstrable connection to Nikolayev were found guilty of complicity in the 'fascist plot' against Kirov, and summarily executed.
However, a few days later, during a subsequent Communist Party meeting of the Moscow District, the Party secretary announced in a speech that Nikolayev was personally interrogated by Stalin the day after the assassination, an unheard-of event for a party leader such as Stalin:
- "Comrade Stalin personally directed the investigation of Kirov's assassination. He questioned Nikolayev at length. The leaders of the Opposition placed the gun in Nikolaev's hand!"
Other speakers duly rose to condemn the Opposition: "The Central Committee must be pitiless - the Party must be purged... the record of every member must be scrutinized...." No one at the meeting mentioned the initial theory of fascist agents. Later, Stalin even used the Kirov assassination to eliminate the remainder of the Opposition leadership against him, accusing Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
, Lev Kamenev
Lev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev , born Rozenfeld , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly head of state of the new republic in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Lenin's life....
, Abram Prigozhin, and others who had stood with Kirov in opposing Stalin (or simply failed to acquiesce to Stalin's views), of being 'morally responsible' for Kirov's murder, and as such were guilty of complicity. All were removed from the Party apparatus and given prison sentences. While serving their sentences, the Opposition leaders were charged with new crimes, for which they were sentenced to death and shot.
After Nikolayev's death, there was some speculation that his motivation in killing Kirov may have been more personal. His wife, Milda Draule, worked at the Smolny, and unsubstantiated rumors surfaced that she was having an affair with Kirov. It is unknown whether these had a basis in fact, or were deliberately fostered by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. Nikolayev's wife, Milda Draule, was noted for her physical plainness, while Kirov preferred liaisons with ballerinas and other Soviet women of notable beauty and grace. Nikolaev, allegedly a deranged party hack with no connection to the NKVD, in the heat of anger over his wife's affair, carefully shoot her lover in the back of the neck, a target specifically employed by NKVD executioners for its 'quick kill' results. Soviet courts convicted and executed Nikolayev's wife for Kirov's death. This can be explained however in her being a Latvian national and thus used as the key in a fabricated plot between her husband and the Latvian government, Zinovievites within the Leningrad party, and other foreign intelligence services.
Pospelov Commission investigation
In December 1955, after Nikita KhrushchevNikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
assumed control of the Party, the Presidium of the Central Committee (CPSU) entrusted P. N. Pospelov, Secretary of the Central Committee, to form a commission
Pospelov Commission
Pospelov Commission was a commission of the CPSU Central Committee Presidium headed by Pyotr Pospelov whose findings had laid the basis and the contents of Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" On the Personality Cult and its Consequences According to Khushchev's speech, "the commission was...
to investigate the repression of the 1930s (this was the same Pospelov who drafted the famous 'Secret Speech' of Khrushchev at the Twentieth Congress). Khrushchev stated:
- "It must be asserted that to this day the circumstances surrounding Kirov's murder hide many things which are inexplicable and mysterious and demand a most careful examination. There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kirov, Nikolaev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose duty it was protect the person of Kirov. A month and a half before the killing, Nikolaev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behaviour, but he was released and not even searched. It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist [Borisov] assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on 2 December 1934, he was killed in a car 'accident' in which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were relieved of their duties and were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover the traces of the organizers of Kirov's killing."
Pospelov subsequently spoke to Dr. Kirchakov and former nurse Trunina, former members of the party, who had been mentioned in a letter by another member of the commission, (Olga Shatunovskaya
Olga Shatunovskaya
Olga Grigoryevna Shatunovskaya was a member of the Shvernik Commission....
), as having knowledge of the Kirov murder. Dr. Kirchakov confirmed that he did talk to Shatunovskaya and Trunina about some of the unexplained aspects of the Kirov murder case, and agreed to provide the Commission with a written deposition. He stressed that his statement was based on the testimony of one Comrade Olskii, a former NKVD officer who was demoted after Kirov's murder and transferred in 1931 to the People's Supply System.
In his deposition, Dr. Kirchakov wrote that he had discussed the murder of Kirov and the role of Feodor Medved with Olskii. Olskii was of the firm opinion that Medved, Kirov's friend and NKVD security chief of the Leningrad branch, was innocent of the murder. Olskii also told Kirchakov that Medved had been barred from the NKVD Kirov assassination investigation. Instead, the investigation was carried out by a senior NKVD chief, Yakov Agranov
Yakov Agranov
Yakov Saulovich Agranov was a prominent member of the Cheka, the forerunner of the Soviet KGB....
, and later by another NKVD bureau officer, whose name he did not remember. During one of the committee sessions, Olskii related he was present when Stalin asked Leonid Nikolaev why Comrade Kirov had been killed. To this Nikolaev replied that he carried out the instruction of the 'Chekists' [NKVD] and pointed towards the group of 'Chekists' [NKVD officers] standing in the room; Medved was not amongst them.
Khrushchev's Report, On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences was later read at closed-door Party meetings. Afterward, new material was received by the Pospelov committee, including the statement of Kirov's chauffeur, Kuzin, that Commissar Borisov, Kirov's friend and bodyguard, who was responsible for Kirov's round the clock security at Smolny, was intentionally killed, and that his death in a road accident was not at all natural.
Conclusions
Given the circumstances of Kirov's growing popularity, the clear indications of Stalin's disapproval of Kirov, and the danger to Stalin in losing effective control of the Politburo and party apparatus, there exists the possibility that Kirov's death was facilitated, at least in part, by the NKVD on Stalin's orders. Alexander BarmineAlexander Barmine
Alexander Gregory Barmine was an officer in the Soviet Army who fled the purges of the Joseph Stalin era. After settling in France, he later moved to the United States where he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private during World War II as an anti-aircraft gunner, later joining the Office of...
, a Soviet official who knew both Stalin and Kirov, asserted that Stalin arranged the murder with the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, who armed Nikolaev and sent him to assassinate Kirov. This theory is bolstered by the fantastic and nearly unbelievable allegations of fascist plots that accompanied Nikolaev's alleged confession, followed by an abrupt announcement only a few days later that the Opposition had in fact been responsible, a fact learned during an interrogation supposedly conducted by Stalin himself. According to this new theory, Nikolaev was part of a larger conspiracy led by Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
against the Soviet government. This conspiracy theory in turn resulted in the arrest and execution of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and fourteen other Opposition leaders in 1936. The death of Kirov also served to ignite the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
, where supporters of Trotsky and other suspected enemies of the state were arrested. Stalin's tolerance of opposition to his control of the party, or even dissident voices, ended with Kirov's death. As author and Marxist scholar Boris Nikolaevsky pointed out:
- "One thing is certain: the only man who profited by the Kirov assassination was Stalin."
In support of the contrary view, Nikolaev's diaries show him to be a loner and a person who viewed himself to be an oppressed genius and who despaired of having to exist on his wife's income once dismissed from his post in the party, as well as containing plans, shot angles and escape routes for once he had shot Kirov .
In Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956, Khrushchev laid the accusation that Stalin personally ordered Kirov's murder, but such accusations should not be confused with evidence.
Legacy
Kirov was buried in the Kremlin Wall necropolisKremlin Wall Necropolis
Burials in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow began in November 1917, when 240 pro-Bolshevik victims of the October Revolution were buried in mass graves on Red Square. It is centered on both sides of Lenin's Mausoleum, initially built in wood in 1924 and rebuilt in granite in 1929–1930...
in a state funeral
State funeral
A state funeral is a public funeral ceremony, observing the strict rules of protocol, held to honor heads of state or other important people of national significance. State funerals usually include much pomp and ceremony as well as religious overtones and distinctive elements of military tradition...
, with Stalin personally carrying his coffin. Many cities, streets and factories took his name, including the cities of Kirov
Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Kirov , formerly known as Vyatka and Khlynov, is a city in northeastern European Russia, on the Vyatka River, and the administrative center of Kirov Oblast. Population: -History:...
(formerly Vyatka), Kirovsk
Kirovsk, Murmansk Oblast
Kirovsk , known as Khibinogorsk until 1934, is a town in Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located at the spurs of the Khibiny Massif on the shores of the Lake Bolshoy Vudyavr, south of Murmansk...
(Murmansk Oblast
Murmansk Oblast
Murmansk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the northwestern part of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Murmansk.-Geography:...
), Kirovograd (Kirovohrad
Kirovohrad
Kirovohrad , formerly Yelisavetgrad, is a city in central Ukraine. It is located on the Inhul River. It is a motorway junction. Pop. 239,400 ....
in Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
), Kirovabad (today Ganja, Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
) and Kirovakan (today Vanadzor
Vanadzor
-Industry:Vanadzor is dominated by large chemical plants which include: "Prometey-Khimprom", "Vanadzor Chemical Plant", "Vanadzor Khimprom" and "Vanadzor Chemical Fiber Plant". Another big enterprise is the "Vanadzor Thermal Power Plant....
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
), the station Kirovskaya of the Moscow Metro
Moscow Metro
The Moscow Metro is a rapid transit system serving Moscow and the neighbouring town of Krasnogorsk. Opened in 1935 with one line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union. As of 2011, the Moscow Metro has 182 stations and its route length is . The system is...
(now Chistiye Prudy), Kirov Ballet
Mariinsky Ballet
The Mariinsky Ballet is a classical ballet company based at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in the 18th century and originally known as the Imperial Russian Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet is one of the world's leading ballet companies...
, and the massive Kirov industrial plant
Kirov Plant
The Kirov Plant Kirov Factory or Leningrad Kirov Plant is a major Russian machine-building plant in St. Petersburg, Russia....
in Saint Petersburg.
In the city of Kirov
Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Kirov , formerly known as Vyatka and Khlynov, is a city in northeastern European Russia, on the Vyatka River, and the administrative center of Kirov Oblast. Population: -History:...
a speedskating match, the Priz Imeni S.M. Kirova, was named for him.
This match is the longest enduring annual organised race in speedskating apart from the World Speed Skating Championships
World Speed Skating Championships
The International Skating Union organises the following World Championships in the sport of speed skating:* Allround** Men's Allround** Women's Allround* Sprint** Men's Sprint** Women's Sprint* Men's Single Distances* Women's Single Distances* Short Track...
and the European Speed Skating Championships
European Speed Skating Championships
The European Speed Skating Championships are a series of speed skating events held annually to determine the best allround speed skater of Europe. The International Skating Union has organised the European Championships for Men since 1893 and the European Championships for Women since 1970. The...
.
For many years, a huge statue of Kirov in granite and bronze dominated the panorama of the city of Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
. The monument was erected on a hill in 1939 and was dismantled in January 1992, after Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
gained its independence. The Kirov class
Kirov class battlecruiser
The Kirov-class battlecruiser is a class of nuclear-powered military ships of the Russian Navy, the largest and heaviest surface combatant warships currently in active operation in the world. The Russian designation is heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser...
of battlecruisers is named in his honor, though the first-of-class vessel originally named Kirov has since been renamed Admiral Ushakov
Soviet battlecruiser Kirov
Kirov, the lead ship of her class of nuclear-powered missile cruisers, is one of the major and biggest surface warships of the Russian Navy, though it was originally built for the Soviet Navy. It is similar in size to a World War II battleship...
.
Honours and awards
- Order of the Red BannerOrder of the Red BannerThe Soviet government of Russia established the Order of the Red Banner , a military decoration, on September 16, 1918 during the Russian Civil War...
- Order of LeninOrder of LeninThe Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...