(2 of 10)
Stalin knew perfectly well who might have voted against him -- certainly not the likes of Khrushchev, who had risen through the ranks under Stalin and who deified him. No, Stalin understood that it was the old cadres from Lenin's time who were displeased with him.
During the 17th Congress, a party secretary from the North Caucasus went to see Kirov, the Leningrad party chief, and said, confidentially, "There's talk among the old cadres that the time has come to replace Stalin with someone who will treat those around him with more decency. The people in our circle say you should be made the General Secretary."
Kirov went to Stalin and told him everything. Stalin listened and replied simply, "Thank you, Comrade Kirov."
In late 1934, Leonid Nikolayev, a disgruntled ex-Bolshevik, showed up outside the Smolny Institute in Leningrad, where Kirov's office was located. Nikolayev was arrested, probably because he looked suspicious. He was searched and found to be carrying a gun. Yet he was set free. The only conclusion is that he was released on orders from higher-ups in the same organization who had sent him to commit a terrorist act. A short time afterward, Nikolayev penetrated Smolny and shot Kirov as he was coming up the stairway. Kirov's bodyguard had lagged behind.
Later there was a rumor that Stalin demanded that Nikolayev be brought before him. Nikolayev fell to his knees, said he had acted on orders and begged for mercy. Maybe he figured he would be allowed to live because he had only carried out his mission. He was a fool. For the mission to remain secret, he had to be exterminated. And so he was.
Something else I know. When Stalin came to Leningrad to investigate Kirov's murder, he ordered the commissar who had been personally responsible for guarding Kirov that day brought to him for interrogation. The truck taking him to see Stalin crashed, and the commissar was killed.
Much later, there was an attempt to find and question the people who were escorting the commissar at the time of the accident. They had all been shot. I suggested looking for the driver. Fortunately, he was alive. He told us there hadn't been a serious accident at all, just a dented fender. But he did recall hearing a thump in the back of the covered truck. That was the end of the commissar.
I have no doubt that Stalin was behind the plot. Kirov had turned the Leningrad party organization into a good, active group. He was very popular, so a blow aimed at him would hurt the party and the people. That's probably why he was marked for sacrifice: his death provided a pretext for shaking up the country, alarming the people so that they would accept the terror and let Stalin get rid of the undesirables and "enemies of the people."
Stalin started by crushing the Old Bolsheviks, then broadened the purge to annihilate the flower of our party, our army, our intelligentsia and ordinary people.