Sergei Mironovich Kirov

Sergey Kirov , actually Kostrikow ( Russian Сергей Миронович Киров ., Scientific transliteration Sergei Mironovič Kirov ; * March 15 ^jul. / 27. March  1886 ^greg. In Urzhum in Vyatka Governorate ; † 1. December 1934 in Leningrad ), was an important Soviet state and party functionary. He was considered a follower of Stalin . At the age of 48 he was shot dead by an assassin under circumstances that have not yet been clarified.

Early years

Kirov came from a poor family with seven children, four of whom died young. After his father, an alcoholic, left the family and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1893 , he was first raised by his grandmother and later raised in an orphanage. After successfully completing secondary school, he was admitted to the trade school in the Tatar city of Kazan in 1901 . It was there that he got to know revolutionary ideology for the first time. After successfully completing the trade school, he went to Tomsk in 1904 , where he planned to enroll at the State University. He quickly abandoned these plans, however, because he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) that same year and has since focused only on the illegal activities of a professional revolutionary.

Kirov took part in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was first arrested in February 1905. After he was released a short time later, he joined the Bolsheviks . In 1906 he was sentenced to three years in prison for disseminating illegal literature. After serving his sentence, he left Tomsk and went to the Caucasus . From the autumn of 1909 he worked in the editorial office of the cadet newspaper Terek in the city of Vladikavkaz . During this time he changed his name from Kostrikov to Kirov and had obvious sympathies for the moderate Social Democrats. In several articles that appeared after the overthrow of Tsarism and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II , Kirov proved to be an admirer of Alexander Kerensky , the head of the transitional government between the February and October revolutions .

October Revolution

In October 1917, Kirov took part in the sessions of the Second All-Russian Congress of Workers 'and Peasants' Councils as a member of the Vladikavkaz Council, where he initially tried to represent the interests of the Mensheviks . After the successful October Revolution , Kirov began to change his orientation. When he was back in Vladikavkaz, he became a member of a so-called “socialist bloc” which united the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, People's Socialists and Social Revolutionaries in its ranks.

When the short-lived Soviet People's Republic of Terek was proclaimed in March 1918 at the II Congress of the Peoples of Terek Oblast , Kirov was neither a member of it nor of the Bolshevik Committee of the city of Vladikavkaz. There is evidence that Kirov was not an official member of the Bolshevik Party until 1919, but was only accepted into it in Astrakhan during the exchange of party membership books. Nevertheless, Kirov was sent to Moscow as a representative of the Council of People's Commissars from Terek to organize the necessary transports of weapons and relief supplies.

Party career

The Kirov Monument in Kropywnyzkyj , the former Kirowohrad , dismantled in 2014

Kirov had been in Astrakhan without interruption since January 1919. Power in the North Caucasus was then entirely in the hands of the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council Shliapnikov , who became a leading representative of the workers' opposition in the 1920s . Kirov's rise only began after Schljapnikov was ousted in the spring of 1919. His successor was Konstantin Mechonoschin , who had appointed Kirov head of the Provisional Military Revolutionary Committee. In this capacity, Kirov had high-ranking Christian dignitaries arrested and shot, including the Astrakhan Archbishop Mitrofan (1869-1919), who was canonized in 2001. He was also responsible for the bloody suppression of a workers' strike in Astrakhan, threatened by the troops of the White Army , in March 1919. A total of up to 1,500 unarmed people were arrested as alleged "White Guard spies" and shot without trial. In April 1920, Kirov became a member of the staff and the Military Revolutionary Council of the 11th Red Army. He was responsible for several "cleanups" against alleged enemies of the revolution in the Terek area. Due to his rude behavior, he earned the title of "Butcher of the Caucasus" from those he persecuted. 1920-1921 Kirov was together with Anastas Mikoyan and Grigory Ordzhonikidze one of the organizers and leaders of the invasion of Azerbaijan by the Red Army. In October 1920 he led the Soviet delegation to the talks in Riga about a peace treaty with Poland to end the Polish-Soviet war .

From June to September 1920, Kirov was the authorized representative of Soviet Russia in Georgia , where he explored the possibilities of overthrowing the democratic-liberal government there. According to a report written by him and Ordzhonikidze in early 1921, the RKP Central Committee (b) made the decision to occupy Georgia. During the 10th Congress of the Communist Party, Kirov was elected candidate for the RKP Central Committee (b). He had been a member of the Communist Party's Caucasus Bureau since October 1920. In April 1921 he headed the work of the constituent assembly that had decided to establish an autonomous republic of the hill tribes of the Caucasus.

In July 1921, Kirov became secretary of the party organization in Azerbaijan. Its main task was to rebuild the oil production in the Baku area , which was badly affected by the civil war , and to bring the production of factories expropriated by the Bolsheviks to the pre-war level. Since 1923 Kirov was a member of the Central Committee of the RKP (b). He was one of the founders of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic , which comprised three countries (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and became part of the newly established Soviet Union on December 30, 1922 .

In February 1926 he was appointed First Secretary of the Leningrad Party Organization and the North-West Office of the Central Committee of the WKP (b) . At the same time he was elected as a candidate for the Politburo . Kirov's main task was to fight the Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev and their supporters, who were particularly strong in the Leningrad party committee, who were ousted by the XIV party congress of the WKP (b) , and to "educate" a party cadre loyal to the new strong man Josef Stalin .

Kirov turned out to be a hardliner and a big fan of Stalin. He particularly supported him in the campaign of deculakization , in which extremely brutal methods were used against the peasants. Together with Stalin and Voroshilov , he oversaw the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal , advocating the increased use of prisoners, thousands of whom died in this project under inhuman conditions. He made his contribution to countless "exposures" of alleged "enemies of the state". At his command, several thousand “socially alien elements” were forcibly relocated from Leningrad to remote areas of the Soviet Union within a few months.

In the 1930s, Kirov became increasingly popular, both with party members and with the people. Since 1930 he was a member of the Politburo and thus belonged to the highest power body of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state. However, Kirov's role remained limited to Leningrad and the northwest of the Soviet Union. The minutes of the Politburo meetings show that Kirov very rarely attended them and was mostly represented by his vice Andrei Zhdanov . In the secret election to the Central Committee on the XVII. At the 1934 party congress of the CPSU , 292 delegates voted against Stalin and only three against Kirov, a humiliation for Stalin.

It is often said that between Kirov and Stalin during the XVII. Tensions arose at the party congress or shortly thereafter. During the party congress, however, Kirov described Stalin as "the greatest strategist of the movement for the liberation of working people" and "the best helmsman in our great socialist country".

Assassination and Aftermath

Kirov's funeral in Moscow. Bearer of the urn (from left to right): Molotov , Voroshilov , Stalin , Kalinin .

On December 1, 1934, Kirov was shot in the head by Leonid Nikolayev at his workplace in the Smolny Institute in Leningrad. The background to the attack has long been a matter of dispute.

The murder of Kirov was one of the reasons for the arrests, the Stalinist purges , the public show trials and the Moscow trials that followed between 1936 and 1939 , in which high Soviet party and state officials were allegedly behind the Kirov murder because of their relationships with the Trotsky's opposition and alleged terrorist anti-state activities were charged. Confessions extorted from the accused by torture by the NKVD served as “evidence” for this .

Due to the assumed use that Stalin derived from the murder for igniting the Great Terror , there are repeated suspicions that he commissioned the murder. However, no evidence of this has ever been found. Edward Radsinski also suspected that Stalin had ordered the assassination attempt on his "rival" and corroborated this by pointing out that the assassin had already been caught and arrested twice by the local police while sneaking around the Smolny Institute and both times had been released on higher orders. Ultimately, Radsinski suspects, he was “led” into the building the third time.

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The latest studies come to the conclusion that Nikolayev was a lone perpetrator. The following arguments are put forward for this:

1. Kirov was not a political rival of Stalin, but his supporter.
2. Of the possible people who would theoretically have been conceivable as masterminds on site (Medved, Zaporozhez, Borisov, a possible stranger), none was able or able to carry out or organize the attack or get away.
3. Nikolayev had the motive and the opportunity. There were rumors that Kirov was having a relationship with Nikolayev's wife Milda Draule; In addition, Nikolayev was bitter because, despite being a party member, he had lost his position in the Leningrad Regional Committee. "Nikolayev's appearance made the idea plausible that the murder was the act of a bitter loner of questionable sanity."

Honors

Soviet postage stamp issued on the occasion of Kirov's 100th birthday in 1986

• Kirov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Lenin .
• After Kirov's death, his urn was buried on the Kremlin wall in Moscow.
• In 1934 the city of Vyatka was renamed Kirov after Kirov , and in 1935 the Leningrad Opera House was renamed the Mariinsky Theater in Kirov . The ballet company of this theater still uses the name Kirov Ballet after the theater was renamed .
• In 1934 the Ukrainian city of Jelisavetgrad (from 1924 to 1934: Zinovievsk) was renamed Kirowo and then Kirowograd / Kirowohrad. The city carried that name until it was renamed Kropywnyzkyj in July 2016.
• In 1934 the city of Chibinogorsk (Murmansk Oblast), founded in 1929, was renamed Kirovsk and is still called that today.
• Between 1935 and 1989, the city was Ganja in Azerbaijan in his honor the name Kirovabad .
• Vanadzor , now the third largest city in Armenia , was called Kirovakan from 1935 to 1991 .
• In the GDR, a mechanical engineering company in Leipzig was named after Kirow. The name became so well known as a brand for railway cranes that the company continues to call itself Kirow even after the fall of the Wall in 1989. The permanent naming of a German company after a follower of Stalin is likely to be unique.
• Since 1979 the 2nd Polytechnic High School in the East Berlin district of Marzahn had the name Kirows.
• The Caspian Red Banner Officers College of the Naval Forces SM Kirov bore his name.
• The Soviet Navy named the Kirov- class cruisers built from the mid-1930s after him, and from 1980 the type ship of a new class of nuclear cruisers was named after Kirov.
• The main square of the city of Irkutsk in Siberia is named after Kirov to this day (сквер им. Кирова)
• The Kazakh Al-Farabi University was named Kirov Kazakh State University in his honor between 1934 and 1991

literature

• Robert Conquest: In the beginning, Comrade Kirov died. Purges under Stalin (original title: The Great Terror. A Reassessment ; London 1990, translated by Jutta and Theodor A. Knust), Droste, Düsseldorf 1970.
• Nikolaj Jefimow: Sergej Mironowitsch Kirow ; in: Voprosy istorii , No. 11/12, 1995, pp. 49-67.
• Adam Bruno Ulam : The Kirov Affair . 1988.
• Dimitri Wolkogonov: Stalin. Triumph and tragedy ; Econ, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-546-49847-X .
• Donald Rayfield: Stalin and his executioners (original title: Stalin and his hangmen , translated by Hans Freundl and Norbert Juraschitz). Blessing, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89667-181-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Robert Conquest : "He will slaughter us all": Stalin's great purge . Der Spiegel 6/1971, February 1, 1971, pp. 98-109; accessed on March 27, 2018.
2. ↑ Marc von Lüpke: Stalin's "Purges": "We shoot too little" . Spiegel Online , December 1, 2014, accessed March 27, 2018.
3. ↑ In his autobiography Born 1900 , published in 1977, the playwright Julius Hay mentions at least a clue for the assumption that the assassin was promoted by forces that supported the regime. Every visitor to a party house was subjected to a thorough body search, assures Hay. Only in Leningrad was there an exception - when Nikolayev came. “Nobody knows how it happened, but this one time there was no body search and the briefcase in which the murder weapon was also remained untouched.” Page 180 in the Munich 1980 edition.
4. ↑ Edvard Radzinsky: Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives . Doubleday, New York 1996, p. 323.
5. ↑ Stephen Kotkin: Stalin. Waiting for Hitler. 1929-1941 . Penguin Press, New York 2017, pp. 235-237.
6. ↑ Oleg Chlewnjuk: Stalin: Eine Biographie , Munich 2015, p. 216.

Web links

Commons : Sergei Mironowitsch Kirow  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Sergei Mironowitsch Kirow in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Sergei Mironowitsch Kirow in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• The murder of Sergej Kirov , Geschichte Aktuell, article by Robert Baag from December 6, 2009 on Deutschlandfunk