Leonid Nikolaev - Aftermath and Responsibility For Kirov's Death

Aftermath and Responsibility For Kirov's Death

After Kirov's death, Stalin called for swift punishment of the traitors and those found negligent in Kirov's death. Borisev, one of the first to come upon the scene, was immediately arrested; he died the day after Kirov's assassination, allegedly as the result of a fall from a truck in which he was being transported by the NKVD. On December 28 and 29 1934, Nikolaev and 13 other people as members of the "counterrevolutionary group" were tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under Vasili Ulrikh's chairmanship. At 5:45 AM, December 29, all of them were sentenced to death penalty and executed by shooting an hour later.

Nikolaev's 85-year-old mother, brother, sisters, cousin and some other people close to him were later arrested and killed. 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, Nikolaev was never posthumously acquitted.

Several NKVD officers from the Leningrad branch were convicted of negligence for not adequately protecting Kirov, and were sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years. However, they never served their prison sentences; instead, they were transferred to executive posts in Stalin's labor camps for a period of time (in effect, a demotion).

Initially, a Communist Party communique reported that Nikolaev's guilt had been established, and that he had confessed that he acted at the behest of a 'fascist power', receiving money from an unidentified 'foreign consul' in Leningrad. 104 other defendants, who were already in prison at the time of Kirov's assassination, and who had no demonstrable connection to Nikolaev, were found guilty of complicity in the 'fascist plot' against Kirov, and were 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 Nikolaev had been personally interrogated by Stalin the very next day after the assassination, an unheard-of event for a party leader such as Stalin:

Comrade Stalin personally directed the investigation of Korv's assassination. He questioned Nikolaev at length. The leaders of the Opposition placed the gun in Nikolaev's hand!

Other speakers 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 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 acquiese to Stalin's views), of having connections with Nikolaev and facilitating the assassination.

After Nikolaev'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 deliberatedly fostered by the NKVD. What is known is that Nikolaev's wife, Milda Draule, was noted for her physical plainness, while Kirov was known to prefer liaisons with ballerinas and other Soviet women of notable beauty and grace. It is also curious that Nikolaev, allegedly a deranged ex-party hack with no connection to the NKVD, would - in the heat of anger over his wife's affair - carefully shoot her lover in the back of the neck, a favorite target of NKVD executioners. Even more curious is the fact that Soviet courts also convicted and executed Nikolaev's wife Milda for Kirov's death.

However, 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, the probability is that Kirov's death was arranged by the NKVD on Stalin's orders. This theory is bolstered by the fantastic allegations of a fascist plot by foreign consuls, used to summarily execute 104 defendants already in NKVD jails at the time of Kirov's assassination. Incredibly, the 'fascist plot' theory was itself discarded only a few days later, after disclosure of Nikolaev's alleged confession implicating the leaders of Stalin's opposition, (extracted by none other than Stalin himself).

Kirov's death, as the most popular leader of the Opposition, meant the definite end of the 'reconciliation' movement exemplified by Kirov, and the beginning of Stalin's Great Purge. As author and Marxist scholar Boris Nikolaevsky pointed out:

One thing is certain: the only man who profited by the Kirov assassination was Stalin.