The Great Terror

During Yagoda’s cross-examination things did not go smoothly. Without giving anything away, he yet managed to imply that there was something fishy about the whole business. Asked what methods he used in the other alleged murders, he answered, “In any case not such as … described here,” and when questioned as to whether he would confirm his own testimony at the preliminary investigation, said, “It is exaggerated, but that does not matter.” When it came to the Kirov murder itself, the following exchange was particularly odd:

Yagoda: I gave instructions … Vyshinsky: To whom? Yagoda: To Zaporozhets in Leningrad. That is not quite how it was.

Vyshinsky: We shall speak about that later. What I want now is to elucidate the part played by Rykov and Bukharin in this villainous act. Yagoda: I gave instructions to Zaporozhets. When Nikolayev was detained … Vyshinsky: In whose briefcase … Yagoda: There was a revolver and a diary. And he released him. Vyshinsky:

And you approved of this? Yagoda: I just took note of the fact. Vyshinsky: And then you gave instructions not to place obstacles in the way of the murder of Sergei Mironovich Kirov? Yagoda: Yes, I did…. It was not like that. Vyshinsky: In a somewhat different form?

Yagoda: It was not like that, but it is not important.⁷

In Leningrad, Zaporozhets looked around for a method and found in the files a report on a disillusioned and embittered young Communist—Nikolayev. Nikolayev had told a friend that he intended to assassinate some Party figure as a protest. The friend had reported him. Through the friend, Zaporozhets got into contact with Nikolayev and saw that he was provided with a pistol. In addition, Zaporozhets got the friend to persuade Nikolayev to select Kirov as his victim.⁸

Zaporozhets’s next task was to steer his gunman to the heavily guarded Kirov. As so often in real life, his plans did not run smoothly. The revolver had been got to Nikolayev. He was worked up to assassination pitch. But his attempts to get into the Smolny did not at first succeed. He was arrested twice in that neighborhood. The first time, “a month and a half before the killing”—that is, within a couple of weeks of Kirov’s return from Kazakhstan—he was “not even searched.” The second time, only a few days before his successful attempt, he got as far as the outer guard in the Smolny. There the guard found on him “a revolver and a chart of the route Kirov usually took” (according to Yagoda at the 1938 Trial) or “a notebook and a revolver” (according to the evidence of Yagoda’s secretary Bulanov on the same occasion); in any case, “arms were found on him. But upon Zaporozhets’s instructions he was released on both occasions” (as Khrushchev was to put it in his speech to the XXIInd Party Congress in 1961).

It says a good deal for Nikolayev’s nerve that he brought himself to make his last, and successful, attempt.

Zaporozhets had gone on holiday, leaving the affair in the hands of accomplices, not yet (1989) identified. Apart from instructions to the outer guard to let Nikolayev through unsearched, the arrangements included the “temporary” abandonment of the internal guard posts on each floor. They also managed to detain Kirov’s bodyguard, Borisov. And finally, after all the earlier muddles, Stalin’s plan succeeded, and his colleague lay dead in the Smolny corridors. But there was still much to do.

When the news reached Moscow, it was announced to the accompaniment of a strong expression of grief and comradeship for the dead man by Stalin and the Politburo. Stalin, with Voroshilov, Molotov, and Zhdanov,⁹ left for Leningrad the same evening to “conduct the inquiry.” Yagoda, Agranov, and other leading NKVD men accompanied them.

Stalin and his entourage took over an entire floor of the Smolny. But before the investigation, there were political moves to be made.

An official speaker remarked at the XXIInd Party Congress in 1961:

On the day of the murder (which at that time had not yet been investigated, of course), upon Stalin’s instructions from Leningrad, a law was adopted on an accelerated, simplified and conclusive examination of political cases. This was immediately followed by a wave of arrests and political trials. It is as if they had been waiting for this pretext in order, by deceiving the Party, to launch anti-Leninist, anti-Party methods of struggle to maintain a leading position in the Party and State.¹⁰

(It is difficult to see how Stalin could have given instructions from Leningrad on the day of the murder. He traveled by train, and Leningrad and Moscow are 400 miles apart by rail. He could scarcely have arrived earlier than “the crack of dawn on 2 December”—the time given by a Soviet source.¹¹ The decree is indeed dated 1 December. Stalin doubtless put it in hand before he left and telephoned after arriving in Leningrad to have it signed by the State authorities and issued.)