M. Katz - The Assassination of Kirov: Proletarian Justice versus White-Guard Terror

Published by

Workers Library Publishers

P. O. Box 148, Sta. D, New York City

February, 1935

By M. Katz

On December 2, 1934, the following announcement appeared in all the Soviet newspapers:

FROM THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION (BOLSHEVIKS)

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) informs the Party, the working class and all toilers of the U.S.S.R. and the toilers of the whole world, with the greatest sorrow, that Comrade Sergei Mironovitch Kirov, an outstanding leader of our Party, and ardent, fearless revolutionary, a beloved leader of the Bolsheviks and of all the toilers of Leningrad, Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Committees of the C.P.S.U. (Bolsheviks) and member of the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., perished by the treacherous hand of an enemy of the working class in Leningrad on December 1.

The loss of Comrade Kirov, who was loved by the entire Party and the whole working class of the U.S.S.R., who was a crystal-pure and unshakably steadfast Party man, a Bolshevik-Leninist who devoted his whole vivid and glorious life to the cause of the working class, to the cause of Communism, is the severest loss sustained by the whole Party and the land of Soviets during the past years.

The Central Committee believes that the memory of Comrade Kirov, the glowing example of his fearless, untiring struggle for the proletarian revolution, for the construction of socialism in the U.S.S.R., will inspire millions of proletarians and all toilers for the further struggle for the triumph of socialism, for the final annihilation of all enemies of the working class.

Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)

Sergei Mironovitch Kirov, one of the most beloved leaders of the Soviet working class, who, in addition to his other duties, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Leningrad Region for the past eight years, was murdered on December 1, at 11 A. M. in the historic Smolny Institute, the headquarters of the Leningrad Party Committee. He was murdered just as he was about to deliver a report on the decisions of the Central Committee abolishing the bread-rationing system and a number of emergency methods of Party work. The assassin Nikolayev, a former petty functionary, lay in waiting in the corridors of the building and fired at Comrade Kirov from behind. A bullet struck his head. Death was instantaneous. The Assassin later confessed that he was a member of a terrorist organization composed of the remnants of the former Zinoviev-Trotzky opposition at Leningrad. The dregs of this opposition, which has lost all contact with the masses, linked itself with various White-Guard elements and representatives of foreign governments for the purpose of overthrowing the Communist leadership and the Soviet government and of putting in their place men like Zinoviev and Trotzky by means of terroristic acts. The murder of Comrade Kirov was organized and directed by counter-revolutionists and White-Guardists, enemies of the working class, who parade under various guises in order to undermine the workers' State and its foremost leaders.

As an answer to the murderous shot, the Soviet government arrested a number of persons connected with White-Guard terrorist organizations. In addition, it had under arrest quite a number of White-Guard terrorists who had been seized previously as they crossed the frontier from Finland, Poland, Rumania, and Latvia, carrying hand-grenades and other concealed weapons for the purpose of murdering leaders of the Soviet government and the Communist Party, of setting fire to industrial plants, of blowing up bridges and disrupting transport.

Due to the gravity of the crime committed on December 1, which showed that the White-Guardists aim their weapons at the very heart of the revolution, all these prisoners were, by decree of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union, turned over to the Extraordinary Supreme Court of the Republic. The prisoners were tried on the basis of the material evidence discovered at the time of their capture. One hundred and three terrorists, members of White-Guard organizations who had entered the Soviet Union from foreign countries with forged passports and armed, were sentenced to death and executed.

This swift act of justice met with the whole-hearted approval of the entire Soviet working class. In thousands of demonstrations and mass -meetings the Soviet workers demanded that short shrift be made of the serpent of counter-revolution which again tried to rear its ugly head and did succeed in striking down one of the best leaders of the revolution.

It was clear from the very beginning that the shooting of Comrade Kirov was no isolated or private act. The fact that bands of known White-Guardist agents of terrorist organizations of Russian emigres recently stole into the Soviet Union, showed that Nikolayev's shot was merely part of a larger plan of terrorist attempts upon the lives of the leaders of the Soviet Union.

Significant likewise was the concentrated offensive of lies and slander let loose in connection with the assassination of Kirov in the capitalist press generally, and especially in the press and at the gatherings of pronounced White-Guardists and various brands of so-called "Socialists". These same elements, who said not a word in condemnation of the murder of the fearless and tireless revolutionist and builder of Socialism, Sergei Kirov, began manufacturing rumors about mutinies and terror in the Soviet Union, even before the arrested White-Guard terrorists were put on trial, insinuating that Kirov was a victim of a personal grudge. Their campaign of vilification and their demands for moral intervention (which is nothing else than a mental preparation for military intervention) against the Soviet Union became even louder after the terrorist conspirators met with their merited fate.

Thus the White-Guardists and counter-revolutionists in the U.S.S.R. and their friends and instigators abroad, worked hand in glove in accordance with a definite plan which has been and remains:

1. To hamper the Socialist construction of the Soviet Union through direct terroristic attacks upon its leaders and through acts of sabotage directed at Soviet enterprises.
   
2. To undermine the moral support that the Soviet Union has been gaining more and more among the toiling masses in capitalist countries, by representing the U.S.S.R. as a land of terror and bloodshed, by placing the Communist leadership of the Soviet Union on the same level as Hitler's wholesale murderers and degenerates.
   
3. To help cement a united capitalist front against the Soviet Union in the hope of precipitating, at the first opportunity, a war against the Soviet Union, and the restoration there of the capitalist system.
   
4. To distract the attention of the world from the remarkable victories of the U.S.S.R. on the front of industrialization and collectivization in the year 1934.
   

Comrade Kirov was born forty-nine years ago, in 1886, in the small town of Urzhum, in the former Vyatka Province near the Urals. His parents were poor workers. When he was seven years old his father died. His mother died a few months later, and Sergei and his two little sisters were orphaned. Their grandmother, a house servant, took them to live with her, but her wages of three rubles a month were not enough to support them, and she was forced to place them in an orphanage.

While still in the orphan asylum, little Sergei distinguished himself as a bright and energetic lad. He found an opportunity to go to school and he completed his elementary education at the municipal school.