Matthew E. Lenoe - The Kirov Murder and Soviet History

ANNALS OF COMMUNISM

Each volume in the series Annals of Communism will publish selected and previously inaccessible documents from former Soviet state and party archives in a narrative that develops a particular topic in the history of Soviet and international communism. Separate English and Russian editions will be prepared. Russian and Western scholars work together to prepare the documents for each volume. Documents are chosen not for their support of any single interpretation but for their particular historical importance or their general value in deepening understanding and facilitating discussion. The volumes are designed to be useful to students, scholars, and interested general readers.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF THE ANNALS OF COMMUNISM SERIES

Jonathan Brent, Yale University Press

PROJECT MANAGER

Vadim A. Staklo

AMERICAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Ivo Banac, Yale University

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies

William Chase, University of Pittsburgh

Friedrich I. Firsov, former head of the Comintern research group at RGASPI

Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago

Gregory Freeze, Brandeis University

John L. Gaddis, Yale University

J. Arch Getty, University of California, Los Angeles

Jonathan Haslam, Cambridge University

Robert L. Jackson, Yale University

Czeslaw Milosz (deceased), University of California, Berkeley

Norman Naimark, Stanford University

Gen. William Odom (deceased), Hudson Institute and Yale University

Daniel Orlovsky, Southern Methodist University

Timothy Snyder, Yale University

Mark Steinberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Strobe Talbott, Brookings Institution

Mark Von Hagen, Arizona State University

Piotr Wandycz, Yale University

RUSSIAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE

K. M. Anderson, Moscow State University

N. N. Bolkhovitinov, Russian Academy of Sciences

A. O. Chubaryan, Russian Academy of Sciences

V. P. Danilov, Russian Academy of Sciences

A. A. Fursenko, secretary, Department of History, Russian Academy of Sciences (head of the Russian Editorial Committee)

V. P. Kozlov, director, Rosarkhiv

N. S. Lebedeva, Russian Academy of Sciences

S. V. Mironenko, director, State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF)

O. V. Naumov, director, Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI)

E. O. Pivovar, Moscow State University

V. V. Shelokhaev, president, Association ROSSPEN

Ye. A. Tyurina, director, Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE)

Translations by Matthew E. Lenoe

Documents compiled by Mikhail Prozumenshchikov

New Haven & London

This volume has been prepared with the cooperation of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) in the framework of an agreement concluded between RGANI and Yale University Press.

Documents held by the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (APRF), the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) are used with permission of these archives.

Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.

Copyright 2010 by Yale University and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Designed by James J. Johnson and set in Sabon Roman type by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lenoe, Matthew E. (Matthew Edward)
The Kirov murder and Soviet history / Matthew E. Lenoe; translations by Matthew E. Lenoe.
p. cm. (Annals of Communism)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-11236-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
I. Kirov, Sergei Mironovich, 1886 1934 Assassination. 2. Stalin, Joseph, 1879 1953. 3. Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza Purges. 4. Political purges Soviet Union History. 5. Political atrocities Soviet Union History. 6. Soviet Union History 1925 1953. I. Title.
DK268.K5L46 2010
947.0842 dc22 2009041252

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI / NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Yale University Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support given for this publication by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Historical Research Foundation, Roger Milliken, the Rosentiel Foundation, Lloyd H. Smith, Keith Young, the William H. Donner Foundation, Joseph W. Donner, Jeremiah Milbank, and the David Woods Kemper Memorial Foundation.

Yale University Press is grateful to Vladimir Pavlovich Naumov for his help in conceptualizing this book and contributing to the research at the early stages of this project.

For Eleanor and Simon

I wish to thank those generous donors who have helped to finance this project, including the supporters of the Annals of Communism series and Hokkaido Universitys Slavic Research Center, where I was a Foreign Visiting Fellow in 2005 2006. Portions of research for this work I did on summer trips to Moscow paid for by faculty development funds at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Assumption College. I also have utilized research funds from the University of Rochester to purchase published document collections and other materials relevant to the book.

I am grateful to Jonathan Brent, executive editor of the Annals of Communism series, for bringing me, a relatively untried scholar, into this exciting project in 2003. Jonathan helped to fund and arrange two of my research trips to Moscow. Throughout the writing process he has been an encouraging and patient editor. I also wish to thank Sarah Miller for shepherding the manuscript through the publication process, and Gavin Lewis for his thorough and sensible copyediting. Vadim Staklo, head administrator for the Annals of Communism series and a scholar in his own right, helped me to coordinate my research with the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) and to understand the Kirov document collection.

This book utilizes many previously unavailable sources, but it is also a synthetic work bringing together arguments and findings from a number of scholars who have worked on the Kirov murder. It relies most heavily on recent groundbreaking scholarship by Alla Kirilina, J. Arch Getty, and Oleg Khlevniuk. Studies by Amy Knight, Robert Tucker, Robert Conquest, Roy Medvedev, and others inform my own reconstruction of Kirovs biography and the Great Terror. William Taubmans recent biography of Nikita Khrushchev is invaluable for understanding the complex political turbulence of the Thaw. Alvin Coox, now deceased, did extensive work on Genrikh Liushkovs biography. The names of other scholars whose work has informed my own can be found in the notes.

I wish to thank those scholars and archivists who personally helped me with the book. Vladimir P. Naumov provided essential guidance at the outset of the project. Nataliya Georgievna Tomilina, director of RGANI, and Mikhail Yurevich Prozumenshchikov, deputy director, showed me wonderful hospitality in Moscow and helped me to access the documents I needed. Mr. Prozumenshchikov supervised the collection of documents for publication, provided citations for them, and answered my questions about RGANIs Kirov document holdings. I also want to express my appreciation to the RGANI staff who tracked down hundreds of citations and photographs for me.