Nikolayev had been bundled into a side office on the third floor, whence he was whisked to NKVD headquarters, where he alternated between wailing uncontrollably and falling silent while staring at a single point. He was carried on a stretcher to the NKVD’s internal clinic for examination at around 6:40 p.m.93 Only around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. could the NKVD interrogate him. Besides the gun, Nikolayev had been carrying his attaché case and was found to be in possession of a party card, a pass to the Smolny cafeteria (from his workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate days), which was how his identity was quickly established, and an address book, which is how his relatives were quickly found. At searches of his and his mother’s apartments, operatives found copies of his various letters to the authorities, the numerous notebooks comprising a diary, the sketch of Kirov’s routes, a fragmentary plan of assassination, secret letters to his wife about his plotting and willingness to die, and instructions on where to find these letters—the kind of treasure trove of documentary evidence never adduced at any of the countless fabricated trials.
“I prepared the whole thing myself,” Nikolayev was recorded as having told Medved, Fomin, and other Leningrad operatives the night of the assassination, “and I never let anyone know of my intentions.” He added: “There was a single reason—estrangement from the party, from which the events in the Leningrad Institute of Party History pushed me away, my unemployment, and the lack of material and, above all, moral assistance from the party organizations. My whole situation reverberated from the moment I was expelled from the party (eight months ago), which discredited me in the eyes of party organizations.” Nikolayev enumerated all his fruitless letters for redress, adding, “There was a single aim of the assassination: for it to become a political signal to the party that over the past eight to ten years on my path of life and work, there has accumulated the baggage of unjust treatment of a living person on the part of certain state persons. . . . This historic mission has been accomplished by me. I had to show the whole party where they had brought Nikolayev.”94
CAVALCADE
Medved had the unenviable task of informing Yagoda, his superior. In the office of the second secretary of the Leningrad city party committee, he composed a telegram: “On December 1, 16:30 in Smolny, third floor, twenty paces from comrade Kirov’s office, Kirov was shot in the head by an unknown assailant who approached him and who, according to party documents, is Leonid Nikolayev, b. 1904, party member since 1924. Kirov is in his office. With him are professors of surgery . . . and other doctors.” The message mentioned that “several functionaries at Smolny recognized Nikolayev . . . as someone who had earlier worked” there, and that an arrest warrant had been issued for his wife, misnamed as Graule. Medved lied that Borisov “had accompanied Kirov to the point of the incident,” concealing NKVD negligence. Inexplicably, the message was stamped as sent at 6:20 p.m. and received and decoded in Moscow by 7:15 p.m.95 Already just after 5:00 p.m., Chudov had called Stalin’s office number; Poskryobyshev picked up.96