Stalin полностью

Around 10:00 or so that morning of December 2, Stalin and entourage—Molotov, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Yezhov, Alexander Kosaryov, a large contingent of NKVD operatives, and at least 200 armed men (the Dzierżyński regiment)—alighted at Leningrad’s Moscow Station. Enveloped by the massive security force, the group proceeded to the Sverdlov Hospital morgue, then to Smolny, where they took over Kirov’s office. “I saw a group approaching,” one Communist Youth League functionary recalled. “I saw Stalin in the middle; in front of him was Genrikh Yagoda with a revolver in his raised hand. The latter gave an order: ‘Everyone, faces to the wall! Hands on your trouser seams!’”¹⁰⁶

Agranov ordered Fomin to accompany him to Leningrad NKVD HQ, where he commandeered Medved’s office and all the case materials.¹⁰⁷ A shattered Borisov, the bodyguard—who had been interrogated the previous night but proved nearly unable to speak (his service revolver had been discovered still unloaded in its holster)—was summoned in the opposite direction, to Smolny.¹⁰⁸ As he was being driven, his head smashed into the wall of a building at around 10:50 a.m. and he died almost instantly. Neither the driver nor the three NKVD operatives accompanying him were hurt. The NKVD had used a one-and-a-half-ton Ford truck to transport Borisov, who was placed in the truck bed. Apparently, no other vehicles were available at the garage because of the cavalcade that had descended from Moscow. A spring on the truck’s front suspension was known to be defective and jerry-rigged, although deemed safe to drive at slow speeds. The driver might have been speeding—the summons was urgent—when he crossed tram tracks in the road. The truck swerved rightward violently. The driver tried to compensate by steering left. A tire blew. The truck ran a sidewalk and struck a building on the side where Borisov happened to be. A piece of his overcoat was caught by a metal clamp holding a drainpipe.¹⁰⁹ It is conceivable that he smashed his own head against the wall once the vehicle swung. It is also possible, though even less likely, that the Leningrad NKVD killed Borisov to hide evidence of incompetence—which was what Stalin suspected.¹¹⁰

Nikolayev was brought before Stalin.¹¹¹ The dictator had a hard time accepting that anyone ever acted alone.¹¹² But it was especially difficult to believe the pathetic Nikolayev could have carried out such a momentous assassination by himself. He stood a hair over five feet (1.53 meters), with “simian arms” down to his knees and very short legs, and, though he was only thirty years old, was a physical and emotional wreck. By then he was also severely sleep deprived. “An unprepossessing appearance. A clerk. Not tall. Scraggly,” recalled Molotov. “I think he was, it seems, angry with something, expelled from the party, aggrieved.”¹¹³ What Stalin managed to extract from the petulant, megalomanical, delirious Nikolayev remains unclear. (A rumor in Smolny suggested that Nikolayev had failed to recognize Stalin until he was shown an official portrait alongside the person before him.) Taken to a waiting vehicle on the street, where people were going about their business, Nikolayev was said to have shouted, “Remember me—I am the assassin. Let the people know who killed Kirov!”¹¹⁴

FAREWELL

Kirov’s open casket was placed for public viewing in the vestibule of the former Tauride Palace on December 2 for two days. His widow, Leningrad and Moscow officials, and delegations of workers from the two capitals paid their respects, many through tears. Initially, Pravda (December 2) accused “enemies of the working class and Soviet power, White Guards.” The next day, the newspaper identified the assassin as Nikolayev, labeling him a former employee of the workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate, omitting his employment in the party committee and his party membership.¹¹⁵ The NKVD was investigating foreign involvement: Nikolayev had visited the German consulate a few times and the Latvian once. He testified that he had found their numbers in the phone book and hoped to be introduced to foreign journalists, but had been brushed off by the German consul while trying to sell anti-Soviet documents (his writings) for money.¹¹⁶ Nikolayev might have sought a visa to Latvia for escape. Also on December 3, at a detached house in Leningrad’s Stone Island neighborhood that Stalin and his entourage were using, the dictator dressed down Medved and Fomin. (Yagoda that day issued an indictment of them and six other Leningrad NKVD operatives.) “The murder of Kirov is the hand of an organization,” Stalin told Medved and Fomin, “but which organization is difficult to say right now.”¹¹⁷