Kirov Affair

Letter of an Old Bolshevik. 1936

Old Bolshevik was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevskii. Nikolaevskii claimed that the following information was given to him secretly by Nikolai Bukharin during a visit to Paris, in an attempt to alert others to the opposition within the Party aroused by the harsh policies introduced by Stalin during the First Five Year Plan and collectivization. Many historians dispute the authenticity of the letter. If authentic, it reflected deep divisions in the party leadership that had already led to Kirov’s death, and would soon lead to Bukharin’s own downfall.

Original Source: Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (Berlin), No. 23-24 (December 1936) and No 1-2 (January 1937).

Kirov played an important part in the Politbiuro. He was a 100 percent supporter of the “general line,” and distinguished himself during its operation by great energy and inflexibility. This caused Stalin to value him highly. But there was always a certain independence in Kirov’s attitude which annoyed Stalin. The story is that Stalin had prevented Kirov from attending the meetings of the Politbiuro in Moscow for several months under the pretext that his presence in Leningrad was indispensable. However, Stalin could never make up his mind to take strong measures against Kirov. It would have been folly to add to the already large number of the dissatisfied an important party leader such as Kirov, especially since Kirov had succeeded in surrounding himself in Leningrad with reliable and devoted aides. A new conflict with the Leningrad party might have been more fatal now than in Zinoviev’s day. In the winter of 1933-1934, Kirov had so strengthened his position that he could afford to follow his own line. He aimed not only at a “Western orientation” in foreign policy, but also at the conclusions which would follow logically from this new orientation as far as home policy was concerned.

The task, therefore, was not only that of creating a mighty army in preparation for the impending military conflict, a conflict which appeared inevitable, but also, politically speaking, of creating the proper psychological frame of mind on the home front. There were two alternatives: to pursue the former policy of crushing all dissenters, with the administrative pressure ruthlessly tightened and the terror intensified, or to try “reconciliation with the people,” to gain their voluntary cooperation in the political preparation of the country for the coming war. The most convinced and most prominent advocates of the second alternative were Kirov and Gorky. It would be worthwhile to describe in greater detail Gorky’s influence in the life of the party, particularly as it is now possible to speak more openly since his death. But that is another matter, and would take us too far afield. Gorky had exercised a great and beneficent influence upon Stalin. But, despite all his influence, Gorky was not a member of the Politbiuro, and had no direct part in the making of its decisions. Kirov’s part became, therefore, all the more important.

Kirov stood for the idea of abolition of the terror, both in general and inside the party. We do not desire to exaggerate the importance of his proposals. It must not be forgotten that when the First Five-Year Plan was being put into effect, Kirov was one of the heads of the party, that he was among those who inspired and carried through the notoriously ruthless measures against the peasants and the wiping out of the kulaks. The Kem and Murmansk coasts, with their prison camps, and so forth, were under his jurisdiction. Furthermore, he was in charge of the construction of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. This is enough to make it clear that Kirov could not be reproached with any undue tenderness in the manner in which he disposed of human lives. But this very fact added to his strength in the official circles in which he had to defend his point of view. That he had so large a share of responsibility in the horrors of the First Five-Year Plan made it possible for him to come forward as a leader and protagonist of the policy of moderating the terror during the Second Five-Year Plan. Kirov’s line of thought ran as follows: The period of destruction, which was necessary to extirpate the small proprietor elements in the villages, was now at an end; the economic position of the collectives was consolidated and made secure for the future. This constituted a firm basis for future development, and as the economic situation continued to improve, the broad masses of the population would become more and more reconciled to the government; the number of “internal foes” would diminish. It was now the task of the party to rally those forces which would support it in the new phase of economic development, and thus to broaden the foundation upon which Soviet power was based. Kirov, therefore, strongly advocated reconciliation with those party elements who, during the period of the First Five-Year Plan, had gone over to the Opposition, but who might be induced to cooperate on the new basis, now that the “destructive” phase was over…

… Early in the summer of 1933, when it became certain that the harvest would be good, Kamenev, Zinoviev and a number of other former members of the Opposition were once again readmitted as members of the party. They were even permitted to choose their spheres of work, and some of them actually received invitations to the party congress (February 1934).

At that congress Kirov appeared in triumph. Previously, his election in Leningrad had been celebrated as was no other. At district conferences in various parts of the city, all of which he toured on the same day, he had been received with wild cheers. “Long live our Mironich!” the delegates shouted; it had been an exceedingly impressive demonstration and it showed that the entire Leningrad proletariat was behind Kirov. At the party congress, too, Kirov received an extraordinarily enthusiastic reception. He was cheered, the entire assembly rising to its feet on hearing his report. During the recesses there was discussion as to who had had the more tumultuous reception, Kirov or Stalin. This very comparison shows how strong Kirov’s influence had already become.

Not only was Kirov reelected to the Politbiuro, but he was also chosen a secretary of the Central Committee, making it necessary for him to move to Moscow within a short time to take over direction of a whole group of departments which had heretofore been under Postyshev and Kaganovich. This was to insure putting into effect the new line which Kirov had inspired. His removal to Moscow was delayed, however. The official reason given was that his presence in Leningrad was indispensable; a substitute was supposedly being sought in Leningrad, but until someone could be found fit to take his place, his transfer to Moscow had to be postponed. In spite of this, he took part in the work of the Politbiuro, and his influence there continued to grow…

… Kirov’s assassination put an end to any chance for liberalization within the party. Thereafter the trend was in quite the opposite direction: not toward reconciliation inside the party, but toward intensification of the

terror inside the party to its logical conclusion, to the stage of physical extermination of all those whose party past might make them opponents of Stalin or aspirants to his power. Today, I have not the slightest doubt that

it was at that very period, between the murder of Kirov and the second Kamenev Trial, that Stalin made his decision and mapped out his plan of reforms,” an essential component part of which was the trial of the sixteen and other trials yet to come. If, before the murder of Kirov, Stalin still had some hesitation as to which road to choose, he had now made up his mind.

The determining reason for Stalin’s decision was his realization, arrived at on the basis of reports and information reaching him, that the mood of the majority of the old party workers was really one of bitterness and hostility toward him.

The trials and investigations which followed the Kirov affair had demonstrated unmistakably that the party had not reconciled itself to Stalin’s personal dictatorship; that, in spite of all their solemn declarations, the old Bolsheviks rejected Stalin in the depths of their hearts, that this attitude of hostility, instead of diminishing, was growing, and that the majority of those who cringed before him, protesting devotion, would betray him at the first change of the political atmosphere.

This was the basic fact that emerged for Stalin from the documents compiled in the course of the investigation of Nikolaev’s act. It must be conceded that Stalin was able to provide a reasonable basis for this deduction, and from it he fearlessly drew his ultimate conclusions. As Stalin perceived it, the reasons for the hostility toward him lay in the basic psychology of the old Bolsheviks. Having grown up under the conditions of revolutionary struggle against the old regime, we had all been trained in the psychology of oppositionists, of irreconcilable nonconformists. Involuntarily, our minds work in a direction critical of the existing order; we seek everywhere its weak sides. In short, we are all critics, destructionists – not builders. This was all to the good – in the past; but now, when we must occupy ourselves with constructive building, it is all hopelessly bad. It is impossible to build anything enduring with such human materials, composed of skeptics and critics. What must be considered now, first and foremost, is the necessity of enduring Soviet construction, particularly because Soviet Russia is facing tremendous perturbations, such as will arise inevitably with the coming of war. It was thus that Stalin reasoned.

The conclusion that he drew from all this was certainly daring: if the old Bolsheviks, the group constituting today the ruling caste in the country, are unfit to perform this function, it is necessary to remove them from their posts, to create a new ruling caste. Kirov’s plans presupposed reconciliation with the nonparty intelligentsia and enlistment of nonparty workers and peasants in the tasks of social and political life, as a means of widening the social basis of the Soviet regime and promoting its cooperation with the democratic elements of the population. Under Stalin’s plan these very same proposals acquired quite a different significance; they were to facilitate a complete revision of the personnel of the ruling caste by expelling from its midst all those infected with the spirit of criticism, and the substitution of a new ruling caste, governed by a new psychology aiming at positive construction….

Source: Letter of an Old Bolshevik (New York: The Rand School, and London: George Allen and Unwin, 1938), pp. 22-25, 27-29, 69-71.

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