The murder of Sergei Kirov--as the event that set off the purges in the Soviet Union--set the stage for Stalin's dictatorship and had a tremendous impact on the entire twentieth century, said Amy Knight, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, and former Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, at a Kennan Institute lecture on 24 February 2000.
At the time of his death, Sergei Kirov was the Leningrad Party Chief, a full member of the Politburo, and Secretary of the Central Committee. According to Knight, he was enormously popular within the party and a charismatic and talented orator. He was one of the closest Politburo members to Stalin, and their friendship was widely accepted. After he was murdered by a "crazed assassin" on the third floor of the Smolny Institute in December 1934, he became a saint and was mourned for weeks by the leadership and the people.
Knight noted that the murder is a critical event in Soviet history in that it set into motion the purges that swept the country in 1936-8, leading to the death of millions of Soviet citizens. Knight remarked that on the very day of the murder Stalin signed two new laws authorizing the NKVD (secret police) to arrest people suspected of planning terrorist acts, sentence them without a court or lawyers, and execute them within twenty-four hours. Thousands in Leningrad and Moscow would be implicated in the "conspiracy."
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