Single page, front only, measures 5 ½" x 13". The format suggests that this news sheet was printed as an insert for a newspaper or magazine. It announces that at 4:30 p.m. on 1 December [1934], Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Committees of VKP(b) and member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee Comrade Sergey Kirov was assassinated in the building of the Leningrad Soviet (former Smolny Institute). The shooter was apprehended, investigation was ongoing.

In excellent condition. The paper is perfectly clean, shows minor wrinkles at the top and bottom. The text is vibrant

Single page, front only, measures 5 ½" x 13". The format suggests that this news sheet was printed as an insert for a newspaper or magazine. It announces that at 4:30 p.m. on 1 December [1934], Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Committees of VKP(b) and member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee Comrade Sergey Kirov was assassinated in the building of the Leningrad Soviet (former Smolny Institute). The shooter was apprehended, investigation was ongoing.

In excellent condition. The paper is perfectly clean, shows minor wrinkles at the top and bottom. The text is vibrant and crisp.

Kirov was shot in the head by Leonid Nikolaev, a low-level Communist Party functionary, unemployed at the time of the assassination. He ambushed Kirov in a hallway in the Smolny and shot him in the back of the head. Then he tried to commit suicide but just wounded himself and was apprehended. Following the event, the rumor mill worked overtime, spinning out one conspiracy theory after another, ranging from lone wolf disgruntled employee to revenge for Kirov seducing Nikolaev's wife to domestic and foreign political plots. Thirteen people were apprehended and accused of an assassination plot, Nikolaev's wife was expelled from the Party and executed by a firing squad a few months later. The entire Nikolaev's family - mother, two sisters including the younger sister's husband, brother and his wife - were executed or sent to GULAG forced labor camps. Just to be thorough, Nikolaev's wife's relatives - brother and sister, together with her husband, - were also executed.

Nikolaev's diary was declassified in 2009. According to it, he decided to avenge Kirov for his dismissal from the Institute of the History of the Party which led to his unemployment. Whether or not this information is true, whether or not Stalin was the initiator of Kirov's assassination for political purposes, the fact remains that he did not let it go to waste. Stalin's main opponents and Old Guard Bolsheviks Zinovyev and Kamenev were arrested, accused as leaders of the conspiracy and sentenced to prison terms, and the wave of repressions known as the Great Purge, was unleashed on the Party, Government and military leadership.

Please note that the pen in our photo is for size reference.
$80.00  Add to cart