Who Killed Kirov?: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery

The 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad Communist Party chief and a rising star in Stalin's inner circle, marked the beginning of one of the darkest periods of Russian history--Stalin's Great Terror, in which millions of Soviet citizens were imprisoned, exiled or killed. While it was initially rumored that Kirov had been killed by a frustrated political rival, many believed--and many still believe--that Stalin himself orchestrated Kirov's death in order to justify his crackdown. Knight (Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB's Successors and Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant) goes beyond the usual questions about the Kremlin's greatest mystery to take a closer look at the people and events that enabled Stalin to not only authorize the murder of a respected colleague but also to repeat the tactic without any kind of personal repercussion. Knight expertly unravels the layers of the Kirov coverup in which newly empowered party and police officials found themselves compelled to discard fact for fiction in a vain attempt to escape the ubiquitous brand of ""traitor"" or ""collaborator."" Even now, 65 years later and after more than a full decade of glasnost, the Kirov affair is still a delicate issue in Russia, where even the loudest decriers of the police state have shied away from a full disclosure of facts. While decades of forced testimonies and altered archival evidence make the truth elusive, Knight notes that people's lingering fears of being found guilty of past crimes remain a strong impediment to discovering the truth. 26 b&w photos not seen by PW. (June)