Leon Trotsky: Remarks on the Kirov Assassination

December 10, 1934

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 543-547]

Although a week has passed since Kirov’s assassination, it is impossible at the present moment to arrive at a correct assessment of this event because of lack of information. Let us try, however, to review the matter in a general way. Since 1927, when a GPU leader was killed in White Russia and a bomb was thrown at the GPU headquarters in Moscow, there have been no terrorist acts in the USSR. The terrorist acts of 1927, which, moreover, had the nature of a final convulsion, like those which had preceded them (Volodarsky, Uritsky, Vorovsky, and others), had been organized and executed by White Guards (or previously by Social Revolutionaries), in any case, by representatives of the classes and parties of old Russia.

In our opinion what clearly distinguishes the assassination of Kirov is that it does not compose a new link in the chain of terrorist acts — which, moreover, had become weak and disjointed — of the first ten years of the revolution, but that it constitutes a phenomenon which is entirely new and of directly Soviet origin.

Nikolaev, the assassin, is a man whose life was molded entirely under Soviet conditions (he was only thirteen when the October Revolution broke out), and he certainly did not act at the instigation of a foreign country or any political organization. We have no definite information and we do not know whether Nikolaev was a member of the Communist Party. We think that the latter is not at all excluded. In any case, he was a Soviet employee, working in the central departments (the very fact that he was able to gain admittance to the Smolny, which is rather well guarded, can be interpreted as a sign that he knew his way around).

What motivated the assassin? Many hypotheses have been presented in the press.

1. Nikolaev may have been connected with the same organization that killed King Alexander. We will pass over that one.

2. The Nazi and the White Guard press speak of a provocation on the part of the GPU: the GPU may have killed Kirov in order to show that it is indispensable and to augment its power.

In this connection mention is made of the rivalry between the GPU and the party apparatus. That such rivalry exists is incontestable. But to think that it has reached such dimensions that the GPU assassinates leaders of the party — the least one can say is that this exaggeration is altogether out of proportion with the state of affairs. Today the rivalry of the GPU manifests itself over the questions of the GPU statutes, the limits of its jurisdiction, and the composition of its leadership (for example, the underhanded and very prolonged struggle which took place over the replacement of Menzhinsky by Yagoda).

3. In Le Populaire Leon Blum champions the theory of personal revenge, which enables him to dodge the political question more easily. We hold this hypothesis to be almost out of the question, especially the idea that Nikolaev might have wanted revenge for having been fired from his job. It is much too easy to find work in Russia for the loss of a job to become a tragedy and for an individual to choose a terrorist act and certain death.

Other plausible hypotheses: a lunatic, a fanatic.

The fact that it took a whole day to force him to give his name — and more than a week has passed without any confessions being published — does not give the impression that Nikolaev is a lunatic. Moreover, this hypothesis has been raised nowhere.

We are entirely inclined to think that it is the case of a political assassination. In striking at Kirov, one of the leaders of the Communist Party and one of the most eminent members of Stalin’s inner circle, Nikolaev must have intended by this act, to strike a blow at the party in power, its policies, and its leaders.

That we are not dealing with a chance terrorist act seems to be confirmed by the fact that enormous importance has been attached to it in the USSR. The [Central] Executive Committee of the Soviets not only adopted a special decree mandating rapid and merciless trial procedures against terrorist groups, but a change is also being prepared along the same lines in the criminal codes of the USSR. This is a sign that the assassination causes the greatest anxiety among the Soviet leadership, and that they consider it not the act of a lunatic or personal revenge but something much deeper and far graver, against which they have to take measures for the future. The sixty-six who were shot and the mass arrests confirm the same thing.

Are we dealing with a man who has been disappointed by the revolution or with a conscious Thermidorean? Whatever the answer, it does not at all change the fact that Nikolaev’s blow is in reality aimed against Soviet Russia, against the working class in power. Needless to repeat here that our position cannot be any other than that of the most absolute, clear and vehement condemnation of this assassination, which, like the whole terrorist method in general, can serve but one goal: to clear the road for Bonapartism and fascism in the USSR.

We cannot here pass in silence over the fact that the Stalinist regime at times drives honest people into the blind alley of despair; among them, unfortunately, there may still grow up other Nikolaevs. If there are still potential and active anti-Soviet elements in the USSR — because the classes are far from being liquidated and the Soviet Union, contrary to the pretenses of the Stalinist doctrine, cannot “make an abstraction” of world relations — then Stalinism helps the growth of these counterrevolutionary cadres by driving into their ranks discouraged or misguided elements who might have been saved but are unable to find the correct road in the darkness of the internal regime. The Stalinist policies and the regime that stifles the slightest stirrings of political life inside the party bear no small share of the responsibility for the fact that counterrevolutionary tendencies manifest themselves at times even among elements that are not hostile to the regime.

It is enough to recall that in 1932, the period of the most acute crisis in the USSR, there was much talk of various groups with terrorist aims, particularly among the youth. When arrested, some youths told of having heard everywhere, within the family circle, in the factory or in the school, words of hatred against Stalin; they saw him as the cause of the state of affairs in the USSR; and they thought that by eliminating this cause, they would effect a change in this state of affairs. The personalization of the regime in the USSR, where the party does not exist, where only the leaders count, can only work in favor of terrorist tendencies. Up to now, fortunately for the USSR and-for the working class movement, these terrorist tendencies did not crystallize into action.

It would be a monstrous mistake to attempt to identify the discontent of the Soviet masses with the act of Nikolaev. The Soviet worker is discontented, but he is deeply attached to the regime, and he seeks a solution inside the Soviet framework through the road of reform. In his eyes, Nikolaev is only a class enemy.

But the very existence of these terrorist tendencies and the shot fired by Nikolaev reflect — although in an exceptional and extremely distorted way — the profound political crisis which the Russian Revolution is passing through.

As to the sixty-six who were shot: Apparently they have nothing to do with the Nikolaev affair itself. They were arrested prior to and entirely independently of Kirov’s assassination. Their execution aims at spreading terror among new and potential Nikolaevs. Parallel measures were taken during Lenin’s lifetime too; but then everything was done in broad daylight: everyone knew who was shot and why. The list of the executed does not contain any biographical material or anything else which would allow one to draw any conclusions whatever.

Contained in the list is a name rare in Russia: Eismont. There was an Eismont who was an old member of the party, a people’s commissar. He was arrested in 1932, accused of conspiring against Stalin. However, there is nothing that permits us to say that it is the same Eismont. If it is he, an entirely different evaluation would be necessary.

We must be on guard. If Nikolaev acted on his own, and in any case has had no connection with any political organization whatever, we may count on all sorts of possible surprises. In order to draw a greater political profit from this event, that is to say, in order to enable him to deal a counter-blow, Stalin may seek to link up Nikolaev even with … the ICL. This is not very probable but it is not excluded. There is nothing extraordinary in such a supposition. With his continual amalgams and his Wrangel officer, Stalin has already shown what he is capable of in an internal struggle.

As the contents of this letter indicate, it is confidential, and only certain opinions expressed in it should be utilized. The axis of an article on this question from our point of view should be the absolute condemnation of the assassin and the defense of the USSR against its class enemies, both external and internal. We again specify that we have as yet no information that permits us to pass definitive judgment, and that subsequent information may again render necessary a radical change in the appraisal of the event.