Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

Nikolaev’s disturbed behavior before the murder aroused comment. He had been detained in the party building in October, carrying a gun and acting suspiciously, but released as the Smolny Institute was not a restricted building and Nikolaev had had a license for a sporting weapon since 1924. His diary shows a man driven by bitter conceit. After running over a pedestrian on his bicycle he was demoted from his post as a party instructor, then dismissed for refusing manual work. He hated depending on his wife’s earnings and felt he was an unnoticed genius. His diary is full of inept epigrams and ominous ambitions: “There are a lot of people, but there’s little difference between them. . . . I want to die with the same joy as I was born with.” The diary has detailed notes of times, addresses, distances, and shot angles for an assassination of Kirov: “After first shot, run to his car: a) smash window and fire; b) open door. In Smolny: at first encounter take a grip on my spirit and decisively. . . . My path of thorns . . . letter to the Central Committee . . . Lack of prospects. 8 months’ unemployment . . . Moment and penitence; historic acts. We and they . . .”

Would Stalin and Iagoda have used such a loose cannon as Leonid Nikolaev when they had professional killers at their disposal?³ Moreover, as the historian Adam Ulam asks, why should Stalin get rid of Kirov by having him assassinated, and thus allow people to believe that a party leader, even himself, was assailable? If Stalin wanted to eliminate a rival, the latter was first branded a traitor, then arrested, tried, and shot; or else he was reported ill, poisoned, or found dead in a crash.

Stalin’s train raced through the night along 700 kilometers of track guarded by thousands of NKVD men. In the morning, accompanied by the heads of every branch of the power structure—Voroshilov, Molotov, Zhdanov, Iagoda, Ezhov, Khrushchiov, Karl Pauker, Vyshinsky, and Aleksandr Kosarev—Stalin left the train.⁴ He was greeted by Filipp Medved, head of the Leningrad NKVD and a friend of Kirov. Stalin struck him in the face and called him an asshole.

Iagoda and Vyshinsky set up an investigation. Stalin decided to interrogate personally Nikolaev and Kirov’s bodyguard, Mikhail Borisov, the chief witness. Kirov insisted on walking the streets and loathed being followed by bodyguards and Borisov had lagged behind when Kirov unexpectedly went back to party headquarters. Stalin told the NKVD to bring Borisov but nearly all their vehicles were busy and only a truck with a broken front spring was left. Borisov sat on the edge of the open back, and when the truck veered his head was smashed against a lamppost.⁵

What Stalin and Nikolaev said to each other is not minuted. Molotov, who in reams of dictated reminiscences said little that was even half true, recalls Nikolaev as “a miserable specimen to look at . . . He said he’d meant to kill, for ideological reasons. . . . I think he seemed to be embittered by something, expelled from the party, a chip on his shoulder. And he was used by the Zinovievites. . . .” Nikolaev’s behavior at the trial has also been cited as proof that Stalin ordered the murder. Nikolaev, according to a Cheka guard, when the sentence was delivered, exclaimed, “Cruel!” and, “I’ve been deceived.” However, the reason Nikolaev cried out was most likely that Stalin’s promise to him had been broken. Stalin and the NKVD frequently bargained with the accused and promised them their lives—or the lives of their loved ones—if they testified as they were told to. With each successive trial, as the accused incriminated themselves and yet still suffered the death penalty, together with their relatives, these promises lost their effect. In December 1934, the bargain still seemed sincere. Presumably, for a promise that he would not be shot, Nikolaev incriminated Zinoviev and Kamenev, and gave Stalin the material he needed for a final judicial solution.

Arrests and trials followed. Iagoda declared that Nikolaev was acting for émigré agents; over one hundred alleged White Guards already in NKVD hands were shot, their deaths reported in the second week of December. Iagoda clearly did not believe in a conspiracy. He pursued the case languidly. Ezhov instructed him that Stalin wanted Zinoviev and Kamenev targeted. When Iagoda failed to get the right testimony, Stalin—as Ezhov would boast when Iagoda fell from power—telephoned him: “Look out, or we’ll smash your face in.” After three weeks’ interrogation, Nikolaev was made to confess to links with Trotsky through the German consulate and, as his wife, Milda Draule, was Latvian, with Latvian espionage. The others arrested were Zinovievites loyal to the old Leningrad party apparatus. Through guilt by association, Iagoda established—but not to Stalin’s satisfaction—that Nikolaev was acting for, if not at the behest of, Zinoviev.