Examples of Stalin’s caution are all over the place. That is why I find it hard to believe the newspaper reports that he dared to venture to Leningrad, where the dangerous terrorist organization had just been operating and where the Ministry of Internal Affairs personnel had not even been able to save Kirov. So the fact that Stalin made this trip cannot but lead one to think that the killing of Kirov was done by a single man alone, and the talk of a detected terrorist organization is pure nonsense.
The mystery of Kirov’s murder came to me only after my return to the Soviet Union at the end of 1935. After arriving in Leningrad via Finland, I had made a trip to the Interior Branch building because I had to make a direct telephone call to Moscow and book a sleeper ticket for an evening express train to Moscow. There, I ran into a newly appointed head of the Leningrad branch of the Ministry of the Interior. He and I had been in the same Red Army unit during the Civil War. During our conversation, we naturally talked about the series of changes that had taken place in Leningrad since Kirov’s murder. It turned out that the former head of the Leningrad division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Medvedsky, and his deputy, Zaporozhets, after being sentenced for the “Kirov case,” were not actually in prison at all. At Stalin’s behest, the two men were put in charge of the Lenin Gold Trust, which is a gold-rich mine in Siberia. “They had a pretty good time there, certainly worse than in Leningrad,” My old friend added that Medvedki’s capricious wife had visited him three times in Siberia, each time saving to stay there with her husband, but each time returning to Leningrad and, as in the past, the train always had a separate first-class compartment for her, and the service was particularly attentive.
My friend also told me about the panic in Leningrad caused by both the murder of Kirov and Stalin’s interview. In the investigation of this case. My friend had assisted Milonov, head of the Economic Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Deputy People’s Commissar Agranov.
Before returning to Moscow, Stalin appointed Milonov to serve temporarily in recent months as head of the Leningrad branch of the Interior Ministry and de facto ruler of Leningrad. When I asked Nikolayev how he managed to scurry into the guarded Smolny Palace, my friend replied. “It was for this that Medvedki and Zaporozhets were removed from their posts. To make matters worse, an attempt had been made to infiltrate the Smolny Palace a few days before Kirov’s murder, but it was caught. If the necessary measures had been taken then, Kirov would surely be alive today.” In my opinion, our conversation covered non-substantial things. It was clear that he was unwilling to speak of any details of the murder. When I was about to take my leave, he whispered, apprehensively, “The matter is too sinister to keep myself safe. It is better to know little about it.”
This hint of my friend’s was far more important than the little news I had then received from him. This hint not only deepened my doubts as to the truth of those two official accounts, but it also showed me what the crux of the murder really was. At that time, there was only one person in the whole of the Soviet Union who would not be subjected to torture. The saying “If you want to be safe, it is better not to know about it” could not, of course, be directed at anyone else.
I was convinced that I would find out the truth about the Kirov case in Moscow. I counted on colleagues who held important positions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and who should know the secret of the murder. One of my old colleagues was Zhuronov, the head of the economic department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He had gone with Stalin to Leningrad to interrogate the murder, and then remained in Leningrad as head of the Leningrad branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he had been a plenipotentiary ruler.
Zhuronov was recommended by me to the State Security Service. In 1924, as Deputy Head of the Economic Bureau of the State Political Security Headquarters, I finally persuaded Dzerzhinsky to appoint Mironov as head of one of my sections of the Bureau. Indeed, I put a lot of effort into this. For understandable reasons, Dzerzhinsky was opposed to the placement in an important post of a man who was a complete outsider to the “Agency”. Later, when I was appointed commander of the post-Caucasian border guards, I was told that I should be replaced by Milonov as Deputy Director of the Economic Department of the State Political Security Headquarters. A few years later Milonov became the head of this bureau by his own talent and became one of the right-hand men of People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Yagoda. I am sure that I will be able to find out the whole truth about the “Kirov case” from Milonov.
Shortly after my arrival in Moscow, I was invited as a guest by the head of the transport department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Alexander Shainin, who was a close friend of Yagoda. He was a close friend of Yagoda, an assistant to Kaganovich, a member of the Politburo, who was assisting him in the reconstruction of the Soviet railways. After lunch, my host suggested listening to a record. Shainin, who loved classical Russian songs, became even more sentimental after a few glasses of wine. He pointed to two sets of records that he had saved especially to send to Vanya Zaporozhets at the “Lenin gold mine”, he said. He exclaimed. “Vanya, Vanya. What a nice man! Suffering in vain …… “He later added that Bauke, the head of Stalin’s personal guard, had recently sent Zaporozhets an imported radio as a gift.
I think the fact that Shainin and Bauke sent a gift to Zaporozhets is quite important, because they both knew that any show of sympathy for the prisoner would be considered an exposure of hostility. By an unwritten rule of Stalin’s time. Soviet cadres were to immediately sever ties with all disgraced (let alone imprisoned) people, even if they were closest friends. Stalin’s henchmen like Shainin and Bock, who were well informed, were certainly not unaware of this minimum rule: glorify and flatter those who were rising in the ranks, and break with those who had lost their future as soon as possible. Therefore, what they did could only lead to one conclusion: both Shainin and Bock knew that Zaporozhyn had not fallen out of favor and that sending him a gift would never get him killed.
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