Stalin was so angry that he turned blue in the face and said thickly, “Take him down!” Once he reached the door, Nikolaev stopped, turned his head toward Stalin, and tried to say something, but was pushed out the door all at once.
As soon as the door closed, Stalin eyed Mironov and flew to Yagoda and said, “Tell him to get out!” Mironov headed for the door without being asked. A few minutes later, Yagoda pulled the door open a crack and called Zaporozhets in. Zaporozhets went in to talk to Stalin for less than a quarter of an hour before he ran out of the ominous office. He hurriedly, without even a glance at Mironov, who was still waiting in the reception room, left along the corridor.
The interrogation of Nikolaev was thus a complete failure.
Apparently, it dawned on Nikolaev that it was the Ministry of Internal Affairs that had instigated him to kill Kirov: it was the Ministry of Internal Affairs that had sent an agent to “make friends” with him, and it was the Ministry of Internal Affairs that ordered this “friend” to encourage him to enter the Smolny Palace.
This means that there is no longer any hope of a public trial for the Kirov murder. Even if Nikolaev had promised to use his own confession to frame Zinoviev and Kamenev, that promise would have been unreliable. Who can guarantee that Nikolaev will not again develop the kind of paranoia and actions that motivated him to commit terrorist acts? In court, he could have shouted that it was not Zinoviev and Gaminev who instigated him to kill, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Stalin dared not take such a desperate risk. He could only urge the Ministry of Internal Affairs to organize a secret trial. Nikolaev was to be executed quietly.
At the same time, the people should be told about the murderer. Stalin, of course, would not publicly declare that the young party member’s actions were spontaneous, isolated, and were meant to protest against his persecution by the party bureaucracy. It was only advantageous to describe him as a minion of the White Russian counterrevolutionaries. Thus, the myth of exiled White bandits who infiltrated the Soviet Union from Poland, Lithuania, and Finland to carry out terrorist activities was born.
Of course, Stalin also had to do his utmost to eliminate the traces of Zaporozhye’s sloppy work. Without trial, he first ordered the elimination of his “friends. Secondly, he summoned all of Kirov’s assistants in order to find out if they knew too much about the case. But these aides were sophisticated enough to understand that it would be self-defeating to be clever in such matters, to show that they were sharp-eyed. During their conversation, only one detail caught Stalin’s attention: when they heard the shots rushing from the conference hall into the corridor, they discovered that Kirov’s bodyguard was not there, and that Borisov, who had just called Kirov out of the conference hall, was nowhere to be seen and had not been seen since.
In fact, there was no mystery about Borisov’s sudden disappearance. Knowing a little about the role of the Ministry of the Interior in organizing the murder, he was arrested by Zaporozhets. I have no way of determining what Borisov knew, but the fact itself is chilling enough to know that Borisov was known for his absolute loyalty to Kirov. It would have been a shame if he had deliberately betrayed his “master” in order to please Zaporozhyeze.
Stalin knew that Borisov had been arrested and was being held in the building of the Leningrad branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After questioning Kirov’s assistants, he came to the building to interrogate Borisov. Their conversation was short. Borisov was then quickly and secretly eliminated by Stalin’s order. In this way, Stalin quickly eliminated the two witnesses.
Stalin transported Kirov’s body to Moscow in a special car. In order to bid farewell to the body, the coffin was placed in the center of the hall of the Soviet House in the traditional manner. According to reports, Stalin was deeply saddened by the loss of his friend and comrade, and with deep “affection” for Kirov, leaned over several times to kiss the deceased during the wake. In fact, he, who had gone to seminary, could not fail to realize that his kiss was like the kiss of Judas on the forehead of Jesus.
Zaporozhets’ clumsiness in carrying out the secret tasks entrusted to him, and the traces left by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the murder of Kirov, forced Stalin for a time to give up the idea of accusing the former opposition leader of Kirov’s murder. But Stalin’s retreat had always been temporary. After hastily executing the direct killers and secretly eliminating circumstantial evidence who knew or suspected the role of the Ministry of the Interior in the case, Stalin felt safe again and decided to return to the conspiracy he had initially planned. All this was done very quickly, as can be seen from the official press reports alone. At first it was said that Kirov had died at the hands of White Guard terrorists, then within a few days the tone suddenly changed. In fact, this is not surprising: Stalin created this case. Stalin made this case in order to punish Zinoviev, Kamenev and other former opposition leaders as soon as possible.
A secret trial, held on January 15, 1935, failed to produce any evidence of the involvement of Zinoviev and Kamenev in the crime. However, the trial was held under the pressure of the Military Court and the Stalinist regime. Under the pressure of the military tribunal and the constant blackmail of Stalin’s accomplice Yagoda, Zinoviev and Kamenev agreed to accept political and moral responsibility for the murder, but at the same time denied any involvement in it. However, the court found them guilty on this highly unreliable basis: both were sentenced to five years in prison and sent to concentration camps.
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