Moscow. Assassination of Sergei Kirov. It marks the beginning of Stalin’s terrible purges. According to a legend spread throughout the USSR, Lenin, before dying, had imposed a solemn oath on the party’s top leaders: “Don’t kill each other, because if heads start rolling, it will end like the French Revolution.” The official version is that Kirov, a close friend of Stalin, was killed by a young official, Leonid Nicolaev, who had no chance to defend himself, and was shot within hours. According to Trotsky, however, Stalin himself ordered the assassination, to rid himself of his friend, who had taken on liberal tendencies and was beginning to overshadow him.
