Two shots had been fired. (All seven bullets in the gun were accounted for: five were still inside the revolver.) Kirov was hit by only one bullet (later extracted from his head), which was confirmed to have been fired from the Nagant registered to Nikolayev.86 The second bullet was recovered from the floor (a ricochet mark was found on a cornice where wall and ceiling met). The upward angle of the bullet entry, fired from behind at close range, can likely be explained by the fact that although Kirov was short, Nikolayev was even shorter.87
As for the semen, already on the night of December 1 rumors were circulating—tracked by the NKVD—of a liaison with Draule having caused Kirov’s demise. Despite arrests, this gossip persisted. At one enterprise, the non-party Khasanov was overheard to say, “Nikolayev killed comrade Kirov because he lived with his wife.” A candidate member of the party, Gubler, when asked why Nikolayev had killed Kirov, responded, “Because of tarts.” At the Leningrad timber company: “Rumors are circulating that Kirov was killed because of personal score-settling, since he lived with Nikolayev’s wife.” An employee of the Southern Water Station: “I know why they killed Kirov—I spoke with Kirov’s cook and she told me that it was because of a woman, because of jealousy.”88 The pants semen does seem to indicate some sort of tryst the day of the assassination, but that would have been far easier to arrange and hide at Kirov’s residence, where he spent most of the day, with his wife away at Tolmachevo. (Kirov answered the door when a courier delivered documents.)89 As we saw, Draule was in Smolny. The rumors seem to reflect a timeworn trope of the jealous husband and Kirov’s general reputation rather than specifics.90 Of course, even if nothing happened that afternoon between Kirov and Draule, the pair could have been lovers. Draule, under interrogation, denied an affair with Kirov.91 But if she was lying, it is still striking that neither Nikolayev’s handwritten notebook/diary nor his testimony alluded to being cuckolded by Kirov.92
Nikolayev had been bundled into a side office on the third floor, whence he was whisked to NKVD headquarters, where he alternated between wailing uncontrollably and falling silent while staring at a single point. He was carried on a stretcher to the NKVD’s internal clinic for examination at around 6:40 p.m.93 Only around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. could the NKVD interrogate him. Besides the gun, Nikolayev had been carrying his attaché case and was found to be in possession of a party card, a pass to the Smolny cafeteria (from his workers’ and peasants’ inspectorate days), which was how his identity was quickly established, and an address book, which is how his relatives were quickly found. At searches of his and his mother’s apartments, operatives found copies of his various letters to the authorities, the numerous notebooks comprising a diary, the sketch of Kirov’s routes, a fragmentary plan of assassination, secret letters to his wife about his plotting and willingness to die, and instructions on where to find these letters—the kind of treasure trove of documentary evidence never adduced at any of the countless fabricated trials.
“I prepared the whole thing myself,” Nikolayev was recorded as having told Medved, Fomin, and other Leningrad operatives the night of the assassination, “and I never let anyone know of my intentions.” He added: “There was a single reason—estrangement from the party, from which the events in the Leningrad Institute of Party History pushed me away, my unemployment, and the lack of material and, above all, moral assistance from the party organizations. My whole situation reverberated from the moment I was expelled from the party (eight months ago), which discredited me in the eyes of party organizations.” Nikolayev enumerated all his fruitless letters for redress, adding, “There was a single aim of the assassination: for it to become a political signal to the party that over the past eight to ten years on my path of life and work, there has accumulated the baggage of unjust treatment of a living person on the part of certain state persons. . . . This historic mission has been accomplished by me. I had to show the whole party where they had brought Nikolayev.”94
CAVALCADE
Medved had the unenviable task of informing Yagoda, his superior. In the office of the second secretary of the Leningrad city party committee, he composed a telegram: “On December 1, 16:30 in Smolny, third floor, twenty paces from comrade Kirov’s office, Kirov was shot in the head by an unknown assailant who approached him and who, according to party documents, is Leonid Nikolayev, b. 1904, party member since 1924. Kirov is in his office. With him are professors of surgery . . . and other doctors.” The message mentioned that “several functionaries at Smolny recognized Nikolayev . . . as someone who had earlier worked” there, and that an arrest warrant had been issued for his wife, misnamed as Graule. Medved lied that Borisov “had accompanied Kirov to the point of the incident,” concealing NKVD negligence. Inexplicably, the message was stamped as sent at 6:20 p.m. and received and decoded in Moscow by 7:15 p.m.95 Already just after 5:00 p.m., Chudov had called Stalin’s office number; Poskryobyshev picked up.96
As Kirov lay dead, shot by an assassin at party headquarters in Leningrad, Stalin was in his office at party headquarters in Moscow. Members of the inner circle—Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov—had entered the dictator’s suite on Old Square at 3:05 p.m. When the news from Leningrad arrived, according to Kaganovich, Stalin “was shocked at first.”97 Yagoda appeared at 5:50 p.m. and called the Leningrad NKVD twice, likely from Stalin’s office, to inquire whether Nikolayev was wearing foreign clothing (he was not).98 Molotov, later in life, recalled that Stalin had rebuked Medved over the phone (“Incompetents!”).99 At 6:15, Pauker arrived with his deputy and the Kremlin commandant Rudolf Peterson; ten minutes later, they were dismissed to prepare a special train for that evening. Others began arriving: Kalinin, Mikoyan, and Orjonikidze at 6:20, Andreyev at 6:25, Chubar at 6:30, Yenukidze at 6:45. They all cleared out except for Yagoda, who stayed until 8:10, when Mekhlis (editor of Pravda), Bukharin (Izvestiya), Stetsky (culture and propaganda department), and Mikhail Suslov (a Control Commission functionary) entered, staying ten minutes. Stalin edited the text of a bulletin that would run in central newspapers under the names of all politburo members. “You were dear to us all, comrade Kirov, as a true friend, a true comrade, a dependable comrade-in-arms,” it stated, using the familiar ty (“thou”) inserted by Stalin. “You were always with us in the years of our hard struggles for the triumph of socialism in our country, you were always with us in the years of wavering and trouble inside our party, you lived through all the difficulties of the last years with us. . . . Farewell, our dear friend and comrade, Sergei!”100
Stalin then held back Yagoda, alone, for twenty minutes, until 8:30 p.m.101 At some point the dictator had drafted a short, vaguely worded law stipulating expedited handling of terrorist cases, with immediate implementation of the death penalty and no right of appeal, which Yenukidze signed as secretary of the Soviet’s central executive committee (and which, subsequently, Kalinin signed as chairman of that body).102 Leningrad party officials, convening their own meeting in Smolny at 6:00 p.m., drafted their own announcement, formed their own funeral commission, and instructed lower-level party committees to call meetings at factories that very night.103