On December 1, 1934 Leningrad Party leader Sergei M. Kirov was murdered. Investigation of this crime soon led to the three public Moscow \u201cShow\u201d Trials, to the \u201cTukhachevsky Affair\u201d trial of eight top Army commanders; and then to the \u201cEzhovshchina\u201d or \u201cGreat Terror\u201d.<\/p>\n
Was Leonid Nikolaev, Kirov\u2019s killer, a lone gunman acting from personal motives whose crime Stalin then \u201cused\u201d to frame and execute real or imagined enemies? Or was Nikolaev\u2019s arrest the key event that led to the uncovering \u201cthe great conspiracy against Soviet Russia\u201d?<\/p>\n
Grover Furr has studied all the available evidence, most of it from formerly-secret Soviet archives. He offers complete and original translations of key historical documents and detailed analysis of their significance in an important synthesis that effectively reconsiders one of the pivotal events of Soviet history.<\/p>\n
Furr also examines in detail the three latest studies of the Kirov murder \u2013 by Alla Kirilina, \u00c5smund Egge, and Matthew Lenoe. His discovery: all the \u201cauthoritative\u201d studies of the Kirov murder are hopelessly wrong.<\/p>\n
Written with the same meticulous attention to detail as his 2011 work\u00a0Khrushchev Lied<\/em>, Furr\u2019s book\u00a0The Murder of Sergei Kirov: History, Scholarship and the Anti-Stalin Paradigm<\/em>\u00a0is a bold rejoinder to decades of omission, distortion and misinformation by Soviet, Russian, and Western historians.<\/p>\n Reviews and Comments on\u00a0The Murder of Sergei Kirov<\/big><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cGrover Furr moves with perfect ease with the Russian language and Russian archives. Without being intimidated by political correctness his research and documentation is precise, patient, meticulous. He has already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as the title of one of his previous books states, Khrushchev Lied. Now he confronts the question of Kirov’s murder. The Soviet tragedy begins with the \u201cKirov Affair\u201d. This is one more reason to reconsider it, in the light of the important novelties in the book by Grover Furr.\u201d<\/p>\n – Professor Domenico Losurdo, University of Urbino, Italy \u201cMatthew Lenoe in his massive work has argued that Kirov\u2019s murderer was in fact a lone gunman, and that Stalin used the Kirov murder as an ideal opportunity to smear his opponents. Drawing upon many archival \u0003and published sources, Professor Furr provides a better and objective analysis, arguing that the murderer did not act alone, but was a\u00a0member of the Zinovievite conspirational organization.\u201d<\/p>\n – Professor Candan Badem, Professor of Russian and Soviet history, Tunceli University, Turkey<\/p>\n \u201cGrover Furr analyzes in detail the interrogations of Nikolaev’s associates, compares them with the testimony of a number of the arrested Zinovievite and the materials of the Moscow Trials 1936-38. He cites sources not accessible to the Russian reader: the Volkogonov Archive, letters of Trotsky from Harvard University, books and article published in the West that are not available in Russian… Furr’s book is not an \u201ceasy read.\u201d In the author\u2019s own words, it is \u201cfor those readers who seek critical examination and analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n – Igor\u2019 Pykhalov, historian, St Petersburg, Russia, author of more than a dozen books on Stalin and Soviet history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nAuthor of Stalin.\u00a0Storia e critica di una leggenda nera<\/em>\u00a0(Rome: Carocci, 2008)<\/p>\n