Sergey Kirov

Soviet politician and Bolshevik revolutionary (1886–1934)

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Lived 1886–1934, aged 48

Wikipedia
58 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1886–1934
Aged 48
Awards
3
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

Shot dead in his Leningrad offices in 1934, his murder gave Stalin the pretext for the Great Purge—a wave of show trials and executions that consumed the Soviet state.

Biography

About

Born Kostrikov on 27 March 1886, he joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as an early revolutionary in the Russian Empire. An Old Bolshevik and personal friend of Joseph Stalin, he rose through Communist Party ranks to head the party organization in Leningrad and win a seat on the Politburo. On 1 December 1934, Leonid Nikolaev shot and killed him at his offices in the Smolny Institute. Nikolaev and several alleged accomplices were convicted in a show trial and executed less than 30 days later. Stalin used the assassination as the catalyst for the Moscow tri…

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