Description:
Drawing on hundreds of newly available, top-secret KGB and party Central Committee documents, historian Matthew E. Lenoe reexamines the 1934 assassination of Leningrad party chief Sergei Kirov. Joseph Stalin used the killing as the pretext to unleash the Great Terror that decimated the Communist elite in 1937-1938; these previously unavailable documents raise new questions about whether Stalin himself ordered the murder, a subject of speculation since 1938.
The book includes translations of 125 documents from the various investigations of the Kirov murder, allowing readers to reach their own conclusions about Stalin's involvement in the assassination.
Review Quotes: Winner of the 2011 Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History sponsored by the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies --Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History "Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies" (6/8/2012 12:00:00 AM)