On 1 December 1934, Sergey Kirov, the popular mayor of Leningrad and a prominent member of the Soviet Communist Party, was assassinated under circumstances that remain shrouded in mystery.
His death provided Joseph Stalin with a pretext to launch the Great Purge, a harrowing campaign of political repression from 1934 to 1938.
Stalin exploited Kirov’s assassination to justify a wave of arrests, executions, and imprisonments targeting party members, military leaders, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens, consolidating his absolute authority while plunging the Soviet Union into an era of fear and suspicion.
