Talk:Sergei Kirov

The votes against Stalin

The number of votes against Stalin appears to be different in different sources. The memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan, chapter 48, available online in Russian [1] claims 287 votes. Mikoyan credits the information to Olga Shatunovskaya, who chaired a committee investigating Great Purges. Several other Russian webpages (i.e., [2]) claim 292, also crediting the number to Shatunovskaya committee. I will put 292 into the article for now, since it appears in more sources. If anyone has different information, let me know.

Another source [3] makes even more striking claim: Stalin had received a 100 yes votes and 1100 no votes. Stalin's people would then figure out everyone who voted "no" by their handwriting (they had to write in a candidate instead of the vote they were voting against) and those people would be executed during purges. I am not sure about the credibility of the claim and I am not including it because of that. Andris 01:11, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

In Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Stalin the Court of the Red Tsar" (p. 132) the author states that 166 ballots went missing and that Stalin received somewhere between 123 and 292 negative votes.130.237.175.198 07:31, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

The huge Kirov's statue in Baku

I added some informations and a link about the huge Kirov's statue that dominated the panorama of the city of Baku from 1939 to 1991. Regards!

Virgilio 22:06, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Misspelling

"Chitye Prudi" as a station should be "Chistiye Prudy" or whatever. You're missing an S

repetitive sentences

In the first paragprah the last sentence is: "He became a Marxist and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1904. He was assassinated in 1934."

Next paragraph: "Becoming a Marxist, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1904."

Could we remove one of these? Anatoly larkin 02:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Sergei or Sergey?

title and picture caption say sergey, within the article it is sergei. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.187.219.142 (talk) 03:18, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Alleged

We are told of the possibility of a random act of violence. The assassin, Nikolaiyev, had a valid NKVD pass

and had arrranged for the guards in the corridors to disappear. He also arranged for Borisov, Kirov's personal body guard, to vanish. All this is hardly consistent with a private motive. A good account of Kirov's death is given by Conquest and Khrushchev, for that matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.230.157 (talk) 08:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The article looks based on the sole point of view and theory of Stalin organizing the murder. Almost no place given to other points of view, even to the official one.Garret Beaumain (talk) 10:03, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Trivia

I have changed the trivia section into references in popular culture. I also removed the sentence "Kirov was a very popular figure during his reign in Leningrad" as it doesn't really fit anywhere and is hard to source. --TheCooperman (talk) 17:07, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Secret documents released

[4] But documents released on Tuesday by Russia's domestic intelligence agency -- including Nikolayev's diary, published with the permission of his son -- painted a picture of a disillusioned Communist Party functionary acting alone, out of bitterness and revenge.

Nikolayev had tried hard to rise to the top of the Leningrad Party hierarchy but instead was told to go and work at a factory in a lower position.

He decided to take revenge on Kirov after he was thrown out of the party for "breaching party discipline", denied treatment in a sanatorium despite having heart problems, and could no longer get food rations available to party apparatchiks.

"You can eat yourself now -- no money, no food," the father of two wrote in his diary. "For themselves, they (party leaders) hold garages with automobiles, for us they have sodden bread." LokiiT (talk) 02:49, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

bad article...

This whole kriminology here about the assasination is pretty useless... Let's just simply say that the case has never been fully solved. And whatever the real background of it all, the important point is that it was use as a pretext for the purges.

Also I'm rather amused by the positive portrait of Kirov (as an opponent of Stalin). In the german Wikipedia he is depicted as a hardliner, mass murderer and follower of Stalin...! :-) oh well...

Clearly there are issues with the articles (maybe there are just subjects for which the Wikipedia concept doesn't work...) I think there are more issues with the english version, mostly because of the style. Anyway. Maybe let's just try to be a bit more sober and neutral in depicting historical figures. Sometimes saying less is better. You know, it's not about making a script for a holliwood movie, where the hero has to be either good or bad [Or then at least I'd recommend to synchronize on which side the judgement falls between Wikipedia versions :-) !]. This here ought to be about history and real folks, not Hollywood and entertainment.

greetings, 212.171.245.69 (talk) 10:59, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

212.171.245.69 should use specific arguments, not broad statements. He should explain how Nikolayev caused the normal guards to vanish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.71.46 (talk) 15:06, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

to do with Stalin

1- The story where Stalin got 270 negative voices is based on documents that don't exist.
A protocol of unsealing the documents of the counting board was published in the paper "Izvestiya CC CPSU" 1989. № 7. p.114.
The findings were these: 3 voices were cast against Stalin. There were 166 missing ballot papers. However, it is unknown how many out of 1225 members were present and voted. It is entirely possible they simply weren't there. Many historians like Medvedev and Conquest chose to disregard that, but there's no reason we should do that as well.

2- There is simply no evidence whatsoever that Stalin orchestrated or was even interested in Kirov's assassination. It's an old conspiracy theory. It should not be presented as a likely scenario in this article or lead the reader to believe that even though there is no evidence, it's what's happened.

3- Kirov's murder did not lead to purges from the Party. The decision to organize a massive Party card verification was taken 2 months prior to his death.
BesterRus (talk) 05:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

These all are good points, but perhaps you've deleted too large part of the article. It would be nice to inform the readers at least about some details of conspiracy theories on Stalin involvement. Maybe a short section on this should be left. Otherwise it is hard to understand why they made several investigations of the event decades later, and why the lead section tells about "conspiracy theories and speculations" but there is almost nothing about them in the body of the article. GreyHood ^Talk 12:32, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your critique and suggestions, I'm new to wikipedia and I definitely need that. I'm going to try and make a section about the conspiracy theory based on the material that was in the earlier version. However, I don't think I'd be able to provide the foundation for the conspiracy theories and investigations. I'm fairly certain I understand the reasons, but I simply wouldn't be able to back them up with sources. For example:

• The theories started off when there was an obvious struggle between two political powers inside the Party. People could see the casualties, but couldn't tell what exactly was going on, which in turn gave birth all sorts of rumors and theories.
  
• The second investigation wasn't launched based on a theory, but on Khrushchev's need for de-stalinization. The fact that the results of Khrushchev's investigation weren't published strongly suggests that he wasn't interested in finding just any result, and given the ideology of his rule, the result he sought after is fairly obvious.
  
• The reason the third investigation was launched was for an entirely new reason. Western world was heavily criticizing past Soviet politics, believing everything that Khrushchev said about the Stalin period. Launching another investigation was simply a way of dealing with all the political pressure coming from the West.
  

However, all this is speculative. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't just write things like that without providing a source, can I?

BesterRus (talk) 03:01, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, everything should be sourced at least by some publications. Maybe not books, but at least some articles by historians or journalists (though using journalism for contentious historical topics is highly undesirable). GreyHood ^Talk 11:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

• The massive unilateral removal of information sourced to numerous secondary RS [5] goes against our policies, such as WP:NPOV and WP:Consensus. So, here is the question: why materials sourced to books by Figes, Amy Knight, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov, and Barmin were removed? Two first people are well-known scholars, and not "anticommunists" by any account. Orlov was not a scholar, but can be quoted with appropriate attribution. Barmin should also qualify as RS, although I did not read his books. Biophys (talk) 18:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)