Unemployed Leningrad party member who shot Kirov dead at the Smolny on 1 December 1934
Born in St Petersburg to an artisan's family and raised by his mother, a cleaner, he apprenticed with a locksmith, joined the Bolshevik party in 1923 and drifted through minor Leningrad posts: factory Komsomol secretary, inspector of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. Expelled in 1933 for refusing a transfer to the provinces, he was readmitted in April 1934 with a severe reprimand but could not find work. On 1 December 1934 he shot Kirov in the back of the head in a third-floor corridor of the Smolny. The NKVD cast him as a member of a Zinovievite 'Leningrad Centre', and on 29 December the Military Collegium sentenced him and 13 others to death; he was shot an hour later. His wife Milda Draule was shot the following year. Stalin used the assassination to destroy the former opposition.
Activities and affiliations
-
1923–1934
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Government and administration -
Soviet Union state institutionsInspector of the Workers' and Peasants' InspectorateMain
Government and administration
Career Timeline
- 1923Joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
- 1933Expelled from the party after refusing a transfer to the provinces
- 1934.04Readmitted with a severe reprimand; unemployed
- 1934.10.15Detained near Kirov's home carrying a revolver, then released
- 1934.12.01Shot Kirov dead at the Smolny
- 1934.12.29Shot an hour after the Military Collegium sentenced him to death