Book 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 unavailableā¦
Why read it?
1 author picked The Kirov Murder and Soviet History as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
For a few brief years following the fall of communism in Russia, the archives were opened to (even) foreign academics.
The result was a wealth of new detail on post-1917 Russia. In 1934 Sergei Kirov, Leningrad party chief and one of Stalinās favourite āsonsā, was assassinated. As this book makes clear, it was the work of a disaffected party member and enabled by the deliberately lax security arrangements that Kirov himself sought. However, the murder also served as the pretext for the Great Terror.
The value of the book is not merely in answering the question surrounding the murder itselfā¦
If you love The Kirov Murder and Soviet History...
These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancĆ©, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Heddaā¦
Want books like The Kirov Murder and Soviet History?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Kirov Murder and Soviet History.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,394
readers submitted
so far, will you?
š If you like The Kirov Murder and Soviet History, you might also like...
Exit Black
Imperium is the most expensive structure ever created. Once an orbiting laboratory, it is now a space hotel for the fantastically wealthy. But as the station preps for its first group of space tourists, Dr. Chloe Bonilla, Imperiumās resident biophysicist, finds herself questioning whether babysitting a passel of space glampersā¦
Mural
Famed Australian literary critic Peter Craven has included Mural in his best books for 2024. He called it "dark and brilliant." Rod McLary in the Queensland Reviewers Collective says it's "breath-taking," a "tour de force of literary fiction." On her blog This Reading Life, Brona was "fascinated" by this confessionā¦
