Was the assassination of Kirov really that significant in consolidating Stalin's power?
Upvote:2
Stalin was biggest, but was not the only shark in the pool
The history of power struggles in USSR and other communist countries (China would be one example) is often murky and incomprehensible for the casual observer, especially the Western observer. You have many factions and cliques, and real differences between them are hard to comprehend. Those differences are sometimes ideological, sometimes ethnical, and sometimes there are power struggles between two or more groups based purely on "we against them" gang mentality. The whole situation is further obscured by the official party language, and conflicts resolving themselves, mostly on party congresses and conferences.
Anyway, Stalin was a leader of the centrist faction, a faction mostly comprising existing party functionaries interested in consolidating communist power in Soviet Union, and willing to put a brake on "World Revolution", at least for a time being. Theory of Socialism in One Country was their official doctrine in late 1920's and early 1930's. At that time Stalin's biggest opponents were the United Opposition (merger between the Left Opposition and the New Opposition), also known as the International or Jewish faction (leaders of the Left Opposition Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev were all of Jewish ethnicity) . The Left Opposition was ideologically opposed to Stalin's views and demanded permanent global revolution. Ironically, the New Opposition (led by Kamenev and Zinoviev) was initially closer to Stalin's position but later relented and moved further to the left to be closer to their allies. With the help of the Right Opposition (sometimes called nationalistic, or Russian faction) led by Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, Stalin managed to marginalize Trotsky and his allies in the United Opposition by early 1930's. However, the alliance between Stalin and the Right Opposition was short lived - Stalin never planned to share power with them or to pursue their more liberal and market oriented ideas. Therefore, by the time of Kirov's assassination they too were marginalized and put aside. Stalin would use the Great Purge to get rid of them completely.
There was another group, potentially most dangerous in Stalin's eyes, and that was the Red Army itself and some of its more charismatic commanders like Mikhail Tukhachevsky. There are indications that Stalin wanted to remove Tukhachevsky as early as 1930, but could not do so because he was not sufficiently powerful at this time. What is certain is that Stalin feared a Napoleon like overthrow of revolutionary government by an ambitious general, and Tukhachevsky was certainly ambitious and sometimes called the "red Napoleon".
What about Sergei Kirov ? Kirov belonged to Stalin's centrist faction and was considered his friend and ally. He was not regarded as a potential opponent, and was politically one of the weakest members of Politburo, residing in Leningrad and not Moscow. However, there is a possibility that Kirov would oppose Stalin's excesses in dealing with his opponents within the party. If we accept the theory that Stalin organized his assassination, then Kirov could be regarded as a sacrificial pawn in Stalin's game of deadly chess. But even if we do not believe that Stalin ordered Kirov's death, he certainly used it to put in motion an already existing plan for purges.
More post
- 📝 How long did the battle of Bosworth last?
- 📝 Has the training of Russian troops improved since 1989?
- 📝 Has a democracy ever transitioned (or reverted back) to a monarchy?
- 📝 What was the need to call the Estates-General of 1789?
- 📝 How can I identify this silver kitchen fork?
- 📝 What were the relations between Romania and Bulgaria before WWI?
- 📝 Language in German cloisters during the High Middle Ages
- 📝 Medieval physician Cornelius Shilander?
- 📝 Were there Old English speaking enclaves within the Danelaw?
- 📝 Why would people join a bloc party?
- 📝 Were taxes from senatorial provinces and imperial provinces sent to their respective treasuries in the Roman Empire? (Under the rule of Augustus)
- 📝 What are the themes of post-WW2 Polish immigration to the United States?
- 📝 Was the Holy Roman Empire a financial union as well as a defensive union?
- 📝 What crops were part of the medieval spring harvest?
- 📝 Identify the caricatured countries in an illustration about the XYZ affair
- 📝 Why didn't King Ferdinand take over Portugal during the Spanish Reconquista?
- 📝 What was the last profitable war?
- 📝 Why does Brazil have many more Italian descendants than the U.S. or Argentina when the latter two received more Italian immigrants?
- 📝 Why were 40,000 German troops left in Prague instead of pulled back to defend Berlin?
- 📝 Athenian Democracy - How were the citizens motivated to be so politically active?
- 📝 Why was the 1944 surrender of 20,000 Germans on the Western Front remarkable?
- 📝 Examples of defense without walls
- 📝 What was the official reason for not invading France until the middle of 1944?
- 📝 What was the Soviet response to accusations surrounding the Lin Biao incident?
- 📝 Why did Russia expand eastwards?
- 📝 How did Hitler imagine his succession? (for the case nazis would win the war)
- 📝 How exactly were the titles of the Roman emperors passed on to their heirs
- 📝 Has an underequipped army ever won a major war?
- 📝 How did the ruling class in the Muslim world react to the discovery and colonization of the Americas?
- 📝 Who won the wrestling match between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Was the assassination of Kirov really that significant in consolidating Stalin's power?
- 📝 Did JFK really say "Hitler is one of the greatest men…one of the most significant figures that ever lived"?
- 📝 Did Brahms really leave Germany because he was dissatisfied with the political realities of that time?
- 📝 Was "Mad Anthony" Wayne of the Continental Army really that cruel like shown in this video?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 Is there any evidence to support the claim that the United States was "suckered into WW1" by Zionists, made by Benjamin Freedman in his 1961 speech?
- 📝 Is it true that slavery was endemic in Sub-Saharan Africa previous to the establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade?
- 📝 Was race really unimportant in the 1660's?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
- 📝 Was slavery really on the way out in the antebellum USA?
- 📝 What was the first solar eclipse that was demonstrably predicted in advance?
- 📝 Who was the last leader of a country to call himself a dictator, or the last regime that called itself a dictatorship?
- 📝 Was any stimulant used in wars before WW2 that gave a significant advantage to soldiers?
- 📝 What is the evidence to claim that political order in ancient Rome was sufficiently different under "kingdom", "republic" and "empire"?
- 📝 Was there an assassination attempt against Xerxes in the battle of Thermopylae?
- 📝 How likely is it that any non-Celtic language was spoken in the British Isles when the Romans invaded?
- 📝 How significant was the Fall of Constantinople as an event leading to the Age of Exploration?
- 📝 Was there really a navy officer named Picard at the Battle of Trafalgar?
- 📝 What was the planned line of succession for the Nazi Party in the event that Hitler died?
- 📝 When was the last documented occasion that Arab or Ottoman slave traders abducted people from Europe?
- 📝 What was the "Favorable result" that the German admiralty was expecting from the naval attack on the Royal Navy in 1918?
- 📝 Is there any evidence to support the claim that the US Strategic Defense Initiative played any significant role in undermining the USSR?
- 📝 Was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 captured on film?
- 📝 What was the liquor that was based on petrol which was produced in the USSR during the Second World War?
- 📝 Was Russia the only country in WWII that succeeded in expansionist war aims?
- 📝 Did Truman really believe that Hiroshima was a military base?
- 📝 Did the Tamil People discover that the earth was round 2000 years ago?
- 📝 Was Islam really responsible for the Italian Renaissance?
- 📝 What was the device that general Birdwood was using in the "Gallipoli" TV series?
- 📝 Did any ancient polytheistic religion hold that theirs was the only pantheon?