INTERVIEW WITH GROVER FURR

Grover Furr is a Professor of Russian/Soviet history at Montclair State University known for his work defending Stalin’s role historically in such works as Khrushchev Lied and an upcoming book (to be published 2012 in Russia) arguing that Stalin did not have anything to do with the assassination of Sergei Kirov.

The source for this interview from July 18, 2006 is Portland Maoist—21^st Century Communism

Stalin has been blamed for the murder of Kirov. Is there any credibility to this? This story has been widely spread, both in the West and in Russia, by anti-communist and anti-Stalinist authors. [Leon] Trotsky and Alexander Orlov seem to have been the original sources for this tall tale. Later it was spread by Robert Conquest (Stalin and the Kirov Murder, 1990) never one to pass up an anti-Stalin story, no matter how far-fetched, and Amy Knight (Who Killed Kirov?, 2000), whose anti-communist biases lead her far astray of the truth. It’s a complete lie, and always has been, because there has never been any evidence for it. On the contrary: Stalin was very fond of Kirov, who was a solid supporter of Stalin’s too.

Meanwhile, both Trotsky and Orlov have been proven to have lied. In his infamous “Secret Speech” of February 25, 1956 Khrushchev hinted at Stalin’s guilt for Kirov’s assassination. But he never made the charge directly. Several – at least two and perhaps three – commissions under Khrushchev and later tried to find evidence to blame Stalin for this, but never found any.

The main Russian researcher on this question is Alla Kirilina. She is very anti-Stalin and has written a couple of books about it. (Rikoshet and Neizvestnyi Kirov, which includes an updated version of the former book). But she admits that Stalin seems to have had nothing to do with Kirov’s murder.

Interestingly, the main version now promoted by anti-Stalinists is that Nikolaev – the person who undoubtedly shot Kirov and was executed for it – was a “lone assassin.” To accept that version means rejecting the confessions of the defendants at the first Moscow Trial of 1936, the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial that they themselves had planned and carried out Kirov’s assassination.  But the anti-communists are eager to believe that the confessions of these defendants were somehow “false” – though there is not the slightest evidence that they were!

There’s no evidence that they were lying, and what they said is consistent with the testimony at the second and third Moscow Trials of 1937 and 1938. Of course, we don’t know the details because the Russian government has steadfastly refused to make the voluminous investigation records public, or even accessible to researchers. Had Stalin been guilty, they would certainly have been made public in the atmosphere of anti-Stalin propaganda that reigned under Khrushchev, and then again under Gorbachev and [Y]eltsin.

The evidence that has been made available is so scanty that any number of scenarios are possible. But Nikolaev was probably not specifically delegated to be Kirov’s assassin. Rather this mentally unstable person was made to believe that Kirov had wronged him. In 2003 one short interrogation of Kotolynov was published in Russia, in which Kotolynov admitted “moral responsibility” for Kirov’s assassination, since they had poisoned Nikolaev’s mind against Kirov (Lubianka-Stalin…1922-1936, No. 481) In fragments of other testimony Kotolynov repeats this admission, while denying that he personally instructed Nikolaev in any way.

The story that Kirov had been involved with Nikolaev’s wife, Mil’da Draule, is still going around. Maybe that was the story that the Zinoviev-Kamenev group told Nikolaev, to egg him on? Kirilina has publicly said she does not believe any such affair took place (Argumenty I Fakti – St. Petersburg, Dec.1, 2004). And in fact Draule may have helped Nikolaev in the assassination, as she apparently confessed.

In short,

* We don’t know even what the Soviet government knew in the 1930s, because the

Russian government refuses to release the investigation materials.

* There is no reason at present to believe Zinoviev, Kamenev, and the other defendants at the 1936 Moscow Trial were lying when they confessed to planning Kirov’s assassination, with Nikolaev as the assassin.

* Only by assuming the existence of some conspiracy of this kind can we account for the evidence we know of – although, to repeat, so much is being withheld that nothing can be taken as certain.

* The anti-communist “party line” that no conspiracy existed, Nikolaev acted on his own, and Zinoviev, Kamenev and the rest were somehow coerced or persuaded to falsely confess to Kirov’s murder, is supported by no evidence whatsoever and, in my view, is the least likely story.

The bottom line: The evidence we have at present supports the theory that Zinoviev, Kamenev, and a group of their followers were responsible for setting Nikolaev to assassinate Kirov. Any objective assessment of the evidence we now have must reach that conclusion.

If and when more evidence becomes available – from the former Soviet archives, still kept strictly secret – we should be ready to change our minds in conformity to that evidence. The anti-communists are unwilling to do this, because they will only accept “horror stories” that make Stalin, the Bolsheviks, and communism in general, “look bad.” That doesn’t necessarily mean they are all liars, though some of them, like Conquest, certainly are. In the main, they are blinded by their prejudices.