page_title: Sergei Kirov
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Sergei Kirov / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Санкт-Петербург / St Petersburg - Каменноостро́вский проспе́кт / Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt 26-28 - Museum Apartment S.M.Kirov (Серге́й Миро́нович Ки́ров)
context_page_description: Sergei Mironovich Kirov was a Soviet politician and Bolshevik revolutionary whose assassination was used as a pretext to launch the first Great Purge.
  Kirov was an early revolutionary in the Russian Empire and member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Kirov became an Old Bolshevik and personal friend to Joseph Stalin, rising through the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ranks to become head of the party in Leningrad and a member of the Politburo.
  On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed by Leonid Nikolayev at his offices in the Smolny Institute for unknown reasons. Kirov's death was later used as a pretext for Stalin's escalation of political repression in the Soviet Union and the events of the Great Purge, with complicity as a common charge for the condemned in the Moscow Trials. Kirov's assassination is controversial and unsolved, and there is a widespread but unproven belief of the complicity of Stalin and the NKVD.
context_section_description: Kirov's assassination became a major event in the history of the Soviet Union because it was used by Stalin as an excuse to justify his reign of terror known as the Great Purge. At the time of Kirov’s murder, Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, was out of the country; his daughter Tanya implied that Litvinov realised this event might be an excuse for Stalin to unleash a reign of terror. This view was confirmed by Anastas Mikoyan’s son, who stated that the murder of Kirov had certain similarities to the burning of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany in 1933. Although it is not known whether the fire at the Reichstag was organised by the Nazis, it was used as a pretext for the mass persecution of the Communists and Social Democrats in Germany. The physical removal of Kirov meant the elimination of a future potential rival for Stalin, but the principal objective, as with the fire at the Reichstag, was to manufacture an excuse for repression and control.
  Many cities, streets and factories were named or renamed after Kirov in his honor, including the cities of Kirov (formerly Vyatka) and Kirov Oblast, Kirovsk (Murmansk Oblast), Kirov (Kaluga Oblast), Kirovohrad (formerly Zinovyevsk, now Kropyvnytskyi) and Kirovohrad Oblast (Ukrainian SSR; now Ukraine), Kirovabad (Azerbaijani SSR; now Ganja, Azerbaijan), Kirovakan (Armenian SSR; now Vanadzor, Armenia), the Kirovskaya station of the Moscow Metro (now Chistye Prudy station), the Kirov Ballet (now the Mariinsky Ballet), the massive Kirov Plant in Saint Petersburg, Kirov Square in Yekaterinburg, the Kirov Islands in the Kara Sea, and various small settlements. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the locations and buildings named after Kirov have been renamed, especially outside of Russia. In order to comply with Ukrainian decommunization laws, Kirovohrad was renamed Kropyvnytskyi by the Ukrainian parliament on 14 July 2016. Ukraine's Kirovohrad Oblast was not retitled because it is mentioned by name in the Constitution of Ukraine, and any alteration would require a constitutional amendment. The S. M. Kirov Forestry Academy in Leningrad was named after him, but renamed the Saint Petersburg State Forest Technical University. For many years, a huge granite and bronze statue of Kirov dominated the city of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, erected on a hill in 1939. The statue was dismantled in January 1992, shortly after Azerbaijan gained its independence. 
  The Kirov Prize, a speedskating match in the city of Kirov, was named for him. The Kirov Prize is the oldest annual organised race in speedskating, apart from the World Speed Skating Championships and the European Speed Skating Championships.
  The English Communist poet John Cornford wrote an eponymous poem in his honour.
  The Soviet Navy cruiser Kirov was named after him, and by extension the Kirov-class cruiser. The Kirov name was again used for the battlecruiser Kirov and the Kirov-class battlecruiser.
caption: A portrait of Kirov from his the Sergei Kirov Museum in his former apartment in Saint Petersburg.
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