Mobster stories like The Godfather and The Sopranos are perennially popular because of a morbid fascination with the rise and fall of ruthless but charismatic strongmen. We see everyday themes that we all deal with though on mafia steroids: loyalty, betrayal, backstabbing, ambition. One of the fascinating aspects of history is that what actually happens in the past goes beyond the imagination of even the most talented writer.

If ever there was an historic model for a mafia kingpin, it would have to be Josef Stalin. Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili to a poor family in Georgia (Russia) in 1878, Dzhugashvili went to a seminary as a young man but chose to join the growing revolutionary movement in Russia over life as an Orthodox priest. Soon after, he changed his name to Stalin which could be a combination of the Russian words “steel” and “Lenin.” (there is dispute over this point).

Lacking formal education, Stalin excelled in the nuts and bolts of organization. Lenin recognized his talents and appointed Stalin to a post that maximized his organizational abilities. Stalin soon rose to prominence by gaining control of appointments and installing loyalists to important posts.

When Lenin died in January of 1924, Trotsky seemed to be the natural choice as a successor. Trotsky advocated permanent revolution exporting the communist ideals worldwide. Stalin had a different vision: the preferred to achieve socialist perfection within Russia before spreading the revolution to other nations. Stalin used the philosophical disagreement to isolate and marginalize Trotsky. The plan worked and Trotsky was forced into exile. To add a little mafioso flair, Trotsky fled to Mexico where an NKVD agent eventually planted an ice pick in the back of his head. If this sounds like a good addition to The Godfather series, just wait, it gets better.

Using the NKVD[1] and his bureaucratic minions, Stalin initiated top down control of Russia through five-year plans forcibly collectivizing peasants while increasing industrialization in government controlled factories. Any protest, no matter how slight, was met with brutal repression. When Ukrainian farmers resisted collectivization, Stalin engineered a famine resulting in the deaths of six to seven million Ukrainians.

By 1933, formerly loyal Stalinists began questioning the unyielding tactics of centralization. At a Politburo meeting that year, Stalin called for another round of arrests. Sergei Kirov, an influential Politburo member and chairman of the Party in Leningrad, led a successful movement to defeat the proposal. Kirov soon gathered followers and shot down several of Stalin’s initiatives. The writing was on the wall. Factions within the government were positioning Kirov to succeed Stalin.

Kirov’s open opposition came as an unwelcome surprise. After Lenin’s death, Kirov wisely supported Stalin’s rise to power. He was supposed to be one of Stalin’s loyal apparatchiks, not a challenger. In early 1934, Kirov flexed his political muscle proposing amnesty and release from prison of all who opposed collectivization. Kirov’s proposal was approved by a majority of the Politburo. Stalin had spent years eliminating rivals and appointing cronies to consolidate his power and now one of his own was moving to undo his careful work. Kirov was too popular to simply denounce and remove. The situation was an embarrassing reminder that Stalin did not yet enjoy unlimited authority and he was determined to remedy the situation.

On December 1, 1934, Kirov left his office in the Smolny Institute in Leningrad with Commissar Grigoriy Borisov for lunch. Kirov’s usual NKVD guard was absent having called in sick. Borisov lagged behind and Kirov walked alone down the hall unaware of a non-descript Leonid Nicolayev loitering in a corner. Nicolayev had recently lost his job and Party membership. Mysteriously, the NKVD had arrested and inexplicably released Nicolayev days earlier without pressing charges. Somehow Nicolayev walked into the heavily guarded Smolny Institute that morning without being stopped by anyone.

In a scene reminiscent of the climactic end of The Godfather, Nikolayev emerged from the shadows, pulled a revolver from his pocket and shot Kirov in the back of the head. Justice was not long in coming. Borisov died the next day after “accidentally” falling out of the back of an NKVD truck. Soviet authorities quickly convicted Nikolaev in a trial lasting less than five minutes. Guards dragged Nikolayev to the basement and summarily shot him.

Kirov’s assassination was widely acclaimed as a national tragedy but sent a clear message to the Soviet leadership. All talk of reform or reconciliation with the Trotskyites ceased immediately. Blame was officially laid at the feet of Trotsky in collusion with fascist agents to undermine the Soviet socialist experiment. Senior politicians made impassioned speeches calling for every member of the Party to be investigated thoroughly for complicity. No one was above suspicion.

It was a neat trick that Tony Soprano would have envied. Stalin killed his chief rival making it appear his enemies had been responsible. Stalin had risen to power by eliminating rivals and then faced challenges to his authority from previously handpicked men he had allowed to remain in power too long. Stalin would not make that mistake again.

Kirov’s death became a pretext to launch the Great Purge where anyone from senior Party members to lowly peasants and anyone in between were executed or imprisoned. The NKVD arrested suspects with or without cause obtaining confessions through torture or simply carried out an execution without bothering with the formality of gathering evidence. Estimates vary and are subject to continuing debate (even after the opening of the Soviet archives), but the NKVD executed anywhere from 1.2 to 1.8 million.

Executions only tell part of the story. Stalin did not create gulags but he grew them exponentially. Anne Applebaum wrote a book based on Soviet archives that estimated 18 million were formally imprisoned in gulags but that number does not include millions more exiled or imprisoned in other detention centers. All totaled, during Stalin’s reign, Applebaum estimated 26 million were forced to endure forced labor in one form or another. Gulag conditions were horrendous. Work days lasted 12-14 hours and prisoners had little food. Frequently epidemics of tuberculosis and other life threatening diseases broke out. The death toll is also subject to dispute, but Applebaum and other scholars estimate nearly half the population died in camps or shortly thereafter adding 10 to 12 million or more to high death rate of the Great Purge.

The statistics are a subject of contention and will continue to be because even with full access to Soviet archives, the numbers do not tell the whole story. The Great Purge generated terror and a mentality that made Stalin feared and immune to any sort of dissention. By the time the Great Purge ended no one dared oppose Stalin cementing his autocratic cult of personality in blood and misery.

Some still claim there is no evidence linking Stalin to Kirov’s murder which reveals another aspect of the genius of Stalin’s Machiavellian scheme, plausible deniability. The real story of Stalin’s ruthless consolidation of power is as good if not better than any Hollywood script. If any aspiring scriptwriters are reading, you should have plenty of material for the next mafia blockbuster. Be sure to email me for an address to send royalty checks.

For additional discussion on Stalin’s legacy, please check out: Revising the Perspective on Russia in the 20th Century

[1] Tsars in Russia relied on a state security service, the Okhrana, to foment terror and repress the population. The communists followed suit creating an organization first called the Cheka that was renamed to the NKVD and later KGB. The names changed over time but the function was the same.

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