"The Ballad of Blood and Power"

One of the most tragic political assassinations in Soviet history occurred on December 1, 1934-the murder of Sergei Kirov, First Secretary of the Leningrad Communist Party Organization. His death, like a bolt from the blue, shook the entire country. A trusted friend and close confidant of Stalin, Kirov had once been a tireless enforcer of the Party line. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, however, he had risen as a beloved leader of the rapidly industrializing Soviet Russia. Respected by Party m