Stalin's golden boy? : Sergei Kirov's political profile, 1926 to 1934.

Abstract

This Master of Arts dissertation is aimed at examining the question of whether Sergei Kirov’s political vision of the Soviet central policies was in any way different from the political programme advanced by Stalin and the rest of his inner circle in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It also seeks to discuss whether Kirov was in any way more liberal in his treatment of various oppositional groups, and whether he faithfully supported the implementation of Stalin’s policies in the Leningrad region, which was under Kirov’s authority. This research has been principally based on the examination of the accessible archival documentation preserved in the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History, RGASPI, in Moscow. It includes documentations from personal archives of Kirov and Stalin, and the archive of the Politburo, or policy-making body of the Soviet Union.