View source for Sergei Kirov

=== Investigations by Soviet authorities ===
{{main|Pospelov Commission}}

In his [[Secret Speech]] in 1956, Khrushchev said that the murder of Kirov was organized by NKVD agents who were tasked with protecting Kirov and were shot in 1937.<ref name="marxists.org">{{cite web|author=Khrushchev, Nikita |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm |title=Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U |website=Marxists.org |access-date=11 December 2015}}</ref> Khrushchev entrusted [[Pyotr Pospelov]], Secretary of the Central Committee, to form a commission to investigate the repression of the 1930s. This was the same Pospelov who had drafted the famous Secret Speech for Khrushchev at the [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|20th Congress]]. Khrushchev stated:

<blockquote>There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kirov, Nikolayev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose duty it was to protect the person of Kirov. A month and a half before the killing, Nikolayev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behavior, but he was released and not even searched. It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist [Borisov] assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on 2 December 1934, he was killed in a car "accident" in which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were relieved of their duties and were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover the traces of the organizers of Kirov's killing.<ref name="Khrushchev, N.S. 1989 p. 21" /></blockquote>

Pospelov's committee came to the conclusion that Kirov’s murder was facilitated by NKVD officers who were responsible for his security, and that NKVD chief [[Genrikh Yagoda]] was declared a hero, instead of holding him responsible.<ref name="Pospelov"/> Pospelov spoke to Dr. Kirchakov and former nurse Trunina, former members of the party, who had been mentioned in a letter by another member of the commission, [[Olga Shatunovskaya]], as having knowledge of the Kirov murder. Kirchakov confirmed that he talked to Shatunovskaya and Trunina about some of the unexplained aspects of the Kirov murder case and agreed to provide the commission with a written deposition. He stressed that his statement was based on the testimony of one Comrade Yan Olsky, a former NKVD officer who was demoted after Kirov's murder and transferred to the People's Supply System.<ref name="Pospelov">[https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1934-2/the-kirov-affair/the-kirov-affair-texts/murder-of-kirov/ Murder of Kirov. P. N. Pospelov, Materials on the Question of the Murder of S. M. Kirov. 1955. (English translation)]</ref>

In his deposition, Kirchakov wrote that he had discussed Kirov's murder and the role of Fyodor Medved with Olsky. Olsky was of the firm opinion that Medved, Kirov's friend and NKVD security chief of the Leningrad branch, was innocent of the murder. Olsky also told Kirchakov that Medved had been barred from the NKVD Kirov assassination investigation. Instead, the investigation was carried out by a senior NKVD chief, [[Yakov Agranov]], and later by another NKVD bureau officer whose name he did not remember.<ref name="Murder of Kirov">{{Cite web |date=2015-08-30 |title=Murder of Kirov |url=https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1934-2/the-kirov-affair/the-kirov-affair-texts/murder-of-kirov/ |access-date=2023-10-30 |website=Seventeen Moments in Soviet History |language=en-US}}</ref>

The other NKVD official may have been [[Yefim Georgievich Yevdokimov]] (1891–1939), a Stalin crony, mass-killing specialist, and architect of the [[Shakhty Trial|Shakhty purge trials]], who continued to lead a secret police team within the NKVD even after technically retiring from the [[OGPU]] in 1931. During one of the committee sessions, Olsky said he was present when Stalin asked Leonid Nikolayev why Comrade Kirov had been killed. To this Nikolayev replied that he carried out the instruction of the "[[Cheka|Chekists]]" (meaning the NKVD) and pointed towards the group of "Chekists" (NKVD officers) standing in the room. Medved was not among them.<ref name="Murder of Kirov"/>

Khrushchev's 1956 report, "[[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences]]", was later read at closed-door Party meetings. Afterwards, new material was received by the Pospelov Committee, including the assertion by Kirov's chauffeur, Kuzin, that Commissar Borisov, Kirov's friend and bodyguard, who was responsible for Kirov's round-the-clock security at the Smolny Institute, was intentionally killed, and that his death in a road accident was not an accident at all.<ref>Pospelov, P. N. (1955) [http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1934-2/the-kirov-affair/the-kirov-affair-texts/murder-of-kirov/ ''Materials on the Question of the Murder of S. M. Kirov'']. Reprinted in ''Svobodnaia mysl'' 8 (1992). Translated from the Russian by Ranjana Saxena.</ref>

In 1989, the last attempt in the Soviet Union to review the Kirov murder case was made by the Politburo Commission headed by [[Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev]]. After two years of investigations, the working team of the Commission concluded that no materials were found to support Stalin's or NKVD's participation in Kirov's murder.<ref>Yakovlev, A. (28 January 1991) "O dekabr'skoi tragedii 1934", ''Pravda'', p. 3, cited in  Getty, J. Archibald (1993) "The Politics of Repression Revisited", in J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning, eds. ''Stalinist Terror New Perspectives'', Cambridge University Press, New York, p. 46. {{ISBN|9780521446709}}</ref> Yakovlev dissented, noticing that a number of circumstances indicated the murder was organized by the NKVD. According to [[Amy Knight]], the Politburo Commission tried to whitewash Stalin.<ref>Knight, Amy (2017). ''Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder''. St. Martin's Press. {{ISBN|978-1-250-11934-6}}</ref>