Sergei Kirov, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetSergei Kirov
Soviet politician
Date of Birth: 15-Mar-1886
Place of Birth: Urzhum, Kirov Oblast, Russia
Date of Death: 01-Dec-1934
Profession: politician
Zodiac Sign: Pisces 
About Sergei Kirov
- Sergei Mironovich Kirov (born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov; 27 March [O.S.
- 15 March] 1886 – 1 December 1934) was a prominent Russian revolutionary and a Soviet politician.
- He was a close, personal friend to Joseph Stalin, and his death in 1934 was used as a pretext to launch the Great Purge. An Old Bolshevik, Kirov took part in early revolutionary activities against Tsarist Russia, for which he was arrested and imprisoned several times.
- He rose through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the party organisation in Leningrad and a member of the Politburo. On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute.
- There is a widespread belief that Joseph Stalin and elements of the NKVD were behind Kirov's assassination, but evidence for this claim remains lacking.
- Kirov's death was later used as a pretext for Stalin's escalation of repression against dissident elements of the party, culminating in the Great Purge of the late 1930s in which many of the Old Bolsheviks were arrested, expelled from the party, and executed.
- Complicity in Kirov's assassination was a common charge to which the accused confessed in the show trials of the period. The cities of Kirov, Kirovohrad, Kirovakan, and Kirovabad, as well as a uncountable number of Kirovsk, Kirovo, Kirovsky and other derivatives, were renamed in Kirov's honour after his assassination.
- Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kirovakan and Kirovabad returned to their original names: Vanadzor and Ganja, respectively.
- In order to comply with decommunisation laws, Kirovohrad was renamed in July 2016 by the Ukrainian parliament to Kropyvnytskyi.
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