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Important. For immediate read by chief editor. Soviet leader Iosef Stalin. Assassinated. Moscow. Assailant Unknown.

December, 20, 1926, Telegram Dispatch to New York Times

Though it will never be fully established why Alexei Ivanovich Vasiliev, a young Chekist, chose to shoot Stalin as he walked the Kremlin grounds. Nor whom he was really acting on behalf of, whether it was on the part of the so recently defeated left opposition, some other political faction within the party, a foreign intelligence service, or simply out of his own personal grievance. But what we do know is that he fired a shot which is to change history forever........ [1]

Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.


*[1] Similar to the assassination of Sergei Kirov otl
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