WI: Kirov survived in 1934?

Been lurking for some time on the forum but only signed up yesterday. When I was studying Russian in college, I had to take a lot of Russian history. One of my major presentations was on the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934. For those on the forum who don't speak Russian, my screen name actually means, "Who killed Sergei Mironovich Kirov?" Then, I got the idea for an alternate history based off a point of divergence where Kirov survives and takes over the government when the Central Committee has had enough of Stalin and replaces him with one of the few guys who had the balls to stand up to him in public. Does he improve conditions in the USSR? Does WWII take a different course or even happen at all? Is there still a Cold War afterwards? Does the Soviet Union survive into the present day? Or does it all turn out pretty similar to our timeline but with a different guy in the Kremlin?

OTL: On 1 December 1934, Leningrad party head S. M. Kirov was assassinated in his office by Leonid Nikolayev, a mentally unstable man who had been expelled from the Communist Party and who had previously been arrested trying to sneak a pistol into the Smolny Institute in Leningrad but been allowed to leave with the weapon a month or so before the assassination. Very suspicious, and there are as many theories on who was involved as there are theories on who shot JFK in our country. Hell, Kirov even looked a bit like Kennedy. :) Stalin, while he may or may not have been involved in the planning of the murder, used it as a pretext to begin his Great Purge, killing millions of mostly innocent Soviet citizens and ushering in a reign of iron-fisted brutality that lasts until his own death in 1953. ATL assumes that Stalin wasn't involved and the murder was Genrikh Yagoda's idea.

ATL: On 1 December 1934, Nikolayev walks up behind Kirov, puts his loaded M1895 Nagant revolver to the back of the party boss's head, pulls the trigger... and the weapon jams. Kirov wheels around and struggles with his attacker. He and his lone NKVD guard Borisov subdue Nikolayev and interrogate him. Nikolayev reveals that Vania Zaporozhets, an NKVD officer attached to Kirov's guard, was involved. Kirov has his personal guard reshuffled and Zaporozhets investigated. He now has reason to suspect Yagoda's involvement.
 
I'm not actually convinced Stalin was involved, although he certainly wasn't too cynical to exploit it to purge the Communist Party of most of the Old Bolsheviks and neuter the Red Army. Nor do I think Nikolayev could have acted alone, the removal of most of Kirov's guards and the fact that Nikolayev was able to sneak a gun into the Smolny at least twice suggests that he had help from inside the NKVD to pull it off. If Stalin ordered Kirov's death, then he certainly wouldn't be so reckless as to risk Yagoda at a show trial where he had nothing to lose by accusing Stalin. He would have been shot after a closed-door trial, like Yezhov. Although I normally accord show trial testimony little weight, Yagoda was actually in a position to orchestrate Kirov's murder even if he wasn't guilty of the other charges against him like being a spy for Germany or trying to kill Yezhov. Wouldn't surprise me if he did kill Gorky and Menzhinsky too. Not like an unscrupulous NKVD chief would be above using poison or arming a loony to take a shot at Kirov to eliminate someone who might threaten his power later or try to exploit the outrage over the murder to start a bloodbath for his own ends. While he wasn't as bad as Yezhov or Beria who were notorious rapists on top of their other atrocities, to be NKVD head one almost had to be a pretty ruthless son of a bitch. So I think the assassination was either Yagoda's idea or possibly that of Vania Zaporozhets, the NKVD agent who obtained the gun for Nikolayev. Could have been Zaporozhets' idea all along, too, but someone in the NKVD was in on it, I'm convinced.
 
As I said, I would like to read Lenoe's book before commenting in too much detail, but I would note that Simon Sebag Montefiore has argued that "The lax security around Kirov proves nothing, since even Stalin often had only one or two guards." http://nemaloknig.info/read-183615/?page=23

The thing that always struck me as most suspicious was the "accidental" death of Borisov. But Lenoe writes that although "Stalin and his officials were immediately suspicious that Leningrad NKVD officers had murdered Borisov to cover up their negligence in guarding Kirov" the "resulting investigation, confirmed by several later inquiries and the recent examination of photos of Borisov's exhumed skull by a Canadian forensics expert, showed that Borisov had died in a genuine automobile accident. Moreover, multiple eyewitnesses and Genrikh Liushkov testified to this..." https://books.google.com/books?id=EjVoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA201
 
In these cases, my money is always on people in position of power conveniently looking away at the critical moment instead of acting and stopping the plot. Is there anything better than somebody, completely unconncted to you, permanently solving a problem you have/will have?
 
Agreed, someone in a position of power, but not necessarily Stalin personally. If it was just Kirov having lax security that would be one thing but the impression I got is that his security had been severely pared back and many of his guards had been replaced. Doesn't necessarily point to Stalin, anyone with a position of power or influence with the NKVD could have done it. My money's on Yagoda personally, by killing Kirov he could use the aftermath to justify giving the NKVD more power or salvage his own increasingly precarious position.
 
I agree about merging the discussion threads. Should have a timeline up within a few days. With the POD as late as the moment of assassination, I'm definitely seeing popular opinion turn against Stalin even if he wasn't involved. IOTL, at the 17th Party Congress earlier in 1934, Kirov got three negative votes to Stalin's nearly 300. Wiki says that Kirov was even approached about taking over the leadership but reported it to Stalin.

Definitely by the 18th Party Congress in 1939, with Kirov alive he'd likely again be called upon to take over the leadership. I'm pretty sure that with him alive there's no Great Purge neutering the Red Army, meaning that by the time Hitler embarks on his military adventurism the Soviet military is stronger than IOTL and still has most of its experienced generals. A larger Soviet military contribution in the Spanish Civil War is likely, meaning either a Fascist defeat or at least a delayed Fascist victory. Further, the Japanese probably fare even worse against the Soviets than IOTL.

WWII definitely takes place differently. If the stronger Soviet military is able to persuade the Czechoslovakians to fight in 1938 with Soviet air and paratrooper support, and keep the Germans from taking over the country before they run out of fuel and ammunition (IOTL, half the stuff they attacked Poland with was Czech weapons) the war as we know it may not even happen if Germany is left too weakened to pose a continued threat to its neighbours. I also don't think Kirov was nearly as paranoid as Stalin so it's up in the air whether or not there would be a Cold War too.
 
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