Lewis and P. Whitehead argue that “It has been irrefutably proved that the murder of Kirov was organised through Stalin through Yagoda and the NKVD”,[xi] however Russian Scholar and politician A. Lakoviev states that “L.V Nikolayev planned and perpetrated the murder alone”[xii]. By looking at it in this respect it shows that Stalin may not have been directly responsible for the purges. But without the murder of Kirov the purges might not have happened as Stalin would have found it difficult to justify his actions. I believe that some parts of the NKVD acted on their own, continuing the purges for their own gain. As historians Corin and Fiehn say “Some units, especially in areas outside of Moscow, operated on their own fiefdoms”[xiii], I believe the NKVD did act more like a mafia outside of Moscow using the purges to their own …show more content…
Lewis and P. Whitehead, Stalin: A time for Judgement, p63
[xii] R.W Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia 1934-41, p22
[xiii] Communist Russia under Lenin and Stalin, Corin and Fiehn, p227
[xiv] Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, p21
[xv] Communist Russia under Lenin and Stalin, Corin and Fiehn, p201
[xvi] A.Nove (ed.), The Stalin Phenomenon, 1993,