First Stalinist purges

© spartacus Sergei Kirow

On 1 December 1934 in Kiev the Soviet politician Sergei Mironovitch Kirov is murdered. Joseph Stalin uses this assassination as a pretext to carry out the first comprehensive „purges“ („tchistka“) in the Soviet Union. In a subsequent series of show trials the Kremlin dictator has his political opponents from all sectors of society, including numerous officials and ministers of the CPSU, condemned to death and executed.