ABSTRACT
In the 1980s the author took the Leningrad murder as the starting point of the author's novel The Kirov Affair. There using the license of fiction, the author presented yet another version of the event but one more attuned to the theme of the book rather than to the exact historical facts. Why as a historian this time he still hesitate to accept the hypothesis of Stalin's guilt, thus being reprimanded by some of his colleagues for being "soft on Stalin". Perhaps this is due to some contrariness in his nature. One other explanation of the Kirov affair must be mentioned. It was late in perestroika; for six years now Gorbachev had been trying to eradicate the traces of Stalinism from Soviet life and to introduce if not democracy then the rule of law. And here in March 1991 the official journal of the Ministry of the Interior carried an article by one Skuratov.
