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Then, in 1934, he was shot dead outside his office in Leningrad. The killer was detained, but the motives behind the murder remain a mystery to this day. It is also unknown whether the hitman acted alone or on the orders of a higher-up, allegedly Stalin himself. In any case, Stalin exploited the moment to root out opponents and supporters of his former party rival Zinoviev. Although it is unclear whether there was a conspiracy, the murder of Kirov was followed by a wave of repressions and executions of all who fell under suspicion. According to historians, this marked the start of the Great Terror.
4. Kliment Voroshilov (1881-1969)
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Voroshilov holds the record for time spent in the upper echelons of power: more than 34 years in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. During the Russian Civil War, he commanded an entire army on the southern front. He was also responsible for establishing order in revolutionary Petrograd, and, together with Felix Dzerzhinsky, was a founding father of the Cheka (the extraordinary commission for combating counter-revolution), the predecessor of both the NKVD and the KGB.
One of Stalin's most loyal associates, he sided with the latter in the internal party struggle that followed Lenin's demise. Later, he wrote a book entitled Stalin and the Red Army, in which he eulogized Stalin's role in the Civil War. He was one of the first marshals of the Soviet Union, carried out military reforms, and served as Minister of Defense. As one of Stalin's inner circle, he, like many of his other associates, signed execution warrants and purged army commanders.
After Stalin's death, for seven years Voroshilov served as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, officially the main position in the country (although the de facto leader was the party's general secretary). He lived to a ripe old age as a party member and Soviet leader. Voroshilov was one of the few associates of Stalin to be buried by the Kremlin wall.
5. Lavrenty Beria (1899-1953)
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Having become a Bolshevik in 1917, during the Civil War Beria joined the Azerbaijan branch of the Cheka. As a professional chekist(security officer) he was responsible for keeping order in the newly created Georgian SSR and throughout the entire Caucasus region. He performed this same task in the NKVD, eventually working his way into the party elite.
Beria was the one closest to Stalin in the final years of the leader's life. He constantly visited his home and dacha, and there are many surviving photos of Beria with Stalin's family.
Beria was in charge of the Soviet Union's nuclear program, as well as the mass deportation of peoples accused of collaborating with Hitler in the occupied territories. It was Beria who oversaw the assassination of Trotsky, and identified and purged "foreign agents" and "spies" nationwide. What's more, he was rumored to be a sex pest, luring and raping young women, and threatening them or their relatives with reprisals if they resisted.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Beria was arrested and convicted of crimes against innocent persons and of anti-Soviet conspiracies (many of which were historical and poorly evidenced). He was shot that same year.
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