“Arsenic was found in the esophagus and stomach” – Kommersant

90 years ago, on March 19, 1934, a state farm supply agent and, according to his own testimony, a lone terrorist M. M. Nikitin (according to other documents – Nikishin) in the Mausoleum tried to shoot the dead V. I. Lenin, and during his arrest shot himself; however, his dying manifesto message was noticeably different in vocabulary from his other clumsily illiterate writings, and the story had a continuation, data about which had never been published before.

From a note from the head of the Operations Department of the OGPU, K.V. Pauker, to the head of the Secret Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, A.N. Poskrebyshev, March 19, 1934.

During the passage of the public into the Mausoleum, an unknown citizen, who later turned out to be Mitrofan Mikhailovich NIKITIN, tried to shoot at the body of V. I. Lenin.

Noticed by the sentries and the passing public, the unknown person instantly shot himself. Death came instantly.

From the documents found it is established that NIKITIN Mitrofan Mikhailovich, born in 1888, ur. Western region, Bryansk district, Zhizdra village council, lived in the Kurkinsky district of Moscow (now Tula.— “Story”) region, serving as a responsible agent at the Progress state farm.

Among the documents found there are letters from K.R. (counter-revolutionary.— “Story”) content.

The investigation into the case continues.

Resolution of J.V. Stalin on the document: “My archive. I. St.”

From a letter from M. M. Nikitin (Nikishin) discovered by OGPU employees and transferred to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to the secretary of the Proletarsky District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in Moscow, M. M. Kulkov, February 8, 1934. (Hereinafter: punctuation and spelling of the document are preserved).

…Take, for example, the Oryol state farm “Progress” of the 2nd Pig Breeding Trust. I entered on the 4th in September 1933 and a week after admission I began writing applications and speaking to dir. Rosenberg, so that he would pay attention to the sabotage work of the gardener Chernokonsky, to the very bad work, thanks to which breakthroughs were obtained, an alcoholic in the 1st area (as in the text.— “Story”) Nikolaev…

From the unfinished suicide letter of M. M. Nikitin (Nikishin), discovered by OGPU employees and transferred to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1934.

Everything is calm on the ship. This is how many of our communists think, talk, and deceive. How perverted people are in lies. But we must listen to what the workers, peasants, and office workers say. How much I had to see and hear. There is poverty, hunger, slavery, atrocities, and some kind of despicability all around. People are afraid of each other, afraid to say the wrong word, knowing that the GPU has torture and death behind them.

People are falling and dying like flies from exhaustion from hunger. Typhoid and other epidemic diseases are rampant all around and are spreading.

Even now, Kaluga and other provinces eat a lot of bread and chaff, and Ukraine, and the Caucasus …

Fraud, theft, atrocities, rudeness, etc. flourish.

People are rushing from side to side, stuck in the mud, and lice are covering everyone. In remote villages and state farms, people are starving. In remote villages, people run around their neighbors, take out a spoon of salt or a match to light some kind of smokehouse. There is no salt, no soap, no matches, no kerosene, no fuel. People are breaking down the last non-residential buildings for fuel.

People went crazy, everyone lost their heads from such a fabulously difficult, meaningless life. Everyone lives only for one day, what will happen tomorrow?…

Yes, many already know what will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow life will be even worse than today. Many people are waiting and wishing for war, saying: “At least there will be some kind of end.” But some are simply waiting for some kind of miracle, but there is no miracle and does not happen. Everyone’s hands fell off. They don’t want to do anything, and if they do, it’s like dummies. Yes, indeed, our “Russian socialism” will bring a lot of disaster to the people.

Many more millions of people will die from communism, from this chimera, this absurdity.

This spring of 1934, again, a lot of people will die due to hunger, dirt, and epidemic diseases. This spring there will be breakthroughs in state farms, collective farms, and factories. More than last spring. Really, our rulers, entrenched in the Kremlin, don’t see that the people don’t want such a life, that it’s impossible to continue living like this, they don’t have enough strength and will. The younger generation, thanks to malnutrition and improper upbringing, is being crippled physically and morally. Everything healthy, good, honest, beautiful is dying out every day, but I am convinced that some of the current dignitaries see and know this, they only consciously want everything bad for the people. They will have time to hide when necessary and where they need to, if politics continues like this in everything, in everything, then the time is not far when jackdaws will begin to build nests in our buildings (factory) and other buildings… Those who remain will have to shout “our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it. Come own and reign over us.” I, Nikitin Mitrofan Mikhailovich, am happy to die for the people, I would be ready to go to any torture for the sake of the well-being of workers, peasants, and employees, for the sake of a better life for the people. I am dying to protest from millions of working people, enough with slavery, terror, hunger, enough with everything that is painful and difficult.

Come to your senses, what are you doing?…

Where have they taken the country? After all, everything is rolling down an inclined plane into the abyss. I know that some people will say – fanatic, kulak, podkulak, oh, but you never know what they will say. But in vain, they will make a mistake, I have been a worker since I was 13, my conscience is clear, I am ready to endure any torture for the truth. I thought about everything for a long time, suffered, worried, and for several days, back in January. I am writing these lines far from Moscow in a village. But know, dear ones, that only my love for people, the people, my honesty and devotion to the people forced me to do this and waste my life, and life is more precious than anything for a person. Long live true freedom. Long live love for one’s neighbor and the conscious struggle for a better, brighter future.

As a necessity, first of all it is required to destroy the bad foundation on which the building is erected from rotten material.

Post scriptum.

It’s impossible to describe everything that I saw. I saw carts transporting corpses in the Voronezh province, in Stalingrad and others, and the Caucasus, and Ukraine, young men in broad daylight fell in the streets and died, all from hunger. What if the pigs don’t seem to eat it? In Voronezh province. They took the last potatoes from the pots for tax, put the frames in the huts, forcing 7-8 families to fit into one hut. I want to confess (torn)

From the report of the Deputy Chairman of the OGPU G. E. Prokofiev to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR V. M. Molotov, March 31, 1934.

According to your proposal, I am informing you of the results of an additional investigation into the case of M.M. NIKISHINA-NIKITIN, who tried to shoot at Lenin’s sarcophagus on March 19, 1934 and then committed suicide:

Until 1926, NIKISHIN, together with his brother Stepan, was the owner of a bakery and sausage shop in the mountains. Dyatkovo, Western Region, and as a major merchant was deprived of voting rights. From 1926 to July 1930 NIKISHIN worked in the “Industry” artisanal artel, then until September 1932 NIKISHIN worked at the Lyudinovo plant, Western Region, as a freight forwarder, and from November 25, 1932 to May 1933 ( with a two-month break due to illness) served as the head of the canteen of the Blagodatensky industrial complex and the head of supplies of the Blagodatensky technical production facility. In September 1933, NIKISHIN entered the Progress state farm as a forwarder in the Kurkinsky district, Moscow region, presenting a memo signed by the director of the 2nd Svinovodtrest, comrade. EFIMOVA.

Comrade EFIMOV stated that he did not give such a memo, although the director of the state farm, Comrade. ROSENBERG acknowledges receipt of the note.

This circumstance is being verified.

On March 7, 1934, NIKISHIN disappeared from the state farm, leaving the station. Ptanj, located 17 km. from Art. Kulikovo Pole (the nearest station to Kurkino). From Art. Ptan they sent a parcel to Dyatkovo to his nephew VOPYAN.

Through a search carried out on March 29, NIKISHIN’s diaries contained in this parcel were discovered and requested to Moscow.

At the same time as NIKISHINA, his close friend AKOLZIN, 46 years old, a native of Art. Veshenskaya, ABC, forwarder at the Pobeda state farm, dismissed on March 1st. AKOLZIN served a 5-year sentence for horse theft in the Dmitrov camp until 27/VIII-33.

AKOLZIN, on the day of NIKISHINS departure, received from his landlord, in accordance with the instructions given earlier by NIKISHINS, his personal belongings.

On March 11, AKOLZIN visited a former woman living in Stalingrad. NIKISHINA’s wife – CHERKASOVA.

The day before NIKISHINA’s assassination attempt, on March 18, NIKISHINA’s second close friend, accountant DRUGANKIN (from a former person), who had received a letter from Moscow that day, also disappeared from the Progress state farm.

In close relations with NIKISHIN was the accountant of the same state farm NOVAK I.F. – a Czech, according to unverified data, formerly. white officer. Having been fired in December 1933 for sabotage, NOVAK was sent by the same trust to another state farm.

It was found out that in February NIKISHIN offered the state farm watchman M.Ya. ALEXANDROV to get him a revolver, promising to pay over 200 rubles. NIKISHIN sent a letter from Moscow to ALEXANDROV on March 18th from Moscow.

The arrested ALEXANDROV, confirming that NIKISHIN wanted to purchase a revolver through him, states that he did not give him a positive answer.

In connection with a letter found in NIKISHIN addressed to the secretary of the RK CPSU(b) of the Proletarsky district of Moscow, Comrade KULKOV, outlining problems in the work of the Progress state farm, – Comrade. KULKOV told us that he did not know the sender of the letter, but from his stay in 1919 in the city. Zhizdre remembers that the anarchist NIKITIN lived there at that time. Comrade KULKOV also pointed out that in the photo NIKISHIN resembles the provocateur BOGOMOLOV.

Through our special verification of these assumptions, Comrade. KULKOV were not confirmed.

It was established that NIKISHIN’s nephew, Vladimir, living in Dyatkovo, Western Region, on March 21st received from Moscow from NIKISHIN a letter of character, informing him of his intention to “die for the cause of the people” and a request to go to Voronezh and Moscow and to visit the persons whose addresses NIKISHIN reported in the letter in order to take things belonging to him from them.

He also sent letters with the contents to a number of relatives and acquaintances.

According to the letter received, Vladimir NIKISHIN and his sister Elizaveta VODOPYAN left on the indicated route on March 23.

On the night of March 30th they were arrested on a train on the way from Leningrad to Moscow.

At the same time, engineer PISKOVITIN, a cousin of NIKISHINA-NIKITIN, who had visited him during his stay in Moscow and on the day of the assassination attempt, was arrested in Moscow.

PISKOVITIN categorically denies his knowledge of NIKISHIN’s intentions and testifies that after reading the notes left in NIKISHIN’s briefcase in his apartment, he destroyed them.

Based on letters from NIKITIN-NIKISHIN found in Vladimir NIKISHIN’s possession, the following was established:

1) He purchased arsenic and a revolver for a large sum of money back in early February 1934.

2) The last days before the assassination attempt, he lived near Moscow, at the station. Perovo from a certain ZIKEEVA.

3) His cousin, engineer PISKOVITIN, allegedly was not aware of his intentions.

4) Before the assassination attempt, NIKISHIN intended to send written messages to two foreign missions about the motives and nature of his enterprise.

5) He strongly emphasizes that he acts alone, without accomplices and, fearing betrayal, does not initiate anyone into his plan.

6) NIKISHIN intended to take arsenic immediately before the assassination attempt and then shoot himself.

(During the autopsy, arsenic was found in the esophagus and stomach).

It is characteristic that in all of NIKISHIN’s documents there is no indication of exactly what act he is going to carry out.

Further activities are as follows:

1) Arrested: Czech NOVAK, engineer PISKOVITIN, Vladimir NIKISHIN and ALEXANDROV M. YA.

2) AKOLZIN and DRUGANKIN, who fled from the state farm, are being sought.

Resolution by V. M. Molotov: “t. Stalin. For your information”

Resolution of J.V. Stalin: “Arch. Art.”

Publication by Evgeny Zhirnov