Editing Nikolai Bukharin (section)

== Increasing tensions with Stalin ==
Stalin's collectivization policy proved to be as disastrous as Bukharin predicted, but Stalin had by then achieved unchallenged authority in the party leadership. However, there were signs that moderates among Stalin's supporters sought to end official terror and bring a general change in policy, after mass collectivization was largely completed and the worst was over. Although Bukharin had not challenged Stalin since 1929, his former supporters, including [[Martemyan Ryutin]], drafted and clandestinely circulated an anti-Stalin platform, which called Stalin the "evil genius of the Russian Revolution".

However, [[Sergey Kirov]], First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee was assassinated in Leningrad in December 1934, and his death was used by Stalin as a pretext to launch the [[Great Purge]], in which about 700,000 people were to perish as Stalin eliminated all past and potential opposition to his authority.<ref>Nikolaevsky, Boris, ''The Kirov Assassination, The New Leader'', 23 August 1941.</ref> Some historians believe that Kirov's assassination in 1934 was arranged by Stalin himself, despite the lack of evidence to plausibly posit such a conclusion.<ref name="Conquest_Kirov">Conquest, Robert. ''Stalin and the Kirov Murder''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 122–138, {{ISBN|0-19-505579-9}}.</ref> After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged an ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder and other acts of treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.<ref>A. Yakovlev, "O dekabr'skoi tragedii 1934", ''Pravda'', 28 January 1991, p. 3, cited in J. Arch Getty, "The Politics of Repression Revisited", in ed., J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning, ''Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives'', New York, 1993, p. 46.</ref>