On December 1 of this year [I was] in the office of Comrade Medved around 4:30 P.M. when the telephone rang. Comrade Medved, putting down the phone, ordered a car to be called as Kirov needed him [Medved’s office was in NKVD headquarters at 4 Liteiny Street, approximately three and a half kilometers from Smolny]. In three to five seconds the telephone rang again. Comrade Medved after the first words threw down the receiver, yelling “Kirov’s been shot,” jumped up from his place, and ran out together with Comrade Fomin who obviously had also received a phone call. […]

In about twenty minutes I got an order to send thirty officers to Smolny, which I carried out immediately. I rode to Smolny with the officers.

At Smolny I found that the murderer was alive and had been sent to the NKVD [headquarters].

At Smolny I [also] discovered that a number of documents had been found on the murderer, including a party card. About forty minutes after my arrival Comrade Medved ordered me and Comrade Gubin to interrogate Commissar Borisov and clarify the circumstances of the attack.

I requested one of the commissars to […] bring Comrade Borisov to me.

They brought me a man in civilian clothes, about fifty years old.

At the beginning of the interrogation [Gubin did not take part] Borisov was so upset that I could not get any kind of straight answer out of him, where he had met Kirov, how he accompanied him, and where he, Borisov, had been at the moment of the killing. I ended up having to draw a map of Smolny, explain to him where the left and right sides were.

At last I managed to figure out from his words that he met Comrade Kirov in the vestibule and was twenty steps from him. When Kirov began climbing the stairs, he remained the same distance from him. […]

To my questions about why he stayed so far from Kirov he gave no answer.

We finally clarified that two to three steps from the turn to the left corridor, Borisov heard two shots, one after the other. He got out his revolver, put in a cartridge, and sprinted into the corridor. Turning into the corridor he supposedly saw two [persons] on the floor, one to two meters apart […] and some people standing around them already. By his own account he did nothing further.

Borisov could not remember a single detail, if we can believe his testimony. Who were these people who surrounded Comrade Kirov as he lay on the floor? For example, to the question of whether Comrade Chudov was among them, he could not answer for a long time.

At the time of Borisov’s interrogation it was found that his revolver was under his jacket in its holster and was unloaded.

I sharply rebuked Borisov about this during the interrogation and he became very upset. In connection with this I addressed Comrade Gubin with the words, “we must take care with the old man, he’s armed.” Two to three minutes later I was told that he had been disarmed.

In view of the fact that Borisov’s interrogation did not give a picture of the moment of the attack, I began seeking people who could give me more details about that. I don’t remember who pointed out to me Platych [Platoch, the electrician] and, I think, Vasiliev [the supply room clerk with Platoch], whom I then interrogated. […]

I also interrogated one operations officer [Dureiko] who was guarding the [main] corridor, who asserted, if I remember correctly, that he saw Borisov walking far behind Kirov.

My interrogations were obviously not complete. This was because:

(1) My purpose in these interrogations was to get the first witness accounts, and I supposed that I would have the possibility of following up in more detail later. But I was not assigned to interrogate these persons later.

(2) There was no way that I could know that this interrogation was Borisov’s last.