Comrade Sergei Mironovich Kirov, the most true son and gifted figure of our Bolshevik Party, is dead at the vile hands of an enemy of the working class.

Comrade Kirov gave all of his storied life to the working class. In the Tsarist underground, in the October Days, at the fronts of the Civil War, in his work in Baku, Vladikavkaz, and Astrakhan Comrade Kirov was an unbendable warrior for the cause of the party, the cause of Lenin-Stalin.

The entire party and all of the laboring masses of our country feel the news of the death of Comrade Kirov with the deepest grief.

We, who worked under the direct leadership of Comrade Kirov, suffer the loss of our dear Mironych with special pain.

The life and work of Leningrad Bolsheviks, of all the men and women workers of the city of Lenin, are unbreakably bonded with the name of Comrade Kirov. Our victories and conquests in the last nine years, our storied road of struggle for the general line of our party and her Central Committee, are tied up with name of Comrade Kirov.

Mironych is no longer among our fighting ranks, Kirov is no more, he who was the living incarnation of Bolshevik party-mindedness (partiinost’), for whom there was nothing more holy in life than selfless devotion to the cause of the freedom of the laborers, for whom there was nothing higher than the title “member of the Communist Party,” is no more.

An ardent and fearless proletarian revolutionary, he approached the daily needs of the laboring masses with great love and care. All of the laborers of our great city knew him and warmly loved him, seeing in him their close and dear chief and comrade.

Comrade Kirov inspired all of our work for the construction of a happy new socialist life. Our industry, our agriculture, our cultural construction, the industrial development of the North, the working and mastery of the mineral wealth of the Leningrad Region—for all of this we are in great measure indebted to the leadership of Comrade Kirov.

There is not a single corner of our [socialist] construction, where the man and woman worker, the collective farmer, the engineer, the teacher, the scholar did not feel the careful and loving attention to business of Comrade Kirov, his friendly help and advice, directed at all of our work.

Comrade Kirov did not know doubt and never feared difficulties in the resolution of the great tasks set by the party. He was a true Leninist, a true and unwavering student of Comrade Stalin.

He united in himself the iron determination and the Bolshevik passion of the revolutionary with a rare simplicity and sincerity.

He was a true chief of the working masses, an ardent tribune of the people. […]

We have suffered an irreparable loss. But the ranks of Leningrad Bolsheviks, of men and women workers, are unwavering. We will follow the shining example of Comrade Kirov. […]

Close the ranks tightly around our Bolshevik Party and her Central Committee, around our chief and teacher Comrade Stalin!