Welcome to Russian History Retold, episode 211, The Enablers, Part 2.

From my Patreon version of Russian rulers, where you can find it at patreon.com slash Russian rulers,

I did a series on Stalin's Enablers, who enabled him to create the kind of havoc, destruction, and death that he did during his reign.

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Welcome to the Russian rulers' History Podcast, Patreon edition, The Enablers, Part 2.

Last time, we reviewed the lives of three members of Joseph Stalin's team, Vyacheslav Molotov, Sergo Orzheno Kise, and Lazar Kaganovich.

Today, we'll look at four more members in this three-part series.

They are Sergei Kirov, Andrei Jodanov, Georgi Malinkov, and Anastas Mikoyan.

Sergei Moronovich Kirov, born Sergei Moronovich Kostrakov, came into the world on March 27, 1886,

and Urzum in the Vyatka, Governate, now known as the Kirov Governate, part of the then Russian Empire.

His was a very sad youth, as his father abandoned the family in 1890 when he was four, and his mother died of tuberculosis three years later in 1893.

He was to spend a short time with his paternal grandmother, along with his three surviving siblings.

Kirov's grandmother could not support the children on her meager pension, so he was hustled off to a local orphanage.

In 1900, Sergei was given a scholarship to go to engineering school in Kazan.

He was successfully completed his degree in 1904, but would turn toward Marxism and join the RS-DLP, becoming the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

He would move to Tomsk in Siberia, where he would become a very active revolutionary, which would lead to his arrest in 1906, in imprisonment for three years.

He would move to the Caucasus, where he would remain until education of Tsar Nicholas II and February 1917.

Kirov would become a leader during the Russian Civil War.

As Simon C. Bergmanofiro describes Sergei in his book Stalin, the Court of the Reds R,

quote,

...