"Kirov Stream" and the destruction of the nobility on the example of the family of VIEM employee Vladimir Nikolaevich Vislenev

In 2025 it will be the 90th anniversary of a tragic events in the history of Leningrad and our country - the "Kirov Stream", one of the repressive operations of the NKVD against the so-called socially dangerous elements (SDE), considered a potential threat to Soviet power. Stalin considered Leningrad "the only city of its kind where the largest number of former tsarist officials and their servants, former gendarmes and policemen remained... These gentlemen, crawling in all directions, corrupt and spoil our apparatuses," he wrote in a closed letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 18.01.1935. Therefore, the murder of S.M. Kirov (01.12.1934), Stalin's loyal comrade-in-arms, served as a convenient pretext for cleansing the city of the Leningrad opposition (Zinovievites and Trotskyists) and the SDE. The following social groups, which the Bolsheviks called "former people", belonged to the SSE: the former aristocratic nobility, the clergy, former tsarist officers and officials, the merchant and noble classes, and the intelligentsia. They were evicted with their families, with their elderly parents, to places where there was often no work, condemning people to hunger. During the Great Terror (1937-1938), the heads of families were shot in the places of settlement. The Kirov Stream did not bypass the employees of the Institute of Experimental Medicine (IEM). The tragedy of what happened in Leningrad in 1935 can be traced in the example of one family, the Vislenevs. Vladimir Nikolaevich Vislenev (1897-1937), a nobleman by birth, whose valiant lineage can be traced back 500 years of Russian history, was the head of the scientific library of VIEM and spoke nine languages. On March 14, 1935, Vislenev received a decree exiling his entire family to Orenburg for a period of 5 years. The decision was preceded by an arrest. Three days were given for departure.