In late January 1934 delegates from all across the Soviet Union gathered in the Kremlin for the 17th Congress of the ruling Bolshevik party. What made this one different from the previous such gatherings was the complete absence of any opposition with the speakers all singing praise to "the Great Chief" Joseph Stalin. The most vocal pro-Stalinist rhetoric came from the Leningrad Party boss Sergei Kirov. The Communist leader of the country's second largest city, at times sounded even more Stalinist than Stalin himself, just like all the other true-blue, or, rather red, party bureaucrats, sitting by the dictator's side in the presidium. The problem was, however, that many of these people were too talented and popular to fit into the Procrustean bed of totalitarian ideology. This eventually precipitated the start of mass purges of the party and state apparatus. The December 1 assassination of Kirov was the best pretext Stalin ever needed to justify the great purge of 1936-38. There is no documented reason whatsoever to believe that Stalin arranged the murder that was actually carried out by a mentally deranged lone killer, Leonid Nikolayev who, like many other Communists like him, felt betrayed by his own party. The trial and the accompanying purge are possibly the darkest period of Soviet history when people lived under the constant threat of being arrested for the slightest deviation from the party line.
In Germany, the Nazis were busily dismantling the remaining democratic institutions. With Adolf Hitler ruling supreme, all political parties, except the NSDAP, had been banned and the principal instrument of control was the unified police, security and SS organization under the direction of Heinrich Himmler and his chief lieutenant Reinhard Heydrich.
The Nazi regime showed particular hostility towards the Jews who were singled out for attack from the very first day of Hitler's chancellorship. The Jews were being stripped of their German citizenship, the bulk of their property was confiscated and the survivors were restricted to ghettolike existence in specially allocated parts of cities. The Jews were supposed to wear yellow Stars of David and were debarred from entering public places. All the non-Jews were to join a web of Nazi-affiliated organizations and take part in all their gatherings and campaigns.
In Spain, the elimination of monarchy touched off a protracted period of political strife with the right-wingers drifting increasingly Naziside and eventually forming the Falange fascist party in 1934.
Meanwhile, in France, local fascists staged an unsuccessful coup attempt on February 6, 1934. Unlike their German brethren, the French fascists were fewer and much less organized, but, with democracy being trampled underfoot in Germany, the bungled coup caused a major uproar triggering a wave of socialist and communist-organized rallies throughout the country. On February 12th the trade unions organized a nationwide political walkout demanding the outlawing of the fascist parties.
Contemporaries called the October 9 assassination in Marseilles of the French Foreign Minister Jean Barthou and the visiting King Alexander of Yugoslavia the murder of the century. The Yugoslav monarch fell victim to Nazi-linked assassins from Croatia and Macedonia apparently for his openly pro-French policies. The cameramen in King Alexander's retinue filmed the assassination in every detail. Adolf Hitler even ordered the footage bought and used it to reorganize his own security detail.
In the Soviet Union, the year 1934 saw the birth of cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Aleksei Leonov. Gagarin was the first man to fly into space and Leonov - to make a spacewalk.
The French movie star Brigitt Bardot was also born in 1934. She did much to make French cinema popular in the world. In the past few years Bardot has become a devout animal protection campaigner. In the United States, the outstanding pianist Van Clibern was born. He became world famous after winning the first prize participating in the Tchaikovsky music competition in Moscow. Van Clibern likes his name pronounced the way they do in Russia, - "ven klaibern" and insists that they keep saying it exactly this way.
In 1934 two 18 year-old classmates from Brooklin, Jerry Sigal and Joe Shuster started making comics about Superman, an omnipotent character who cared for the week and punished the mean and greedy. Superman is an absolutely viceless, ideal personality. As to his octogenarian creators, Joe Shuster and Jerry Sigal, they have long ceased to believe in fairly tales. Only recently, did they earn a modest pension from the company which has made billions on their creation. Not mentioning, of course, the 120 dollars they got for their first comics ...

THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.


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