The December 1934 assassination of Stalin 's right-hand man Sergei Kirov served as one of the triggers for the Great Purge of the Soviet Communist Party . Littlepage noted that the assassination when occurred " the country had just begun to settle down to a fairly comfortable routine after the painful years which followed the Second Communist Revolution . " Just a few months prior " in the summer of 1934 , the Government had announced ... that the federal police ... would no longer have the power of arrest people ... . for five years without open trial . Now the Government announced the old powers were restored to the police , and the latter began to exercise them with the greatest vigor . " Littlepage 's success earned him the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and a Soviet-built Ford Model A the latter being regarded as one of the most precious gifts of the time in the USSR . Littlepage was to return to the US several times to recruit more engineers into the Soviet gold mine industry : at the time of the Great Depression there was never a shortage of willing candidates . Many of the thousands of US workers who emigrated to the USSR at the time in search of work subsequently became victims of the Terror
Terror
Great Purge
Jack Littlepage