The Kremlin Plot (Russian: Кремлёвское дело) is a 1935 criminal case in the Soviet Union about an assassination attempt on Joseph Stalin, which preceded the Great Purge.
The leading conspirator was Mikhail Cherniavsky, a military Fourth Department officer who lost his Communist faith while studying chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology undercover.
On March 26, he confessed that he was part of a 'terrorist' assassination plot organized after the Kirov affair in the belief that equally poor security in the Kremlin could enable them to smuggle in pistols and shoot Stalin.
[2][3] On May 4, Joseph Stalin delivered a speech in the Kremlin to the graduates from the Red Army Academies, in which he referred to Cherniavsky's bullets and said "These comrades did not always confine themselves to criticism and passive resistance.
"[4][5] Relevant research was conducted by Svetlana Lokhova, whose probe into voluminous Soviet archives shed important light on the motivations of Stalin before the Great Purge.