Doctors' plot
Encyclopedia
The Doctors' plot was the most dramatic anti-Jewish episode in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin
's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders. This was accompanied by show trials and anti-Semitic propaganda in state-run mass media. Scores of Soviet Jews were promptly dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to the Gulag
, or executed.
After the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, the new Soviet leadership declared that the case was fabricated.
's death. Anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin's policies were fueled by the exile of Leon Trotsky
. After dismissing Maxim Litvinov
as Foreign Minister in 1939, Stalin immediately directed Vyacheslav Molotov
to "purge the ministry of Jews". This was likely a signal to Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for talks on non-aggression; however, some critics see a purely anti-Semitic reason for this. According to historian Yakov Yakovlevich Etinger
, many Soviet state purges of the 1930s were anti-Semitic and after more intense anti-Semitic policy toward the end of World War II, Stalin in 1946 reportedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy." Furthermore, after purportedly ordering the development of bombers capable of reaching America, supposedly convinced that Harry Truman was Jewish, Stalin reportedly remarked in private that "we will show this Jewish shopkeeper how to attack us!"
Nevertheless, During the period 1945 to 1947, overt anti-Semitism had been suppressed in the USSR, because Stalin was considered the savior of the Jews, the man who defeated Hitler and had liberated the Eastern European concentration camps from the Nazis. Moreover, during those years Stalin needed the Jews for propaganda purposes, and besides many of the old Bolsheviks were Jewish, Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, Lazar Kaganovich, Maxim Litvinov, Yakov Sverdlov, Polina Zhemchuzhina (the wife of Molotov), etc. Jewish communists, such as the legendary founder of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and his successors, Abram Slutsky, Sergei Shpigelglas, and Genrikh Yagoda, had led the intelligence and security organs of the Bolsheviks and subsequently the Soviet state. And there were still many Jewish cadres in the cultural organs, the Party, the intelligence services, and the security apparatus. Thirdly, Stalin had initially supported the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.
With the beginning of the Cold War
, the State of Israel
allying with the West
, and Stalin's suspicions of any form of Jewish nationalism
(and indeed nationalism
in general), the Soviet regime eliminated the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
in 1948 and launched a campaign against so-called "rootless cosmopolitan
s." Also, in the course of his career, Stalin became increasingly suspicious towards physicians. In his later years, he refused to be treated by doctors, and would only consult with veterinarians about his health. After show trials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 13 Jewish members were secretly executed on Stalin's orders in the Night of the Murdered Poets
.
, Zhdanov
, Dimitrov
, Choibalsan ... die so quickly! We must change the old doctors for new ones." At the end of 1952, Mikhail Ryumin
indicated to his superior, Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, Minister of State Security, that Professor Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger had committed malpractice in treating Zhdanov and Shcherbakov, allegedly with the intention of killing them. When Abakumov refused to believe the story, Ryumin went over his head directly to Stalin who saw the malpractice as part of a wider conspiracy to kill off the Soviet leadership. Under torture, prisoners seized in the Soviet investigation of the alleged Doctors' Plot were compelled to produce 'evidence' to 'prove' that the Kremlin doctors, led by Stalin's own physician, had in fact assassinated those mentioned by Stalin.
In a December 1, 1952, Politburo
session, Stalin announced:
One of the agenda items of a December 4 meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU was "The situation in MGB and sabotage in the ranks of medical workers." It was brought up by Stalin and vice-minister of MGB (Ministry of State Security) S.A. Goglidze. "Without me," Stalin declared, "the country would be destroyed because you are unable to recognize enemies." An outcome of this session was a decision to consolidate all intelligence and counter-intelligence
services under the GRU
, headed by S.I. Ogoltsov (later accused of organizing the killing of Solomon Mikhoels
in 1948).
President of Czechoslovakia
Klement Gottwald
announced: "During the investigation and trial of the anti-state conspiratorial center we discovered a new channel by which treachery and espionage penetrate into the Communist Party. It is Zionism." One of the charges brought against Rudolf Slánský was "taking active steps to cut short" Gottwald's life with the help of "hand-picked doctors from the enemy camp."
, the official newspaper of the CPSU, reported the accusations under the headline "Vicious Spies and Killers under the Mask of Academic Physicians"
Among other famous names mentioned were Solomon Mikhoels
(actor-director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater
and the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
assassinated on Béria's orders in January 1948,) who was called a "well-known Jewish bourgeois nationalist", Miron Vovsi
(Stalin's personal physician and a cousin of Mikhoels), Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger (a world-famous cardiologist), A. Feldman (otolaryngologist), A. Grinshtein (neuropathologist), Boris Kogan (therapist
), Mikhail Kogan
, I. Yegorov and V. Vinogradov. All of them but two were Jewish.
The list of alleged victims included high-ranked officials Andrei Zhdanov
, Aleksandr Shcherbakov
, Army Marshals Aleksandr Vasilevsky
, Leonid Govorov
and Ivan Konev
, General Sergei Shtemenko
, Admiral Levchenko
and others.
Jews were promptly dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to GULAG
or executed. This was accompanied by show trial
s and by anti-Semitic propaganda in state-run mass media
. Pravda prepared publication of a letter signed by many Soviet notables (including Jews) containing incitive condemnations of the "plot"; however, some notable Jews refused to sign it (general Yakov Kreizer
, singer Mark Reizen
, writers Veniamin Kaverin
and Ilya Ehrenburg
, etc.). The letter was never published because of the termination of the campaign soon after. According to Khrushchev, Stalin hinted to him to incite anti-Semitism in Ukraine, telling him "The good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews."
On February 9, 1953, there was an explosion in the territory of the Soviet mission in Israel, and on February 11 the USSR broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state (restored in July). The next day Maria Weizmann
, a Moscow doctor and a sister of the first President of Israel
Chaim Weizmann
(who had died in 1952), was arrested.
Outside of Moscow, similar accusations quickly appeared. For example, Ukraine
discovered a local "doctors' plot" allegedly headed by famous endocrinologist Victor Kogan-Yasny (the first in the USSR who treated diabetes with insulin
and saved thousands). Thirty-six "plotters" were arrested there.
Newly opened KGB
archives provide evidence that Stalin forwarded the collected interrogation materials to Georgy Malenkov
, Nikita Khrushchev
and other "potential victims of doctors' plot".
Stalin also used the occasion to purge his security services, who he had called "waiters in white gloves, ordinary nincompoops," who he no longer trusted to get the job done! And so, Viktor Abakumov, the former head of SMERSH (i.e., Russian acronym for “Death to Spies”; the counterintelligence, death-squad units) during World War II, was arrested and tortured. He was, like his predecessors, Nikolai Yezhov and Genrikh Yagoda, simply expendable now. He was charged with being a sympathizer and protector of the nonexistent, criminal Jewish underground — even though, just recently, Abakumov had arrested and wiped out the Jewish Antifascist Committee!
Stalin harangued the MGB Minister, Semyon Ignatiev (who had succeeded Abakumov) and accused the MGB of incompetence. The security organs “see nothing beyond their noses,” and yelled, “If you want to be Chekists, take off your gloves. You are degenerating into ordinary nincompoops!” Stalin demanded and insisted that torture be used to obtain the necessary confessions.
Albert Einstein
, Winston Churchill
and other world dignitaries sent condemning telegrams to the Soviet ministry of Foreign Affairs and demanded an investigation.
, and on April 6 this was communicated to the public in Pravda
. Chief MGB
investigator and Deputy Minister of State Security M. D. Ryumin was blamed for making up the plot and was arrested and later executed.
", Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
stated that the Doctors Plot was "fabricated... set up by Stalin", but that Stalin did not "have the time in which to bring it to an end," which saved the doctors' lives. Khrushchev also told the session that Stalin called the judge in the case and, regarding the methods to be used, stated "beat, beat and, beat again." Stalin told his Minister of State Security "[i]f you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head." Stalin told Politburo members "You are blind like young kittens. What will happen without me? The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies." In fact, it has been suspected that Stalin's inner circle feared for their lives. And recently an article published in a peer-review medical publication Surgical Neurology International (SNI) provides evidence supporting the long-held suspicion that Stalin was indeed poisoned with the anticoagulant Warfarin that caused his stroke. This carried out by members of his own inner circle, most likely Lavrenti Beria, and perhaps even Khrushchev, all of whom feared for their lives at the time of Stalin's death.
According to one source, Nikolay Nikolevitch Poliakov, Stalin purportedly created a special "Deportation Commission" to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps. Poliakov, the purported secretary of the Commission, stated years later that, according to Stalin's initial plan, the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental tasks of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed. "Pure blooded" Jews were to be deported first, followed by "half breeds" (polukrovki). Before his death in March 1953, Stalin allegedly had planned the execution of "Doctors Plot" defendants already on trial in Red Square in March 1953, and then he would cast himself as the savior of Soviet Jews by sending them to camps away from the purportedly enraged Russian populace. Further purported statements from others describe some aspects of such a planned deportation. Others argue that any charge of an alleged mass deportation lacks specific documentary evidence and that attempts to move the then geographically assimilated Jewish population would not have comported with Stalin's other postwar methods.
Yakov Etinger (son of one of the doctors) said that he spoke with Bulganin, who told him about plans to deport Jews. Etinger's credibility was questioned, however, when he claimed to have published a previously unpublished letter to Pravda, signed by many Jewish celebrities and calling for Jewish deportation. The alleged original two versions of the letter have been published in Istochnik and other publications. Not only did they lack any hint of a plan to deport Jews to Siberia, in fact they called for the creation of a Jewish newspaper. The alleged text of the famous letter serves as an argument against the existence of the deportation plans.
Etinger was asked to publish the notes taken during his alleged meetings with Bulganin, but they are still unpublished.
Four large camps were built shortly before Stalin's death in 1953 in southern and western Russia, with rumors swirling that they were purportedly for Jews, but no directive exists that the camps were to be used for any such effort.
Veniamin Kaverin claimed that he had been asked to sign the letter about the deportation.
Ilya Ehrenburg's memoirs hint about his letter to Stalin, which was published along with the "Jewish Letter," but don't talk about the purported plans for deportation.
Sakharov, Yakovlev and Tarle do not specify the sources of their claims and don't claim to be eyewitnesses. Anastas Mikoyan's edited and published version of the memoir contains one sentence about the planned deportation of the Jews from Moscow, but it is not known whether the original text contains this sentence.
One million copies of a pamphlet titled "Why Jews Must Be Resettled from the Industrial Regions of the Country" may have been published; no copy has been found.
Based on these and other asserted facts, a researcher of Stalin's anti-Semitism, Gennady Kostyrchenko, concluded that there is no credible evidence for the alleged deportation plans, and there is much evidence against their existence. Some other researchers disagree, asserting that the question is still open.
The prevailing opinion of many scholars outside the Soviet Union, in agreement with what Khrushchev said, is that Joseph Stalin intended to use the resulting doctors' trial to launch a massive party purge.
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders. This was accompanied by show trials and anti-Semitic propaganda in state-run mass media. Scores of Soviet Jews were promptly dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, or executed.
After the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, the new Soviet leadership declared that the case was fabricated.
Background
As early as 1907, Stalin wrote a letter differentiating between a "Jewish faction" and a "true Russian faction" in bolshevism. Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov stated that Stalin made crude anti-Semitic outbursts even before Vladimir LeninVladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
's death. Anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin's policies were fueled by the exile of Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
. After dismissing Maxim Litvinov
Maxim Litvinov
Maxim Maximovich Litvinov was a Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet diplomat.- Early life and first exile :...
as Foreign Minister in 1939, Stalin immediately directed Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
to "purge the ministry of Jews". This was likely a signal to Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for talks on non-aggression; however, some critics see a purely anti-Semitic reason for this. According to historian Yakov Yakovlevich Etinger
Yakov Yakovlevich Etinger
Yakov Yakovlevich Etinger is a Russian politologist, essayist, historian and political activist.-Biography:...
, many Soviet state purges of the 1930s were anti-Semitic and after more intense anti-Semitic policy toward the end of World War II, Stalin in 1946 reportedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy." Furthermore, after purportedly ordering the development of bombers capable of reaching America, supposedly convinced that Harry Truman was Jewish, Stalin reportedly remarked in private that "we will show this Jewish shopkeeper how to attack us!"
Nevertheless, During the period 1945 to 1947, overt anti-Semitism had been suppressed in the USSR, because Stalin was considered the savior of the Jews, the man who defeated Hitler and had liberated the Eastern European concentration camps from the Nazis. Moreover, during those years Stalin needed the Jews for propaganda purposes, and besides many of the old Bolsheviks were Jewish, Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, Lazar Kaganovich, Maxim Litvinov, Yakov Sverdlov, Polina Zhemchuzhina (the wife of Molotov), etc. Jewish communists, such as the legendary founder of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and his successors, Abram Slutsky, Sergei Shpigelglas, and Genrikh Yagoda, had led the intelligence and security organs of the Bolsheviks and subsequently the Soviet state. And there were still many Jewish cadres in the cultural organs, the Party, the intelligence services, and the security apparatus. Thirdly, Stalin had initially supported the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.
With the beginning of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, the State of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
allying with the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
, and Stalin's suspicions of any form of Jewish nationalism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
(and indeed nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
in general), the Soviet regime eliminated the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities...
in 1948 and launched a campaign against so-called "rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan was a Soviet euphemism widely used during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953, which culminated in the "exposure" of the alleged Doctors' plot...
s." Also, in the course of his career, Stalin became increasingly suspicious towards physicians. In his later years, he refused to be treated by doctors, and would only consult with veterinarians about his health. After show trials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 13 Jewish members were secretly executed on Stalin's orders in the Night of the Murdered Poets
Night of the Murdered Poets
On August 12, 1952, thirteen Soviet Jews were executed in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Russia as a result of charges of espionage based on forced, false confessions resulting from coercion and torture. This massacre is known as the Night of the Murdered Poets....
.
Events of 1952
The death of Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan in Moscow early in 1952 concerned the aging and paranoid Stalin, who commented, "They die one after another. ShcherbakovAleksandr Shcherbakov
Aleksandr Sergueyevich Shcherbakov , was a founding member of the Soviet Writers' Union, along with Maxim Gorky. Following the latter's death in 1936, Shcherbakov was transferred from his role as First Secretary to the lower role of Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee where he reported...
, Zhdanov
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician.-Life:Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934...
, Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
, Choibalsan ... die so quickly! We must change the old doctors for new ones." At the end of 1952, Mikhail Ryumin
Mikhail Ryumin
Mikhail Dmitrievich Ryumin was Deputy Head of the Soviet MGB who engineered the "Doctors' Plot" in 1952-1953; the case was dismissed on Stalin's death and Ryumin was arrested and executed....
indicated to his superior, Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, Minister of State Security, that Professor Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger had committed malpractice in treating Zhdanov and Shcherbakov, allegedly with the intention of killing them. When Abakumov refused to believe the story, Ryumin went over his head directly to Stalin who saw the malpractice as part of a wider conspiracy to kill off the Soviet leadership. Under torture, prisoners seized in the Soviet investigation of the alleged Doctors' Plot were compelled to produce 'evidence' to 'prove' that the Kremlin doctors, led by Stalin's own physician, had in fact assassinated those mentioned by Stalin.
In a December 1, 1952, Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
session, Stalin announced:
"Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA (there you can become rich, bourgeois, etc.). They think they're indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists."
One of the agenda items of a December 4 meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU was "The situation in MGB and sabotage in the ranks of medical workers." It was brought up by Stalin and vice-minister of MGB (Ministry of State Security) S.A. Goglidze. "Without me," Stalin declared, "the country would be destroyed because you are unable to recognize enemies." An outcome of this session was a decision to consolidate all intelligence and counter-intelligence
Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...
services under the GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
, headed by S.I. Ogoltsov (later accused of organizing the killing of Solomon Mikhoels
Solomon Mikhoels
Solomon Mikhoels ; was a Soviet Jewish actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during the Second World War...
in 1948).
Prague Trials
In the wake of the Prague Trials, 11 former Communist leaders and high Party officials of Czechoslovakia (14 were on trial in total, 11 of whom were Jews) were executed on December 3, 1952. On December 16, at the National Conference of the Communist Party of CzechoslovakiaCommunist Party of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....
President of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald was a Czechoslovakian Communist politician, longtime leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , prime minister and president of Czechoslovakia.-Early life:...
announced: "During the investigation and trial of the anti-state conspiratorial center we discovered a new channel by which treachery and espionage penetrate into the Communist Party. It is Zionism." One of the charges brought against Rudolf Slánský was "taking active steps to cut short" Gottwald's life with the help of "hand-picked doctors from the enemy camp."
An article in Pravda
To mobilize the Soviet people for his campaign, Stalin ordered TASS and Pravda to issue stories along with Stalin's alleged uncovering of a "Doctors Plot" to assassinate top Soviet leaders, including Stalin, in order to set the stage for show trials. On January 13, 1953, some of the most prestigious and prominent doctors in the USSR were accused of taking part in a vast plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership. PravdaPravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
, the official newspaper of the CPSU, reported the accusations under the headline "Vicious Spies and Killers under the Mask of Academic Physicians"
Today the TASS news agency reported the arrest of a group of saboteur-doctors. This terrorist group, uncovered some time ago by organs of state security, had as their goal shortening the lives of leaders of the Soviet Union by means of medical sabotage.
Investigation established that participants in the terrorist group, exploiting their position as doctors and abusing the trust of their patients, deliberately and viciously undermined their patients' health by making incorrect diagnoses, and then killed them with bad and incorrect treatments. Covering themselves with the noble and merciful calling of physicians, men of science, these fiends and killers dishonored the holy banner of science. Having taken the path of monstrous crimes, they defiled the honor of scientists.
Among the victims of this band of inhuman beasts were Comrades A. A. Zhdanov bp1 and A. S. Shcherbakov bp2. The criminals confessed that, taking advantage of the illness of Comrade Zhdanov, they intentionally concealed a myocardial infarction, prescribed inadvisable treatments for this serious illness and thus killed Comrade Zhdanov. Killer doctors, by incorrect use of very powerful medicines and prescription of harmful regimens, shortened the life of Comrade Shcherbakov, leading to his death.
"The majority of the participants of the terrorist group… were bought by American intelligence. They were recruited by a branch-office of American intelligence — the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalistBourgeois nationalismBourgeois nationalism is a term from Marxist phraseology. It refers to the alleged practice by the ruling classes of deliberately dividing people by nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion, so as to distract them from possible class warfare...
organization called "JointAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution CommitteeThe American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is a worldwide Jewish relief organization headquartered in New York. It was established in 1914 and is active in more than 70 countries....
." The filthy face of this Zionist spy organization, covering up their vicious actions under the mask of charity, is now completely revealed…
Unmasking the gang of poisoner-doctors struck a blow against the international Jewish Zionist organization.... Now all can see what sort of philanthropists and "friends of peace" hid beneath the sign-board of "Joint."
Other participants in the terrorist group (Vinogradov p10, M. Kogan p11, Egorov p12) were discovered, as has been presently determined, to have been long-time agents of English intelligence, serving it for many years, carrying out its most criminal and sordid tasks. The bigwigs of the USA and their English junior partners know that to achieve domination over other nations by peaceful means is impossible. Feverishly preparing for a new world war, they energetically send spies inside the USSR and the people's democratic countries: they attempt to accomplish what the Hitlerites could not do — to create in the USSR their own subversive "fifth column."...
The Soviet people should not for a minute forget about the need to heighten their vigilance in all ways possible, to be alert for all schemes of war-mongers and their agents, to constantly strengthen the Armed Forces and the intelligence organs of our government."
Among other famous names mentioned were Solomon Mikhoels
Solomon Mikhoels
Solomon Mikhoels ; was a Soviet Jewish actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during the Second World War...
(actor-director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater
Moscow State Jewish Theater
The Moscow State Jewish Theater, Russian language: Московский Государственный Еврейский Театр, also known by its acronym GOSET: ГОСЕТ) was a Yiddish theater company established in 1919 and shut down in 1948 by the Soviet authorities....
and the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities...
assassinated on Béria's orders in January 1948,) who was called a "well-known Jewish bourgeois nationalist", Miron Vovsi
Miron Vovsi
Miron Vovsi was a prominent physician of the Soviet Union.He was Joseph Stalin's personal physician. At the end of January 1953 Miron Vovsi was arrested within the frame of the so-named Doctors' Plot. Vovsi is the cousin of Solomon Mikhoels who was assassinated in 1948 at the orders of Stalin...
(Stalin's personal physician and a cousin of Mikhoels), Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger (a world-famous cardiologist), A. Feldman (otolaryngologist), A. Grinshtein (neuropathologist), Boris Kogan (therapist
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
), Mikhail Kogan
Mikhail Kogan
Mikhail Borisovich Kogan was a well-known doctor in Moscow, Russia. He was one of the doctors named in the fabricated Stalin's Doctors' plot in 1953. However, he had already died by the time the article was published. He was the brother of Boris Borisovich Kogan, who was also a doctor and also...
, I. Yegorov and V. Vinogradov. All of them but two were Jewish.
The list of alleged victims included high-ranked officials Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician.-Life:Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934...
, Aleksandr Shcherbakov
Aleksandr Shcherbakov
Aleksandr Sergueyevich Shcherbakov , was a founding member of the Soviet Writers' Union, along with Maxim Gorky. Following the latter's death in 1936, Shcherbakov was transferred from his role as First Secretary to the lower role of Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee where he reported...
, Army Marshals Aleksandr Vasilevsky
Aleksandr Vasilevsky
Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky was a Russian career officer in the Red Army, promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1943. He was the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, as well as Minister of Defense from 1949 to 1953...
, Leonid Govorov
Leonid Govorov
Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov was a Soviet military commander. An artillery officer, he joined the Red Army in 1920. He graduated from several Soviet military academies, including the Military Academy of Red Army General Staff. He participated in the Winter War as a senior artillery officer.In...
and Ivan Konev
Ivan Konev
Ivan Stepanovich Konev , was a Soviet military commander, who led Red Army forces on the Eastern Front during World War II, retook much of Eastern Europe from occupation by the Axis Powers, and helped in the capture of Germany's capital, Berlin....
, General Sergei Shtemenko
Sergei Shtemenko
Sergei Matveevich Shtemenko was a Soviet general, who served as the Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces' General Staff from 1948 to 1952.-Early life:...
, Admiral Levchenko
Levchenko
Levchenko is a surname of Ukrainian origin. It derives from the Christian name Levko. The surname, Levchenko, was created by adding the Ukrainian patronimic suffix, -enko, meaning someone of Levko, usually the son of Levko.- Famous Levchenkos :...
and others.
Arrests
Initially, 37 were arrested, but the number quickly grew into hundreds. Scores of SovietSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
Jews were promptly dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to GULAG
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
or executed. This was accompanied by show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
s and by anti-Semitic propaganda in state-run mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
. Pravda prepared publication of a letter signed by many Soviet notables (including Jews) containing incitive condemnations of the "plot"; however, some notable Jews refused to sign it (general Yakov Kreizer
Yakov Kreizer
-Before the war:Kreizer's Jewish parents were granted permission to live outside the Jewish pale of settlement because his grandfather was a cantonist soldier in the Russian imperial army. Kreizer enlisted in the Red Army in 1921, volunteered to the school for infantry officers in Voronezh and...
, singer Mark Reizen
Mark Reizen
Mark Osipovich Reizen, also Reisen or Reyzen — died November 25, 1992 Moscow, Russia) was a leading Soviet opera singer with a beautiful and expansive bass voice.-Life and career:...
, writers Veniamin Kaverin
Veniamin Kaverin
Veniamin Alexandrovich Kaverin was a Soviet writer associated with the early 1920s movement of the Serapion Brothers. The immunologist Lev Zilber was his older brother, and the critic Yury Tynyanov was his brother-in-law....
and Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...
, etc.). The letter was never published because of the termination of the campaign soon after. According to Khrushchev, Stalin hinted to him to incite anti-Semitism in Ukraine, telling him "The good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews."
On February 9, 1953, there was an explosion in the territory of the Soviet mission in Israel, and on February 11 the USSR broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state (restored in July). The next day Maria Weizmann
Maria Weizmann
Maria Weizmann - ?) was a sister of Israeli politician and notable scientist Chaim Weizmann . She graduated from a university in Switzerland and worked as a doctor in Moscow from 1915....
, a Moscow doctor and a sister of the first President of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
(who had died in 1952), was arrested.
Outside of Moscow, similar accusations quickly appeared. For example, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
discovered a local "doctors' plot" allegedly headed by famous endocrinologist Victor Kogan-Yasny (the first in the USSR who treated diabetes with insulin
Insulin
Insulin is a hormone central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin causes cells in the liver, muscle, and fat tissue to take up glucose from the blood, storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle....
and saved thousands). Thirty-six "plotters" were arrested there.
Newly opened KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
archives provide evidence that Stalin forwarded the collected interrogation materials to Georgy Malenkov
Georgy Malenkov
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician, Communist Party leader and close collaborator of Joseph Stalin. After Stalin's death, he became Premier of the Soviet Union and was in 1953 briefly considered the most powerful Soviet politician before being overshadowed by Nikita...
, Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
and other "potential victims of doctors' plot".
Stalin also used the occasion to purge his security services, who he had called "waiters in white gloves, ordinary nincompoops," who he no longer trusted to get the job done! And so, Viktor Abakumov, the former head of SMERSH (i.e., Russian acronym for “Death to Spies”; the counterintelligence, death-squad units) during World War II, was arrested and tortured. He was, like his predecessors, Nikolai Yezhov and Genrikh Yagoda, simply expendable now. He was charged with being a sympathizer and protector of the nonexistent, criminal Jewish underground — even though, just recently, Abakumov had arrested and wiped out the Jewish Antifascist Committee!
Stalin harangued the MGB Minister, Semyon Ignatiev (who had succeeded Abakumov) and accused the MGB of incompetence. The security organs “see nothing beyond their noses,” and yelled, “If you want to be Chekists, take off your gloves. You are degenerating into ordinary nincompoops!” Stalin demanded and insisted that torture be used to obtain the necessary confessions.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and other world dignitaries sent condemning telegrams to the Soviet ministry of Foreign Affairs and demanded an investigation.
Stalin's death and the consequences
After Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, the new leadership quickly distanced itself from the investigation into the plot. The charges were dismissed and the doctors exonerated in a March 31 decree by the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy BeriaLavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
, and on April 6 this was communicated to the public in Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
. Chief MGB
Ministry for State Security (USSR)
The Ministry of State Security was the name of Soviet secret police from 1946 to 1953.-Origins of the MGB:The MGB was just one of many incarnations of the Soviet State Security apparatus. Since the revolution, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong political police or security force to support and...
investigator and Deputy Minister of State Security M. D. Ryumin was blamed for making up the plot and was arrested and later executed.
Khrushchev's statements
In his 1956 "Secret SpeechOn the Personality Cult and its Consequences
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences was a report, critical of Joseph Stalin, made to the Twentieth Party Congress on February 25, 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It is more commonly known as the Secret Speech or the Khrushchev Report...
", Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
stated that the Doctors Plot was "fabricated... set up by Stalin", but that Stalin did not "have the time in which to bring it to an end," which saved the doctors' lives. Khrushchev also told the session that Stalin called the judge in the case and, regarding the methods to be used, stated "beat, beat and, beat again." Stalin told his Minister of State Security "[i]f you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head." Stalin told Politburo members "You are blind like young kittens. What will happen without me? The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies." In fact, it has been suspected that Stalin's inner circle feared for their lives. And recently an article published in a peer-review medical publication Surgical Neurology International (SNI) provides evidence supporting the long-held suspicion that Stalin was indeed poisoned with the anticoagulant Warfarin that caused his stroke. This carried out by members of his own inner circle, most likely Lavrenti Beria, and perhaps even Khrushchev, all of whom feared for their lives at the time of Stalin's death.
Speculation about a planned deportation of Jews
In his Secret Speech at the Communist Party's Twentieth Congress, Nikita Khrushchev asserted that Stalin intended to use the doctors' trial to launch a massive party purge.Yakov Etinger (son of one of the doctors) said that he spoke with Bulganin, who told him about plans to deport Jews. Etinger's credibility was questioned, however, when he claimed to have published a previously unpublished letter to Pravda, signed by many Jewish celebrities and calling for Jewish deportation. The alleged original two versions of the letter have been published in Istochnik and other publications. Not only did they lack any hint of a plan to deport Jews to Siberia, in fact they called for the creation of a Jewish newspaper. The alleged text of the famous letter serves as an argument against the existence of the deportation plans.
Etinger was asked to publish the notes taken during his alleged meetings with Bulganin, but they are still unpublished.
Four large camps were built shortly before Stalin's death in 1953 in southern and western Russia, with rumors swirling that they were purportedly for Jews, but no directive exists that the camps were to be used for any such effort.
Veniamin Kaverin claimed that he had been asked to sign the letter about the deportation.
Ilya Ehrenburg's memoirs hint about his letter to Stalin, which was published along with the "Jewish Letter," but don't talk about the purported plans for deportation.
Sakharov, Yakovlev and Tarle do not specify the sources of their claims and don't claim to be eyewitnesses. Anastas Mikoyan's edited and published version of the memoir contains one sentence about the planned deportation of the Jews from Moscow, but it is not known whether the original text contains this sentence.
One million copies of a pamphlet titled "Why Jews Must Be Resettled from the Industrial Regions of the Country" may have been published; no copy has been found.
Based on these and other asserted facts, a researcher of Stalin's anti-Semitism, Gennady Kostyrchenko, concluded that there is no credible evidence for the alleged deportation plans, and there is much evidence against their existence. Some other researchers disagree, asserting that the question is still open.
The prevailing opinion of many scholars outside the Soviet Union, in agreement with what Khrushchev said, is that Joseph Stalin intended to use the resulting doctors' trial to launch a massive party purge.
See also
- History of the Jews in Russia and Soviet Union
- Prague Trials
- Sergo GoglidzeSergo GoglidzeSergo Goglidze was a Georgian Soviet NKVD official.- Biography :Born in Korta, a village near Kutaisi, Serghei Arsenievici Goglidze joined the Cheka in 1921. He served with GPU-NKVD border troops, rising through the ranks...
- Khrustalyov, My Car!Khrustalyov, My Car!Khrustalyov, My Car! is a 1998 Russian drama film directed by Aleksei German based on a story by Joseph Brodsky, screenplay by Svetlana Karmalita. It was produced by Canal+, CNC, Goskino, Lenfilm and VGTRK.-Plot summary:...
External links
- Translated Pravda article of January 13, 1953
- The Soviet “Doctors' Plot”—50 years on by A Mark Clarfield
- Byelorussian Jewry and the Doctors' Plot, 1953 by Dr. Leonid Smilovitsky
- Materials on the case of Maria Weizmann (in Russian)
- http://forum.grani.ru/jews/articles/eak/ Group photo of the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist CommitteeJewish Anti-Fascist CommitteeThe Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities...
- http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/13/world/soviet-survivor-relives-doctors-plot.html"Soviet Survivor Relives 'Doctor's Plot'"
Further reading
- Arno Lustiger. Stalin and the Jews. The Red Book. The Tragedy of the Soviet Jews and the Anti-Fascist Committee. Enigma Books.2003 ISBN 1-929631-10-3
- Jonathan Brent & Vladimir Naumov. Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953. ISBN 0-06-093310-0.
- Rapoport, L. Stalin's war against the Jews: the Doctors' Plot and the Soviet solution. Toronto: Free Press; 1990.