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The "doctors' plot" () was a Soviet state-sponsored anti-intellectual and antisemitic (under the guise of being anti-cosmopolitan) campaign based on a conspiracy theory that alleged an anti-Soviet cabal of prominent medical specialists, many of whom were ethnically Jewish, intended to murder leading government and Communist Party officials. It was also known as the case of saboteur doctors, doctor-poisoners or killer doctors.

In 1951–1953, a majority-Jewish group of doctors from Moscow were accused of a conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders. They were accused of serving the interests of international Jewry, The campaign against the doctors was presumably set in motion by Stalin as a pretext to launch a massive purge of the Communist Party,

In 1948, an allegation was made by a Soviet veteran medical worker, Lydia Timashuk, who stated that "intentional distortions in medical conclusions [were] made by major medical experts who served as consultants in the hospital". Timashuk "exposed their criminal designs" and as such the security bodies of the Soviet Union were made aware of the existence of the alleged conspiracy against Stalin. Stalin had strong doubts about Timashuk's allegations. Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, stated that her father was "very saddened by the turn of events" and that the housekeeper heard him saying that he did not believe the doctors were "dishonest" and that the only evidence against them were the reports of Timashuk.

In 1951, Ministry for State Security (MGB) investigator Mikhail Ryumin reported to his superior, Viktor Abakumov, Minister of the MGB, that Professor Yakov Etinger, who was arrested as a "bourgeois nationalist" with connections to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, had committed malpractice in treating Andrei Zhdanov (died 1948) and Alexander Shcherbakov (died 1945), allegedly with the intention of killing them. However, Abakumov refused to believe the story. Etinger died in prison (2 March 1951) due to interrogations and harsh conditions. Ryumin was then dismissed from his position in the MGB for misappropriating money and was held responsible for the death of Etinger. With the assistance of Georgy Malenkov, Ryumin wrote a letter to Stalin, accusing Abakumov of killing Etinger in order to hide a conspiracy to kill off the Soviet leadership. On 4 July 1951, the Politburo set up a commission (headed by Malenkov and including Lavrentiy Beria) to investigate the issue. Based on the commission's report, the Politburo soon passed a resolution on the "bad situation in the MGB" and Abakumov was fired.

Beria and Malenkov both tried to use the situation to expand their power through gaining control of the MGB.

Arrests

thumb|Ukaz awarding Lydia Timashuk the Order of Lenin for "unmasking killer-doctors"

Abakumov was arrested and tortured soon after being dismissed as head of the MGB. He was charged with being a sympathizer and protector of the criminal Jewish underground. This arrest was followed by the arrests of many agents who worked for him in the central apparatus of the MGB.

The killer doctors case was revived in 1952 when the letter from cardiologist Lydia Timashuk was dug up from the archives. In 1948, Timashuk wrote a letter to the head of Stalin's security, General Nikolai Vlasik, explaining that Zhdanov suffered a heart attack, but the Kremlin doctors who treated him missed it and prescribed the wrong treatment for him. Zhdanov soon died and the doctors covered up their mistake. The letter, however, was originally ignored. In 1953, Timashuk was awarded the Order of Lenin (later revoked) "for the assistance in unmasking killer doctors", and for a long time Timashuk had an unjust stigma of the instigator of this persecution of doctors after Khrushchev in his "Secret Speech" mentioned her in this respect.

The arrests started in September 1952. Vlasik was fired as head of Stalin's security and eventually also arrested for ignoring the Timashuk letter.

Initially, 37 people were arrested including 17 Jews.

Stalin accused the MGB of incompetence. He demanded that the interrogations of doctors already under arrest be accelerated. Stalin complained that there was no clear picture of the Zionist conspiracy and no solid evidence that specifically the Jewish doctors were guilty.

Media campaign

Stalin ordered the news agency TASS and Pravda, the official newspaper of the CPSU, to issue reports about the uncovering of a doctors' plot to assassinate top Soviet leaders, including Stalin himself. The possible goal of the campaign was to set the stage for show trials. Other sources say that the initiative came from Beria and Malenkov, who continued to use the plot for their own interests. Beria pushed the Politburo to publicize the plot on 9 January 1953. For him, it was especially important that the doctors' plot got more attention than the Mingrelian Affair, which personally affected him.

On 13 January 1953, nine eminent doctors in Moscow were accused of taking part in a vast plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership.</blockquote>

Others mentioned included:

  • Solomon Mikhoels (actor-director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, assassinated in January 1948), who was called a "well-known Jewish bourgeois nationalist"
  • Miron Vovsi (therapist, Stalin's personal physician and a cousin of Mikhoels)
  • Vladimir Nikitich Vinogradov (therapist), also a personal doctor to Stalin
  • Mikhail Kogan (therapist)
  • Boris Kogan (therapist)
  • P. Yegorov (therapist)
  • A. Feldman (otolaryngologist)
  • Yakov Etinger (therapist)
  • Aleksandr Grinshtein (neuropathologist)
  • G. Mayorov (therapist)
  • L. H. Kechker [ru] (therapist, professor)

Although the majority of accused were not 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 Gordey Levchenko and others.

Pravda intended to publish a letter signed by many prominent Soviet Jews in response to the plot. Approximately 50 people read the letter and approximately 40 signed the letter. The letter aimed to distance the accused doctors from the Soviet Jewish public and reassert Jewish support for the Soviet government. Two versions of the letter were created, but it was never published. Either Stalin eventually decided not to publish it or it was still being worked on at the time of his death.

Stalin's death and the consequences

After Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, the new leadership quickly dismissed all charges related to the plot; the doctors were exonerated in a 31 March decree by the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, Lavrentiy Beria, and on 6 April, this was communicated to the public in Pravda. Chief MGB investigator and Deputy Minister of State Security Mikhail Ryumin was accused of fabricating the plot, arrested and later executed. A Komsomol official, Nikolai Mesyatsev, was assigned by Malenkov to review the doctors' plot case and quickly found that it was fabricated.

There is a tale in the Hasidic Chabad movement that Stalin became sick as a consequence of some metaphysical intervention of the seventh Chabad leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, during the recitation of a public discourse at a Purim gathering in 1953, which supposedly caused Stalin's death and averted massive deportations of Soviet Jews to Siberia that were to take place as a result of the anti-intellectual campaign surrounding the doctor's plot affair.

Khrushchev's statements

In his 1956 "Secret Speech", First Secretary 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. Stalin supposedly told his Minister of State Security, "If you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head."

According to Khrushchev, 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."

According to Louis Rapoport, the alleged deportation was planned to start with the public execution of the imprisoned doctors, and then the "following incidents would follow": "attacks on Jews orchestrated by the secret police, the publication of the statement by the prominent Jews, and a flood of other letters demanding that action be taken. A three-stage program of genocide would be followed. First, almost all Soviet Jews ... would be shipped to camps east of the Urals ... Second, the authorities would set Jewish leaders at all levels against one another ... Also the MGB [Secret Police] would start killing the elites in the camps, just as they had killed the Yiddish writers ... the previous year [<nowiki/>Night of the Murdered Poets]. The ... final stage would be to 'get rid of the rest.'"

Four large camps were built in southern and western Siberia shortly before Stalin's death in 1953, and there were rumors that they were for Jews. A special "Deportation Commission" to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps was allegedly created. Nikolay Poliakov, the presumed 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. There are further statements that describe some aspects of such a planned deportation. According to a book by another Soviet Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev, According to historian Samson Madiyevsky, the deportation was definitely considered, and the only thing in question is the time-frame.

However, Russian historian Zhores Medvedev argued against these allegations, saying that no documents were found in support of the deportation plan. In addition, while historian Joshua Rubenstein argues it would not have been so unusual for an idea like this to not show up in documentation, he argues that the evidence is still weak and many of it has better, more plausible explanations. For example, he argues that many Russian leaders at the time may have propped up stories like this to increase their reputations by claiming they convinced Stalin to relent.

  • Red Monarch (1983)
  • Stalin (1992)
  • The Death of Stalin (2017)

See also

  • 1968 Polish political crisis
  • Dmitry Pletnyov (doctor) – Soviet doctor that performed a clinical diagnosis of Stalin and was later executed in 1941.
  • Purge of Ana Pauker
  • Anti-Jewish violence in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1946
  • Antisemitism in the Soviet Union
  • History of the Jews in Russia
  • Khrustalyov, My Car!
  • Slánský trial
  • Refusenik
  • Soviet Jewry movement
  • Joseph Stalin and antisemitism
  • Lina Stern – The sole survivor of the Night of the Murdered Poets
  • Vladimir Bekhterev – Soviet neurologist that performed a diagnosis of Stalin and died a day later under suspicious circumstances in 1927.

References

CitationsBibliography

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