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The Death of Stalin: Part I - Page 3

© Nick Bendel

Signs of this anti-Semitism began to clearly emerge in 1948. Mikhoels, a famous Jewish actor and head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was murdered. Later that year the Committee was dissolved and its members arrested. Over the next few years, Jews began to be increasingly persecuted in Soviet society. The culmination of all this was the Doctors' Plot of 1952-3.

This episode originates in 1948 when Andrei Zhdanov, who may then have been the most powerful man in the Soviet Union after Stalin, died, apparently of natural causes. A lady called Lidya Tamashuk, who worked at the Kremlin clinic, made a written- and false- denunciation stating that Zhdanov had been denied proper treatment. In 1952 this letter was 'discovered'- why and by who is still unclear- and a number of doctors, mainly Jews, as well as Molotov's wife, a Jewess, were arrested.

On January 13, 1953, this 'plot' was announced in Pravda to the Soviet people. The doctors, it was explained, "were recruited by a branch-office of American intelligence- the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization called "Joint". The filthy face of this Zionist spy organization, covering up their vicious actions under the mask of kindness, [was] now completely revealed."

To those familiar with how the system worked- and none were more familiar than Stalin's inner circle- this article sent out an ominous warning that a massive campaign was about to be launched against the Jews and anyone who was connected to them- that is most of the inner circle. The only thing that saved the lives of the Jews and these senior Bolsheviks was the timely death of Stalin. Of course none of this constitutes proof, but it does indicate a clear motive for the insiders to murder Stalin.

Bibliography:
P. Deriabin (with J.C. Evans), Inside Stalin's Kremlin, (Washington, 1998)
S. Kahan, The Wolf of the Kremlin, (New York, 1987)
E. Radzinsky Stalin, (London, 1996)
http://stalin.narod.ru/
http://www.guardiancentury.co.uk/1950-19...
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/index.html#...

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