The Doctors' plot (Russian language: дело врачей [doctors' affair], врачи-вредители [doctors-saboteurs] or врачи-убийцы [doctors-killers]) 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.[1] 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.
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As early as 1907, Stalin wrote a letter differentiating between a "Jewish faction" and a "true Russian faction" in bolshevism.[2][3] Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov stated that Stalin made crude anti-Semitic outbursts even before Vladimir Lenin's death.[2][4] Anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin's policies were fueled by the exile of Leon Trotsky.[2][5] After dismissing Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Minister in 1939,[6] 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.[6][7][8] 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,[2] Stalin in 1946 reportedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy."[2][9] 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!"[10]
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.[11]
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 cosmopolitans." 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.[12] After show trials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee[10] 13 Jewish members were secretly executed on Stalin's orders in the Night of the Murdered Poets.[13]
The death of Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan in Moscow early in 1952 concerned the aging and paranoid Stalin, who commented, "They die one after another. Shcherbakov, Zhdanov, Dimitrov, Choibalsan ... die so quickly! We must change the old doctors for new ones."[14] 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.[15]
In a December 1, 1952, Politburo 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."[16]
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).
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 Czechoslovakia 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."[17] 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."
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,[18][19] including Stalin, in order to set the stage for show trials.[20] 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. Pravda, 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-nationalist organization called "Joint." 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."
[21]
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,[22]) 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.
Initially, 37 were arrested, but the number quickly grew into hundreds. Scores of Soviet Jews were promptly dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to GULAG or executed. This was accompanied by show trials 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.[23] 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."[24][25]
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".[26]
Stalin also used the occasion to purge his security services, who he had called "waiters in white gloves, ordinary nincompoops," whom 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. [27]
Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and other world dignitaries sent condemning telegrams to the Soviet ministry of Foreign Affairs and demanded an investigation.
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 Beria, and on April 6 this was communicated to the public in Pravda.[28] 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.[29]
In his 1956 "Secret Speech", 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.[30] 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."[30] Stalin told his Minister of State Security "[i]f you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head."[30] 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."[30] 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.[31]
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.
According to one source, Nikolay Nikolevitch Poliakov, Stalin purportedly created a special "Deportation Commission" to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps.[32][33][34] 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.[32][34] "Pure blooded" Jews were to be deported first, followed by "half breeds" (polukrovki).[32] 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.[32][35][36] Further purported statements from others describe some aspects of such a planned deportation.[34] 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.[19]
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.[37][38] 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.[39]
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[40] 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.[41][42]
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.[43]