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In 1952, a year before Stalin’s death, an epochal event occurred in Czechoslovakia, the trial and hanging of mainly Jewish leaders of the Communist Party, led by Party General Secretary Rudolf Slansky, who had been arrested in 1951. The following year Slansky and thirteen co-defendants were tried as ‘Trotskyite-Titoist-Zionist traitors’. The defendants were accused of espionage and economic sabotage, and of working on behalf of Yugoslavia, Israel and the USA.

Many other Jews were mentioned as co-conspirators, and were implicated in a cabal that included influential US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, described as a ‘Jewish nationalist’, and Mosha Pijade the ‘Titoist Jewish ideologist ‘in Yugoslavia. It was alleged that a conspiracy against the state had been hatched at a secret meeting in Washington in 1947, between President Truman, Secretary of State Acheson, former Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., and Israeli leaders David Ben Gurion and Moshe Sharett. In the indictment Slansky was described as ‘by his very nature a Zionist’ who had, in exchange for American support for Israel, agreed to place ‘Zionists in important sectors of Government, economy, and Party apparatus’. The plan included the assassination of President Gottwald by a ‘freemason’ doctor.[396]

These factors were to emerge a year later in the USSR in the so-called ‘Doctors’ Plot’. This allegedly involved hundreds of doctors and was centred on the death in 1948 of A A Zhdanov, Stalin’s likely successor, who had formulated the doctrine on Soviet arts[397] that repudiated ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’, which was often synonymous with ‘Jewishness’. After several years of investigation, Stalin had intended to use this increasingly wide-ranging plot to undertake a comprehensive campaign against Jewish influence.

The ‘case of the doctors’ as it was officially called, linked the doctors with American intelligence and the Soviet Ministry of State Security (MGB).[398] Additionally, members of the Jewish Antifascist Committee were linked to the ‘Doctors’ Plot’, and to spying for the USA,[399] tried in 1952 and executed, as part of the campaign against ‘rootless cosmopolitism’.[400] On December 1, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Stalin declared, ‘every Jew is a potential spy for the United States’.[401]

The Soviet secret police had always had a disproportionate number of Jews, and was the power base of Lavrenti Beria. Brent and Naumov state that Stalin wished to remove Beria and that a file was said to have been compiled on him.[402] The rumour of a ‘Day X’ when Jews would be deported en masse to Siberia spread throughout the Jewish population.[403]

It is in these circumstances that Stalin died in March 1953.

Stalin’s Death

The death of Stalin seems to have involved two rival factions for the leadership of Russia, one centred on Khrushchev and supported by the military, and the other centred on Beria and supported by the MGB. Given that Zhdanov, Stalin’s likely successor, had died in 1948, prompting the accusations of murder, it does not seem too fanciful that he was indeed eliminated, and the likely culprit was Beria, who had been his rival since the war years. Beria in alliance with Malenkov initiated the ‘Leningrad affair’ in 1950; a purge of Zhdanov’s associates. At this time Khrushchev began to be regarded as an alternative to a Beria-Malenkov regime after Stalin.

With Beria’s control over security affairs, Stalin’s bodyguard was changed shortly before his death. Alexandr Proskrebychev, Stalin’s personal secretary since 1928, was placed under house arrest. Lt-Colonel Nikolay Vlasik, Chief of Stalin’s personal security for 25 years, was arrested on December 16, 1952 and died several weeks later in prison.[404] Major-General Petr Kosynkin, Vice-Commander of the Kremlin Guard, responsible for Stalin’s security, and according to Peter Deriabrin,[405] the only surviving member of the bodyguard whom Stalin trusted, died of a ‘heart attack’ on February 17 1953. Deriabin comments: ‘[This] process of stripping Stalin of all his personal security [was] a studied and very ably handled business’.[406]

The accounts of Stalin’s death on March 5 1953 vary widely and are contradictory. Amy Knight writes that ‘Members of the leadership may have deliberately delayed medical treatment for Stalin◦– probably for at least ten or twelve hours◦– when they knew he was seriously ill’.[407] The commonly stated time of Stalin’s death is 9:50 PM, yet Dimitry Volkogonov, who has had access to the classified documents on the subject in the Russian archives, states that the actual time was 9: 50 AM.[408]

The ten doctors who attended Stalin during his illness did not complete their report until July 1953. It had gone through at least two drafts, which vary from each other ‘in significant respects’, marked ‘top secret’ and submitted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Brent and Naumov comment, ‘The final draft is probably supervised by Beria’.[409]

What is known is that Stalin became ill following a dinner with Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin that had begun the night of February 28 and ended in the early morning of Saturday, March 1. Khrushchev claimed that Stalin had been ‘pretty drunk’, but others stated that Stalin only drunk fruit juice that night, and it is known that Stalin seldom drunk hard liquor.[410] Khrushchev claimed that the evening went well, with Stalin in high spirits, while others claim that Stalin was angry that the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ issue was not progressing. Stalin suddenly retired to his room and the party left, but returned when hearing of Stalin’s collapse. They stayed from March 2, until his death on March 5.

At Midday on March 1 there was no movement in Stalin’s quarters. The servants and other personnel were prevented from entering, although the staff was becoming worried. At 6: 30 AM a light came on, indicating Stalin was working, which allayed the concerns of the staff. Some accounts state that Stalin was found at 10: 30 PM lying on the floor next to his desk. However, there are discrepancies in accounts as to when and how Stalin was found.[411] Khrushchev stated that he suggested delaying calling doctors, claiming that Stalin might have merely had a hangover, although it is now known that he had not been drinking. Beria likewise was not in a hurry to call for medical help.[412] Medical assistance was not permitted for at least ten hours after Stalin was found lying on the floor, although the standing order to the Kremlin Guard was that ‘if any Kremlin official showed signs of illness, doctors were to be called immediately by the guards themselves’, and there had been no requirement to seek the approval of Khrushchev, Beria or anyone else.[413] Brent and Naumov comment:

Either the guards had been instructed to deviate from their standing order by members of the Politburo, or their call for help was countermanded. In either case, complicity at the highest level of Soviet government appears to have ensured that Stalin would die.[414]

According to V M Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Beria boasted to him on May 1 1953 of Stalin’s death: ‘I did him in. I saved you all!’[415]

While the complicity of Khrushchev and Beria in Stalin’s death seems undoubted, the question of a direct hand remains open. Was Stalin poisoned? Stalin suffered both a cerebral haemorrhage and stomach haemorrhaging. However references to stomach haemorrhaging were eliminated from the doctors’ report to the Central Committee. Brent and Naumov question whether this was a cover-up to prevent suggestions of poisoning.[416] They raise the possibility that warfarin, a tasteless and colourless blood thinner also used as rat poison, might have been slipped by Beria into Stalin’s drink. The right doses imbued over several days would cause cerebral and stomach haemorrhaging in someone already having acute hardening of the arteries, as Stalin did.[417]