Many years later I found out the meaning of their night whispers. According to Stalin’s plan, after the Doctors’ trial and execution of the accused Kremlin doctors, all Jews would be deported from the cities to special labor camps. Stalin’s scenario consisted of five “acts.”274 First, sentencing doctors after their full confession. Second, execution by public hanging. Third, Jewish pogroms through the country. Fourth, an appeal by Jewish celebrities to Stalin asking for protection from pogroms and for permission to leave the big cities. Fifth, mass deportation of Jews “at their own request” to Siberian camps.
According to Nikita Khrushchev, the whole scenario was discussed at a meeting of the Central Committee Presidium (i.e., Politburo) in February 1953.275 Stalin’s resolution on the deportation of Soviet Jews to a special separate zone within the USSR was not passed. Stalin fainted and fell to the floor. This was the first indication of his serious health condition. He died two weeks after the meeting.
In the morning, at school, I heard the laughing of my classmates. One of them was a son of our building’s superintendent. According to the MGB rules, a superintendent had to attend the arrest of an inhabitant of his (or her) building. Our superintendent’s son told my classmates funny stories about the previous night’s arrests. Laughing, he used to say to me: “This night one more of your fellows was taken! My mom (the superintendent was a woman) said that it was so funny!” It was not clear if he meant one more Jew, a doctor, or simply an educated person. It was dangerous to belong to the intelligentsia at that time. I can still hear the laughter of my classmates when I recall those days.
Ryumin interrogated doctors personally and supervised their torture. Even his appearance was “horrifying… He was very short, and his small-sized, like children’s, galoshes stood in the same office. My heart dropped every time when he looked at me,” victim Ariadna Balashova later recalled. Additionally, Ryumin created a commission of three medical professors from the Kremlin Hospital (M. A. Sokolov, V. F. Chervakov, and S. A. Gilyarovsky) and deputy head of the MGB Central Clinic (N. N. Kupysheva) that conducted a special investigation of the medical treatment of Zhdanov and other alleged victims of “killer-doctors.”276 The pattern of Vinogradov, Shereshevsky and other doctors’ betrayal of Professor Pletnev in 1938, when they testified against Pletnev as official experts (see Chapter 2), was repeated. This time Vinogradov and Shereshevsky themselves were the object of the “investigation” by the MGB-selected commission of “experts.”
Despite all efforts, the efficiency of Ryumin’s investigation of doctors and the Jews who were former MGB officers was apparently low. Later Ryumin testified:
In September 1952 [MGB Minister] Ignatiev reproached me… that our information on the investigation cases looked very weak comparatively with that Abakumov had used to send to the Authorities [i.e., Stalin and the Politburo]… Ignatiev stressed many times that if we did not succeed in obtaining the necessary testimonies from the doctors-Jews, both of us would be dismissed and possibly arrested.277
However, on November 14, 1952, only Ryumin was dismissed, and Ignatiev was placed personally in charge of the Doctors’ Plot case. After sophisticated torture techniques were applied, each one of the doctors confessed to all the fabrications suggested by their interrogators. One can clearly see Professor Pletnev’s model of 1938 (Chapter 2) in the Doctors’ Plot case. One of the arrested, Professor Vladimir Vasilenko, signed the following “testimony” on November 15, 1952:
The trial on Pletnev’s case… revealed for me the technique of killing patients by administrating incorrect treatments. From the materials of the case I understood… that the doctor could not only damage his patient’s health, but also lead the patient to death by cunning methods. I thought about this many times during the years that followed, remembering Pletnev, whom I personally knew. In July 1948, when I visited the ill Zhdanov [a member of the Politburo] at his bedside, I unwittingly remembered again Pletnev and his killings… And I decided to kill Zhdanov A. A.278
In January 1953, a group of MGB operatives brought “Prisoner No. 12” Zhemchuzhina from Kazakhstan back to Lubyanka in Moscow. Through February 1953, she was interrogated every day in connection with the Doctors’ Plot. As Larissa Vasilieva, who had access to Zhemchuzhina’s investigation file at the KGB/FSB Archive, writes, “in her files are excerpts from the interrogations of Doctors Vinogradov, Kogan, Vovsi, who all confirmed that she was a Jewish nationalist.”279 The last document in the file dated March 23 is unique; it contains the following phrase: “It is now established that the statements by Kogan and Vovsi in the case against Zhemchuzhina were extorted through brutality and beatings.”280 On March 2, interrogations suddenly stopped: Stalin was dying. He died on March 5, 1953, and the nightmare of the Doctors’ Plot case was terminated.
Molotov was restored as foreign minister immediately after Stalin’s death, on March 5, 1953. On March 9, the day of Stalin’s funeral and Molotov’s birthday, Khrushchev and Malenkov asked Molotov what he wanted for his birthday. He wanted his wife back. The next day Zhemchuzhina was summoned to see Beria and her husband. She fainted in Beria’s office when she was told that Stalin had died. Zhemchuzhina was released, and her case was closed on March 23. Like Allilueva, despite her experience she remained a staunch Stalinist.281 So did her husband.282
Incidentally, Molotov was not the only Politburo member whose wife was arrested. The wife of Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946), Ekaterina, was arrested much earlier, on October 25, 1938.283 Kalinin was one of Lenin’s first adherents. In 1919, he was elected to the Central Committee, and from 1926 until his death, he was a Politburo member. From 1938–1946, Kalinin chaired the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, meaning that he was formal head of the Soviet government. But in fact, he was a “decorative” figure and had no power. During the investigation, which was conducted under the personal supervision of Beria and Bogdan Kobulov, Ekaterina Kalinina was tortured in Lefortovo Prison. On April 22, 1939, Kalinina was condemned to fifteen-year imprisonment in a labor camp as a “Trotskyist.” Only on December 14, 1946, did a special decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet order her release. The decree was signed by the secretary of the Presidium, and not by Kalinin. For eight more years, Ekaterina Kalinina struggled for official rehabilitation. Finally, she received a document stating that “there was no evidence against her anti-Soviet activities” and that “Kalinina’s arrest was an act of retribution by Beria and Kobulov.”
On April 1, 1953, Beria, the new head of state security (now named the MVD),284 approved the draft resolution of the Presidium (i.e., the Politburo) to release the arrested doctors, and on April 3, 1953, the Presidium adopted this resolution.285 Many of the arrested were released immediately, but several others remained imprisoned for one more year. They were released in February 1954, following the order of the new MVD minister, Sergei Kruglov. On April 27, 1954, Dr. Etinger’s wife was moved from Vladimir Prison to Moscow and released.286 Although Dr. Vovsi was released after Stalin’s death, he still became a victim of the executioners: He died soon of osteosarcoma, which formed in those places of his body that had been beaten the most extensively during interrogations.