"The Doctors' Case": Stalin against Zionism. The Doctors' Case: the last "conspiracy" against the party The Doctors' Case, Stalinist repressions

Yakov Lvovich Rapoport

"The Doctors' Case" 1953. Testimony of the accused

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Dedicated to my late wife and friend

Sofya Yakovlevna Rapoport

"Killer Doctors"

On January 13, 1953, the whole world was stunned by a message published in central Soviet newspapers and broadcast on the radio. In this message, the world was informed about the discovery in the Soviet Union (mainly in Moscow) of a criminal organization of major medical workers who committed heinous crimes: taking advantage of the trust of their patients, they vilely killed them, prescribing measures that were obviously contraindicated for them due to the nature of the disease and state of health, often leading to inevitable death. Their victims were outstanding figures of the Soviet state - Shcherbakov, Zhdanov, and major military leaders. This organization included the most prominent representatives of Soviet medicine - professors and academicians (later they were joined by a large group of doctors of lower rank). Their criminal activities, which they carried out on instructions from the intelligence services of capitalist countries, were not limited to the killing of patients; at the same time they carried out espionage work on instructions from the same intelligence agencies. This message named the names of some active members of the criminal organization (M. S. Vovsi, Ya. G. Etinger, B. B. Kogan, M. B. Kogan, A. M. Grinshtein and others), and added People's Artist of the USSR and prominent public figure S. M. Mikhoels, killed several years earlier in Minsk by an unknown truck. The car and its driver remained undetected.

The ideological platform of this criminal gang was Jewish bourgeois nationalism, inspired by connections with the American Jewish organization “Joint”, the existence of which, as it later turned out, many of those involved in this case did not suspect and did not even know its name.

The entire message had a strong anti-Jewish slant.

In addition to the terrorist organization of Jewish bourgeois nationalists, a number of prominent medical scientists of non-Jewish nationality were arrested on similar charges before and after this message (V.N. Vinogradov, V.Kh. Vasilenko, V.F. Zelenin, B.S. Preobrazhensky, M. N. Egorov and others), and the Jewish group was additionally staffed by professors I. A. Shereshevsky, M. Ya. Sereisky, Ya. S. Temkin, E. M. Gelshtein, B. I. Zbarsky, M. I. Pevzner , I. I. Feigel, V. E. Nezlin, N. L. Vilk, the author of these lines and many others. Some of them died before the organization of this case and before it was reported and were “arrested” posthumously (M. B. Kogan and M. I. Pevzner, and Ya. G. Etinger, arrested in 1950, died in prison before its inclusion to the list of “monsters of the human race”).

The announcement on January 13 about the arrest of a large group of doctors was not unexpected. Arrests began in November-December 1952; the names of those arrested and their number could not be a secret for wide circles of the population of Moscow and the largest centers.

Group arrests of specialists on professional grounds were not news for Soviet citizens. Along with the arrests of large masses of the population, mainly from the intelligentsia, without professional analysis, there were arrests of groups differentiated by their specialties (engineers, builders, military, geologists, agricultural workers, etc., and social and political figures). Of these, specialized conspiratorial groups were formed in the depths of the GPU - MGB, followed by physical extermination by verdicts of an open or, more often, closed court.

What was unexpected was the monstrous nature of the accusations against a large mass of doctors, moreover, well-known clinicians with great professional popularity.

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In the criminal history of the Soviet country, there were already known cases of similar accusations against doctors, but they concerned individual representatives of the medical class. In chronological order, this type of criminal chronicle was apparently discovered by the surgeon Dr. Kholin. He suddenly disappeared in the late twenties, and it was completely unclear why he was arrested, what crime he could have committed. According to leaked rumors (they were mostly confirmed), it was reported that he was arrested in connection with the operation carried out by M.V. Frunze. There were rumors about this operation for a duodenal ulcer that it was performed at the insistence of Stalin. On October 31, 1925, two days after the operation performed by leading surgeons led by Professor I. I. Grekov, M. V. Frunze died. These rumors hinted that Stalin was interested in the operation and its fatal outcome, and this version was used as a plot for the literary work of the famous writer B. Pilnyak, “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon.”

It was probably this story that cost B. Pilnyak his life. At the height of the repressions of 1937, he was arrested, accused of spying for Japan (he was in Japan and reflected his impressions of the trip in the book “The Roots of the Japanese Sun”) and shot. The versions that circulated immediately after Frunze’s death about doubts about the need for the operation with its subsequent fatal outcome apparently nevertheless reached the highest spheres, since a few days after Frunze’s funeral, Professor I. I. Grekov appeared in the press with confusing explanations about the circumstances of the operation and of death. In them, he justified the need for the operation and argued that there were indications for it, and explained the death (extremely incomprehensibly) mainly by the general aggravating background of M. V. Frunze’s body.

Many of the circulating versions about the cause of death of M. V. Frunze (especially the version about death from chloroform anesthesia) may have a legitimate medical basis. At the same time, we should categorically reject the idea of knowingly criminal actions of surgeons - well-known, respected scientists. At present, apparently, we will have to be satisfied with the official materials of 1925 with the testimony of contemporaries about the death of Frunze; calculations on other sources are probably hopeless. There is no information about Kholin’s role in the Frunze operation. If his arrest had anything to do with this role, then the most likely assumption is that the “authorities” needed him only as a source for a criminal “dossier” on the surgeons who operated, just in case they might need it.

Such “dossiers” were in the practice of the GPU - MGB. In them, minor participants in the “crimes” were arrested and admitted their guilt, and the main ones did not even suspect their participation in them and continued to work, often in high esteem. Often such “dossiers” remained “a thing in itself”, without use due to the lack of a suitable situation.

I will cite a known “paradox” of the Stalin era.

At the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute, the faculty surgery clinic was headed for many years (1926–1943) by the famous surgeon-professor, and later academician, S.I. Spasokukotsky. Among his assistants was a certain Doctor Arutyunov. In 1938, he was arrested by the GPU and, as always, disappeared without a trace. The reason for the arrest, also, as always, remained unknown. This episode was soon forgotten as not representing anything unusual for that time, and the rank of the disappeared did not contribute to the long-term preservation of memory of him and interest in him. Unexpectedly, in 1940, the party organization of the institute (Arutyunov was, it seems, a member of the CPSU) received a letter from Arutyunov, written on a piece of student notebook and sent, apparently, by someone released from prison, at the request of his “fellow prisoner” - Arutyunov. In this letter, Arutyunov wrote that he was sentenced to 10 years for participation in a counter-revolutionary organization headed by Spasokukotsky, into which he involved him. He further wrote that he was sure that Spasokukotsky had been shot (apparently, Arutyunov admitted everything during the investigation), since he, only an accomplice of the leader of the organization, was sentenced to 10 years. By chance, in a concentration camp, a piece of newspaper fell into his hands with a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on awarding Professor Spasokukotsky with the Order of Lenin, and that, therefore, not only was he not shot, but alive, healthy and enjoying the favor of the Soviet government (later he was elected to the USSR Academy of Sciences ). In this regard, Arutyunov asks the party organization of the institute to petition for his release as an innocent convict. His request remained without consequences, no one dared to enter into conflict with the GPU - MGB, since doubts about the validity of the arrest at that time were already a crime against the infallibility of the GPU, and the transfer of the letter to the judicial authorities could cause a deterioration in the fate of the convicted person.

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The Arutyunov case and the Kholin case are separated by a period of almost 10 years. But the fundamental commonality of both cases convinces us of the constancy of the previously created methods of activity of the “bodies.” The target orientation of these techniques in such cases remains a mystery, that is, the conspiratorial political discrediting of the “chiefs” through minor imaginary accomplices of their crimes. It is very likely that this goal is to create ready-made “dossiers” on chefs in reserve, just in case they are suddenly needed.

“The Doctors’ Case” of 1953 is the name of a sensational criminal case against famous doctors in the USSR, 6 of whom were Jews. The doctors were accused of conspiracy against high-ranking officials of the CPSU Central Committee and the murder of prominent party members. The reason for starting the investigation was the events of 1948. Doctor Lydia Timashuk diagnosed the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Andrei Zhdanov with “myocardial infarction.” But under “pressure” from her superiors, she not only prescribed the wrong treatment, but also completely rewrote the medical history - which is why Comrade Zhdanov died a few days later.

Campaign to eradicate cosmopolitanism

The background to the case of the “killer doctors” was, in fact, the final stage of the campaign to eradicate cosmopolitanism in the USSR. Initially conceived as a good cause, it soon took on an ugly shape, spreading ideas of anti-Semitism.
The doctors' case goes back to 1946, when Stalin, in order to strengthen his position, first removed Lavrentiy Beria from the leadership of the NKVD. Instead of General Merkulov (a close associate of Beria), he appointed Viktor Abakumov. There were more “Leningraders” in the CPSU - Zhdanov, Kuznetsov, Voznesensky. Kuznetsov appointed Dr. Egorov as head of the medical and sanitary department - the one who in the future will appear in the “doctors’ case.” It was Egorov who did not allow Timashuk to treat Zhdanov “correctly”, and the cardiologist wrote a denunciation to the Party Central Committee. Stalin ordered the report to be sent to the archives, however, a year later, on the basis of the same denunciation, Abakumov had to carry out a “purge” in the Kremlin hospital in order to maintain his position.

How the business began

On January 13, 1953, all major newspapers of the USSR published a message with the following headline: “Arrest of a group of pest doctors.” The message said that “some time ago, state security agencies uncovered a terrorist group of doctors whose goal was to shorten the lives of active figures in the Soviet Union through sabotage treatment.” It was further said that these doctors abused their position and the trust of their patients, diagnosed the wrong diseases in their patients, and killed them with the wrong treatment.
In January 1953, the arrest of saboteur doctors was officially approved, most of whom were Jews: Vovsi, Etinger, Feldman, Kogan, Grinstein. Everyone was charged with the same thing - organizing a “Zionist” anti-Soviet conspiracy against prominent members of the USSR party. They were also accused of being members of the Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization “Joint”. And Vinogradov and Egorov were declared long-time MI6 agents. They were arrested earlier, but the public received information only in 1953.
Lydia Timashuk, who “reported” to the CPSU Central Committee about the secret plan of the pest doctors, was awarded the Order of Lenin. She was declared a national heroine, who became “... a symbol of Soviet patriotism, high vigilance, irreconcilable, courageous struggle against the enemies of our Motherland”

Investigation of the case

Stalin believed that the arrested doctors were connected with intelligence in England and the United States. He gave the order to “knock out” the truth from those arrested by any means in order to understand the motives of the “killer doctors.” Naturally, the doctors did not know about any conspiracy and insisted on their innocence. Then all prisoners were transferred to another prison to tighten interrogation methods.
Lieutenant Colonel Ryumin was appointed head of the investigation. Back in 1951, he informed Stalin about a Jewish conspiracy in the state security agencies. In October 1952, the conspiracy of Jewish doctors was confirmed, and the doctors were arrested. At the end of November, the “knocked out” information seemed to be enough to prove the guilt of the killer doctors. But Stalin did not calm down on this, he continued to put pressure on the Ministry of State Security, so the arrests continued.

Completion of the investigation

On January 19, 1953, a special employee of the MGB, Nikolai Mesyatsev, was appointed to conduct an independent investigation into the case of the pest doctors. Mesyatsev was appointed by Stalin. Within a few days of working on the case, Mesyatsev realized that the case was fabricated, the evidence was falsified and invented, since “the origin of chronic and age-related diseases is the result of the influence of criminal doctors.”
A month later, the case was declared null and void due to false and fabricated evidence. On March 5, 1953, Stalin died, and anti-Semitic policies in the media stopped. On March 13, 1953, Lavrentiy Beria initiated the abolition of the criminal case, and on April 3, the doctors were reinstated in their positions.
Lydia Timashuk, awarded the Order of Lenin, was deprived of the award on April 4, 1953, promising to retain her position and authority. But the promises were not kept: in 1954 she was retired in the prime of her medical career, without the right to receive a company apartment and a personal medical pension.
Lieutenant Colonel Ryumin was fired and arrested for abuse of authority and bullying. In 1954 he was shot.

On the essence of the “doctors’ case”
“The Doctors' Case” is a high-profile criminal case of the Soviet Union under Stalin, brought against famous Soviet medical workers accused of plotting to kill a number of Soviet figures. This process became famous for its anti-Jewish essence, remaining one of many similar crimes among the crimes of the Stalinist regime.
On January 13, 1953, many newspapers, in particular Pravda, published the article “Despicable spies and murderers in the guise of professors and doctors,” which tells the story of the discovery of a conspiracy by a group of medical terrorists. They were identified by their colleague, doctor Lydia Timashuk. She drew the attention of the MGB to the incorrect treatment of Zhdanov, which, according to her, led to his death. The essence of the message was that state security agencies had uncovered a criminal conspiracy among high-ranking doctors. It was alleged that they planned to commit a series of terrorist attacks in order to eliminate leading statesmen of the USSR.
The text mentioned professors and respected people arrested in this case: Vovsi, brothers B.B. Kogan and M.B. Kogan, Grinstein, Etinger, Feldman, as well as Egorov, Vinogradov and Mayorov. They were credited with working for various foreign intelligence services, including British and Japanese. Among other things, the results of medical examinations, confessions of the accused and other documentary evidence were presented that fully confirmed their guilt. Doctors were accused of making deliberately false diagnoses, which led to improper treatment and systematic killing of patients. Among other things, doctors were accused of poisoning A.A. Zhdanov and A.S. Shcherbakov and the intention to “incapacitate” key Soviet military personnel - Marshals Konev, Govorov, Vasilevsky, and many others.
The authors of the article emphasized the Zionist nature of the conspiracy. The main point of the accusation was that most of the group's members were recruited by the Jewish international charitable organization "Joint", as they said, this is a Zionist spy organization hiding behind the mask of charity.
The investigation into the “Doctors’ Case” entered an active phase in the previous year, 1952, and was conducted by state security officers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ryumin. A series of arrests began among doctors who had some connection to the highest echelon of power. At the same time, the leadership of the MGB formed a general “doctors’ case”, thus, 37 people were already charged in the general proceedings. Most of them were Jews. Stalin wanted to work out the version of the Zionist conspiracy and the trace of foreign intelligence in the doctors’ case as fully as possible. To achieve their goals, they were given instructions to use torture on the “conspirators.”
Now, after the publication of information about the discovery of the conspiracy and the arrest of the doctors, a platform was prepared for another anti-Jewish campaign. The publication about the “doctors’ case” caused a wide resonance among the people; relatives and colleagues of those arrested were subjected to persecution and persecution, and anti-Semitic sentiments flared up throughout the country. A hunt began for cosmopolitans, and most of them turned out to be Jews. Hatred of Jews became open and all-Union, the Soviet press received “carte blanche” to accuse Jews of all sins. Every now and then there were regular “exposures of dark deeds”, with the main defendants being Jews, and large-scale layoffs of Jews from work began throughout the Union. This was the whole point of the “doctors’ case.”
By mid-March 1953, a high-profile and show trial was being prepared, which should end in death sentences and public executions by hanging in the central squares of the main cities of the USSR, but this was not destined to take place.
Already at the beginning of March 1953, shortly after Stalin's death, the criminal trial was curtailed. New First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR L.P. Beria, as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, initiated the cessation of many high-profile trials of “enemies of the people,” including the “doctors’ case.” On March 13, a special investigation team was created and ordered to reconsider the case. As a result of the review, the “doctors’ case” was declared a falsification and it was closed, and all the accused (those who survived the investigation) and their relatives and colleagues were acquitted, reinstated and completely rehabilitated on April 3.
The next day, the investigation officially announced that the confessions of those arrested were obtained using “unacceptable investigative methods.” The head of the investigation, Ryumin, was made guilty of the entire fabricated trial. At that time, having already been dismissed from the authorities, he was arrested and, according to official data, executed.
There is a version according to which, as the culmination of the “Doctors’ Plot,” a mass deportation of Jews was planned, akin to Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars, that this was the essence of all the persecutions. However, this version has not found documentary evidence.
Thus, the essence of the “Doctors’ Plot” largely lies in its outright far-fetchedness and anti-Semitic orientation, all charges were fabricated solely for ideological criminal purposes, it became the final one among other provocations within the framework of Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign. Soon after the rehabilitation of all the accused, the case was hushed up and no data or materials about this case were subsequently published.

Campaign to eradicate cosmopolitanism

How the business began

Investigation of the case

Completion of the investigation

January 2013

The events we want to talk about today are our recent past; a story that took place in a huge country called the USSR that had already disappeared from the world map and became part of the history of the Jewish ethnic group, which, together with other peoples, lived on 1/6 (as they used to proudly say) of the landmass of planet Earth.
We hope that this material will refresh the memory of those of our fellow citizens who still yearn for those times...

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Sixty years ago, on January 13, 1953, all the central newspapers of the Soviet Union published a TASS emergency message: “Arrest of a group of pest doctors.” The message said, in part:
“Some time ago, state security agencies uncovered a terrorist group of doctors whose goal was to shorten the lives of active figures in the Soviet Union through sabotage treatment.” Next, the names of the nine arrested were listed, and it was reported: the investigation established that members of the terrorist group, using their position as doctors and abusing the trust of patients, deliberately undermined the health of the latter, gave them incorrect diagnoses that did not correspond to the actual nature of their diseases, and then destroyed them with improper treatment. It was also reported that the criminal doctors admitted that they took advantage of the illness of a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade Zhdanov, by incorrectly diagnosing his disease, hiding his myocardial infarction, prescribing a regimen contraindicated for this serious disease, and thereby killing him. And further:
“The investigation established that the criminals shortened the life of comrade A.S. Shcherbakova (Candidate Member of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)), incorrectly used potent drugs in his treatment, establishing a regime that was detrimental to him, and in this way brought him to death. The criminal doctors tried, first of all, to undermine the health of the Soviet military leadership, incapacitate them and weaken the country's defense (the names of the marshals are listed), but the arrest thwarted their villainous plans, and the criminals failed to achieve their goal. It has been established that all these killer doctors, who became monsters of the human race and trampled on the sacred banner of science, were hired agents of foreign intelligence.”
At this point we must pause and inform the reader that six of the nine arrested doctors named in the TASS report were Jews. The fact that there were several Russian names on the list of accused should, according to the plan of the organizers of this Jesuit case, only testify to the “objectivity” of the investigation, and therefore to the reliability of the “doctors’ case”...
Why did I use the word “Jesuit”? Yes, because the case of the “killer doctors” became the final act - the apotheosis of the policy of state anti-Semitism, carried out in the USSR by the Stalinist totalitarian regime and which did not stop even after the catastrophe of the Jewish people of 1941-1945. This policy was aimed at eliminating the so-called “Jewish influence” on the socio-political and cultural life of the country. Someone may not agree with this statement of mine, so for those who have forgotten, I will remind you of the three post-war anti-Jewish campaigns that preceded the “Doctors’ Plot”: the Case of the “Rootless Cosmopolitans” (1947), the Case of the “Theater Critics” (1949) and “ The Case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" (1952), during which prominent figures of Jewish culture in the USSR were shot. It should be noted here that during the struggle against “rootless cosmopolitans” and “theater critics” the word “Jew” was hardly mentioned. And in August 1952, newspapers reported nothing about the execution of leading figures of Jewish culture in the USSR, and information about the trial of the “Case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee” remained closed in the USSR for many years after the death of the tyrant.

But in January 1953, the defamation of Jews became open. It was enough to pay attention to the style of the TASS report “Arrest of a group of saboteur doctors”, its content and threats, reminiscent of the exposure of “enemies of the people” in the pre-war years, for citizens to understand: the command “Face!” was given...
Here is the final paragraph of the article:
“Most of the participants in the terrorist group (Vovsi M.S., Kogan B.B., Feldman A.I., Grinshtein A.M., Etinger Ya.G. and others) were associated with the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization “Joint” , created by American intelligence supposedly to provide material assistance to Jews in other countries. In fact, this organization, under the leadership of American intelligence, carries out extensive espionage, terrorist and other subversive activities in a number of countries, including the Soviet Union. The arrested Vovsi told the investigation that he received a directive “on the extermination of the leading personnel of the USSR” from the United States from the Joint organization through a doctor in Moscow, Shimeliovich, and the famous Jewish bourgeois nationalist Mikhoels... The investigation will be completed in the near future.”
Please note how confidently TASS reports: “The investigation will be completed in the near future.” Of course, confidently, because the fabrication of the “doctors’ case” actually began long before the events of January 1953 that we are describing.
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Back in 1948, the MGB received a letter from the doctor of the Kremlin hospital, Lydia Timashchuk, who reported on the improper treatment of A.A. Zhdanov, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b). The letter reported that after taking an electrocardiogram, Timashchuk diagnosed the patient with a myocardial infarction, but eminent professors Egorov, Vinogradov, Vasilenko and Mayorov allegedly not only rejected her diagnosis and recommendations (Timashchuk insisted “on observing the strictest regime for Andrei Alexandrovich”), but also forced rewrite the diagnosis in accordance with your own conclusions. Moreover, they allowed Zhdanov to get out of bed, walk in the park and watch movies, as a result of which Zhdanov, according to Timashchuk, died a few days later. Timashchuk’s letter landed on Stalin’s desk, but he did not attach much importance to the information it contained and ordered the letter to be sent to the archives. It should also be noted that in Timashchuk’s letter only Russian and Ukrainian names appeared: Vinogradov, Egorov, Vasilenko, Mayorov. But in the MGB, four years later, developing the theme of “killers in white coats” (no doubt - at the direction of the leader), Jews were added to the Russian doctors. And the real persons involved in that ill-fated letter were soon themselves turned by popular rumor into “hidden Jews.”
To substantiate my statements and especially the role of the “leader,” I would like to turn to evidence documents.
This is what Alexander Yakovlev, a prominent Soviet political and public figure, member of the Politburo and Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, wrote in his article “He imagined hostile Zionism everywhere”:
“After the Patriotic War, anti-Semitism became practically state policy. Deputy Minister of State Security M. Ryumin stated that since the end of 1947, in the work of his department, “a tendency to consider persons of Jewish nationality as potential enemies of the Soviet state began to clearly manifest itself.” Yakovlev further writes: “The largest anti-Semitic provocation was the “Doctors’ Plot.” The persecution of Jewish doctors began soon after the war. Endless checks were carried out based on anonymous letters. Checks ended in arrests. In 1950, two resolutions of the Central Committee were adopted demanding stricter purges of Jews in medical institutions. After a letter to the MGB from L. Timashchuk (an ordinary doctor at the Kremlin hospital), persecution began of medical luminaries who were involved in the treatment of senior rulers. They persistently searched for evidence to accuse doctors of “criminal methods of treatment” with the aim of “killing prominent figures of the party and state.” Among those arrested were people of different nationalities - Russians, Ukrainians, Jews. All were declared participants in the Zionist conspiracy. Investigators could not find documentary materials about the existence of a conspiracy of doctors and their espionage activities. Then, in the fall of 1952, Stalin took control of the investigation. He personally set the deadline for preparing the open trial. By his order, people - far from young and in poor health - were subjected to monstrous torture and torture. Stalin himself determined what kind of torture should be applied to which arrested person in order to extract “confessions.” I checked myself to see how accurately his orders in this regard were carried out.”
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So 60 years ago, a grandiose anti-Semitic campaign began to unfold in the USSR, sweeping the entire country in a short time. Immediately after the TASS report, on January 14, 1953, a handwritten leaflet appeared on the outskirts of Kyiv: “Announcement!!! Expulsion of the Jews!... Drive them out, so that there is no smell of another spirit on our land...” Then new leaflets were discovered in Kyiv. Here are the texts of some of them: “Jews! Get out of Ukraine!”, “Beat the Jewish spies!”...
All over the country, mass layoffs of Jewish doctors began. Many doctors and pharmacists have become victims of suspicion on the part of patients. After all, a “villain doctor” could end up in any medical institution and harm the health, or even kill the patient. Incredible rumors arose about medical crimes that were attributed to Jewish doctors; they said that they infected patients with tuberculosis and syphilis, terminated women's pregnancies, killed newborn babies, slipped “poisonous powders” into pharmacies... The population of the country lived in an atmosphere of fear and fear for their lives and the lives of their relatives and friends. And the reaction of people corresponded to this atmosphere.
Here are just a few excerpts from letters from “vigilant” Soviet citizens.
Kemerovo region: “We must write a letter to Comrade Stalin so that not a single Jewish doctor is allowed anywhere near the Kremlin...”.
Kyiv: “The Jews healed my husband and sent him to the next world only because he was a member of the party...”
Lvov: “The Soviet people curse these degenerates and demand the most severe punishment...”.
Let us turn again to the article by A.N. Yakovleva.
“Candidate member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee Malyshev, who was present at the first meeting after the 19th Congress of the CPSU,” writes Yakovlev, “recorded in his diary some of Stalin’s statements during the meeting. Here they are: “Any Jew is a nationalist, he is an agent of American intelligence. Jewish nationalists believe that the United States saved their nation. They consider themselves obligated to the Americans. There are many Jewish nationalists among doctors." And further Yakovlev reports: “In February 1953, preparations began for the deportation of Jews from Moscow and large industrial centers to the eastern regions of the country. They planned to organize the case in such a way that a group of Jews proactively prepared a letter to the government asking for the deportation of Jews in order to save them from the wrath of the Soviet people caused by the “Doctors' Plot.”
For those for whom this statement of a former member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee is not convincing, I will cite the testimony of a person from the “other camp” - an ardent anti-communist, a person who was not at all distinguished by his love for Jews, a Russian writer and publicist, public and political figure Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Here is what he writes in his book “The Gulag Archipelago”:
“Stalin was going to organize a big massacre of Jews. Stalin's plan was this: at the beginning of March, the “killer doctors” were to be hanged on Red Square. The excited patriots (under the guidance of instructors) had to rush into the Jewish pogrom. And then the government, generously saving the Jews from the wrath of the people, deported them that same night to the Far East and Siberia (where barracks were already being prepared).”
In his book “Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation. Reflections on I.V. Stalin,” written in 1979, many years after Stalin’s death, (published in 1988), the famous writer, poet and public figure Konstantin Simonov writes:
“For example, I didn’t want to believe in his (Stalin’s) anti-Semitism: it didn’t coincide with my ideas about him, with everything that I read from him, and in general seemed something ridiculous, incompatible with the personality of the man who found himself in charge of world communist movement."
The answer to the question that so worried not only Simonov, whether Stalin was an anti-Semite, is probably best obtained from what his own daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva wrote about this “illness” of his:
“In 1939, while studying at the academy, Yakov Dzhugashvili married a very pretty woman, abandoned by her husband. Julia was Jewish. And this excited my father. True, in those years he had not yet expressed his hatred of Jews so clearly; it began for him later, after the war, but in his soul he never had sympathy for them.”
Well, Simonov continues to suffer in his book:
“Among these doctors with Jewish surnames there was a man whom I knew personally very well - Professor Vovsi. He treated me during the war and after it, being the chief therapist of the Red Army. I simply could not believe that he was guilty. And in general, all this did not inspire faith; it seemed something monstrous and strange. When, a week later, a message appeared about the awarding of the Order of Lenin to the doctor Lydia Timashchuk, to whom the government expressed gratitude for her help in exposing the killer doctors, this whole story looked even worse, even more suspicious. A wave of anti-Semitism rolled in, in many cases not alien to the settling of all kinds of personal scores - recent and old. It seems impossible to imagine killer doctors. Everything, starting from the wording itself, was deliberately designed to have a huge resonance, to the fact that people who succumbed to this at least a little, who believed it to some extent, would become people with shifted brains... In general, there was a feeling that the consequences of all this may turn out to be truly unimaginable. I mentally asked myself: what happened? What about Stalin? What, he deliberately deceived us when he said exactly the opposite of what was done (there was no doubt about it) on his direct instructions and permission...”
***
In the early morning of March 1, 1953, Stalin was paralyzed, and on March 5, the all-powerful dictator died.
Let's be honest - it was this death that saved the Jews of the Soviet Union from the impending massacre.
By the way, on that day, March 1, 1953, the great Jewish holiday of Purim began, established by our sages in memory of the miraculous deliverance of the Jewish people from the attempted physical extermination of Jews in the Persian Empire 2500 years ago. Surprisingly, in those distant times, in the capital of the Persian Empire, as the Bible reports, just as in the March days of 1953 in the capital of the Soviet Empire, gallows were being prepared for the Jews. And in March 1953, another hater of Jews lay defeated precisely on the holiday of Purim - just as at the same time and on these same days, but only 2500 years earlier, the Persian minister Haman, who had plotted to destroy the entire Jewish people, was defeated...
Let’s not dwell on what kind of reaction Stalin’s death caused in the country, what Soviet newspapers wrote then and how sincerely mourned (!) ordinary Soviet citizens... Stalin’s successors immediately tried to quickly dissociate themselves from Stalin’s actions and, above all, from their involvement in “ the cause of doctors."
On April 1, 1953, L. Beria reported to the country’s leaders about the “falsification of the “doctors’ case” and proposed that “the arrested doctors and members of their families be completely rehabilitated and immediately released from custody.”
On April 3, the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee on “complete rehabilitation ...” followed.
And already on April 4 at 6 o’clock in the morning, Moscow radio broadcast an emergency “Message from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.” The message said:
“The USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs carried out a thorough check of all the preliminary investigation materials and other data in the case of a group of doctors accused of sabotage, espionage and terrorist actions against active figures of the Soviet state. As a result of the audit, it was established that those involved in this case (their names are listed below) were arrested by the former Ministry of State Security of the USSR incorrectly, without any legal grounds. The investigation showed that the charges brought against these individuals are false. It has been established that the testimony of the arrested, allegedly confirming the charges brought against them, was obtained by employees of the investigative unit of the former MGB through the use of unacceptable investigative techniques and strictly prohibited by Soviet laws.” And further it was reported: “based on the conclusion of the investigative commission, specially appointed by the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs to verify this case, those arrested (names are listed) and others involved in this case were completely rehabilitated and released from custody. Those responsible for the improper conduct of the investigation have been arrested and prosecuted.”
Finally, almost two and a half million Soviet Jews were able, if not to breathe easy, then at least just to take a breath...
On the same day, this message from the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs was published by the same (which also published the TASS emergency message of January 13, 1953) main newspaper of the country, the print organ of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, the newspaper Pravda. And at the very end of the newspaper page there was a very small, modest message:
“The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to cancel the Decree of January 20, 1953 on awarding the Order of Lenin to Timashchuk L.F. as incorrect, in connection with the actual circumstances that have now emerged.”
After these two official reports, no data or materials about the “doctors’ case” were subsequently published in the USSR.
After the cancellation of the Decree on the award, Timashchuk returned the Order of Lenin to the state and ... received assurances that the government considered her an “honest Soviet doctor.” Timashchuk continued to quietly work as a doctor in the 4th Main Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Health until her retirement in 1964.
***
Very little time passed, and in the summer of 1953, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, it was already said that the public rehabilitation of doctors was done “to the detriment of the interests of our state” (?!!) and made a “painful impression” on Soviet society.
And then, almost exactly three years after the “doctors’ case,” in February 1956, the 20th Congress of the CPSU took place with the famous secret report of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev “On the cult of personality and its consequences,” in which Khrushchev directly laid the blame for numerous crimes in the mid-1930s - early 1950s. against Stalin and publicly stated that the order for the arrest and torture of doctors was given personally by Stalin. But at the same time, in his speech Nikita Sergeevich did not say a word about the fact that the “doctors’ case” was anti-Semitic in nature, and in his denunciatory speech he managed not to use the word “Jews” at all.
In order to avoid omissions, before putting an end to it, I would like to once again turn to the testimony of A.N. Yakovleva:
“After Stalin’s death, the persecution of Jews on the basis of nationality was stopped, but an unspoken conspiracy-agreement continued to operate within the party and state elite: not to allow Jews into power structures at all levels. The personnel apparatus of the party, ministries and departments carefully monitored this “order” under the general control of the KGB. True, as a pharisaical cover for anti-Semitic policy, two Jews worked in each ministry, as if to answer a “tricky” question: well, why are you accusing us of anti-Semitism - we have one Jew working in... The situation was more complicated in the scientific sphere. Here the naked pragmatism of power prevailed, especially in applied military sciences. Therefore, we had to “tolerate” the Jews too”...
As we see, the life of the Jews of a huge country, as they rightly wrote in the West - the country “behind the Iron Curtain”, as well as the life of other peoples of the USSR, continued further in the direction set by the party and under the supervision of the KGB.
Before perestroika, when state anti-Semitism was ended in the USSR, there were still three long decades left...

Semyon BELMAN, specially for the Jewish Observer