Stalin's Last Crime

Jonathan Brent, Vladimir Naumov

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780062013675
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Biografías políticas

A new investigation, based on previously unseen KGB documents, reveals the startling truth behind Stalin's last great conspiracy.

On January 13, 1953, a stunned world learned that a vast conspiracy had been unmasked among Jewish doctors in the USSR to murder Kremlin leaders. Mass arrests quickly followed. The Doctors' Plot, as this alleged scheme came to be called, was Stalin's last crime.

In the fifty years since Stalin's death many myths have grown up about the Doctors' Plot. Did Stalin himself invent the conspiracy against the Jewish doctors or was it engineered by subordinates who wished to eliminate Kremlin rivals? Did Stalin intend a purge of all Jews from Moscow, Leningrad, and other major cities, which might lead to a Soviet Holocaust? How was this plot related to the cold war then dividing Europe, and the hot war in Korea? Finally, was the Doctors' Plot connected with Stalin's fortuitous death?

Brent and Naumov have explored an astounding arra of previously unknown, top-secret documents from the KGB, the presidential archives, and other state and party archives in order to probe the mechanism of on of Stalin's greatest intrigues -- and to tell for the first time the incredible full story of the Doctors' Plot.

ONE

THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF COMRADE ZHDANOV

MOSCOW, SEPTEMBER 6, 1948

You went your glorious way, comrade Zhdanov Leaving eternal footsteps behind

—ALEKSANDER ZHAROV, PRAVDA, SEPT. 1, 1948

With what biting sarcasm he threatened all the old enemies, all those who would poison young Soviet literature with their pernicious poison! With what annihilating scorn and hatred he exposed the mercenary bourgeois literature of the West today, that corrupts the minds of readers, that aids reaction, that served fascism once in no small way and now serves the lackeyism of the imperialists—the instigators of a new war!

—MIKHAIL SHOLOKHOV, PRAVDA, SEPT. 2, 1948

The workers of the entire world mourn the untimely death of com. A. A. Zhdanov

— IZVESTIA, SEPT. 3, 1948

On August 31, 1948, at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, a powerful member of Stalin’s Politburo, “unexpectedly” died in Valdai, a health resort for members of the Soviet political elite, about two and a half hours by car to the north and west of Moscow, on the road to Leningrad. Zhdanov was fifty-two years old. His death provoked a public outpouring of grief throughout the Communist world. Condolences were published over many days. Mao Zedong from China and Georgi Dimitrov, the new president of Bulgaria, expressed their sorrow, as did the leaders of Communist parties of Great Britain, France, and Austria, as well as all the Soviet satellites. His body was borne on a gun carriage through Red Square to the Great Hall that housed the Politburo, followed by a procession of dignitaries and mourners, with Stalin in the lead. Eulogies by Molotov and other Politburo leaders were declaimed in Red Square to a sea of mourners. Poems were dedicated to his eternal memory. Mikhail Sholokhov and other noted writers, along with members of the cultural elite, referred to the “great heart” and the “crystal bright mind” of this “true son of the Motherland and the party.” It was said at the time that no Kremlin leader had been buried with such public attention since Sergei Kirov, who died in 1934.

A. A. Zhdanov had been the former, brutal boss of the Leningrad party and the architect of Soviet postwar ideology and cultural policy. It was he who gave the keynote speech at the 1934 International Writers’ Congress, where he had invoked Stalin’s dictum that writers were the “engineers of human souls.” In 1946 Zhdanov had issued the infamous “report” on literature and ideology that included, among other things, harsh criticism of the poetry of A. A. Akhmatova, and led to her banishment from the Writers’ Union. Akhmatova, Zhdanov wrote, was “A nun or a whore—or rather both a nun and a whore who combines harlotry with prayer.” He described her poetry as “utterly remote from the people…. What can there be in common between this poetry and the interests of our people and State? Nothing whatsoever.”¹ Another time he had rebuked Shostakovich for not writing music the average Soviet worker could hum. Zhdanov’s report unleashed what came to be termed the “Zhdanovshchina,” which terrorized Soviet arts and letters for a decade until the Khrushchev “Thaw.”

After the Second World War Zhdanov had been represented as a hero of the siege of Leningrad; he had given his life to the “interests of the State.” At the time of his death he was considered by many to have been the most powerful member of the Soviet government after Stalin. He had defended Stalin and Stalinism all his life and had earned the respect of the people as well as Stalin’s confidence. In September 1947 Stalin entrusted Zhdanov, not Molotov, with delivering the keynote speech at the Szklarska Poreba conference in Poland that set out the basic terms of Stalin’s Cold War vision to leaders of the satellite countries and foreign Communist parties. Zhdanov depicted the postwar world as “irrevocably divided into two hostile camps.”² American expansionism, he charged, was comparable to that of the fascist states of the 1930s.

More than just professional or political sympathy drew Stalin and Zhdanov together. Stalin was said to have personally preferred him because Zhdanov was educated and more literate than most of the other Politburo leaders. Zhdanov enjoyed playing the piano at Stalin’s dacha and discussing literature with Gorky. In the spring of 1949 his son, Yuri, married Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, something that was possibly more a sign of political realities than of personal choice.³

But in early July 1948 Zhdanov had fainted on the way to his office in Old Square near the Kremlin, returning from a Politburo meeting held in Stalin’s “nearby” dacha the Blizhnyaya. Though just over fifty, he had had a bad heart for some time, the result of years of overwork, drinking, and hypertension. Earlier that spring Stalin had given him other reasons to be anxious. In April, only nine months since Zhdanov’s historic speech at Szklarska Poreba, Stalin had reacted very negatively to the role Zhdanov’s son, Yuri, had played in discussing the botanist T. D. Lysenko at a meeting held under the auspices of the Central Committee, saying that those responsible for this provocation should be punished in “exemplary” fashion. Although not formally dismissed from the posts of Secretary of Ideology of the Communist Party and head of the Leningrad party, Zhdanov knew his position in the party was now at risk and his life might also be in jeopardy. Stalin’s suggestion that he recover in Valdai had carried with it the same solicitude that had accompanied the demotion of other Kremlin leaders since the thirties. The head of the Kremlin Hospital signed the medical certificate authorizing Zhdanov’s leave and he was sent to Valdai on July 13. “Strict bed rest” was ordered for him to safeguard his health, but its other purpose, as Zhdanov might have guessed, would have been to keep him out of active political life.

On September 6, 1948, one week after Zhdanov “went his glorious way,” an emergency session of experts was convened in the Kremlin Hospital to investigate whether the doctors who treated him in Valdai had misdiagnosed Zhdanov’s illness and had provided criminally negligent treatment. The Kremlin Hospital doctor responsible for the last EKGs of Zhdanov’s heart had sent a secret letter accusing the doctors of this negligence to Lieutenant General Nikolai Vlasik, the Head of the Kremlin Bodyguards, known as the Okhrana. In her letter of August 29, 1948—two days before Zhdanov’s death—Lidia F. Timashuk asserted that the attending doctors had underestimated the “unquestionably grave condition of comrade Zhdanov.”⁴ Soon after his death this evaluation turned into an accusation of outright murder.

For some fifty years this accusation has been viewed as the essential element in the instigation of the Doctors’ Plot, and for fifty years, ever since the accusation against the doctors was dismissed by the Soviet government after Stalin’s death, it has been widely assumed to have been a false charge, stemming from a premeditated plan to launch a conspiracy against the doctors. Therefore, the question of whether Timashuk’s accusation was false and whether in 1948 it was part of a premeditated plan deserve careful scrutiny. Only by examining the details of the session of September 6 and the events immediately leading up to it will the full complexity of this essential component of the Doctors’ Plot be understood.

The special September 6 session took place in the office of Dr. P. I. Yegorov, head of the so-called Lechsanupra (lechebno-sanitarno-upravleniye) of the Kremlin, the complex of medical units, known as the Kremlin Hospital. He himself was one of those Timashuk had accused of misdiagnosing Zhdanov and providing “incorrect treatment.” All the doctors summoned to examine the charges of medical malfeasance were those alleged to have been complicit. No other participants, except Timashuk, attended this extraordinary session.

Even though Timashuk’s initial letter had not raised the accusation of murder (Zhdanov was still alive when she sent it on August 29), all concerned instantly realized the menacing implications of her charge. Before August 1948 Timashuk had been a “rank-and-file doctor at the Kremlin Hospital,”⁵ managing the electrocardiograph unit, with little authority to dispute the findings of the distinguished professors and doctors who had tended Zhdanov and made the original diagnosis of his illness. Timashuk’s secret letter to Vlasik included the transcript of Zhdanov’s EKG examination of August 28, on the basis of which she disputed the conclusions and directives of her superiors. She warned of a “fatal outcome” if Zhdanov did not receive a strict bed rest regimen that her diagnosis of a myocardial infarct (heart attack) would have indicated for him.

I consider that the consultants and physician doctor MAIOROV underestimate the unquestionably grave condition of com. ZHDANOV, permitting him to get up from bed, stroll about in the park, visit the cinema, and so forth, that this provoked the second attack [of August 29] and worsened the indications of the EKG of August 28, and in the future this regimen may lead to a fateful outcome.⁶

As the head of the Kremlin security guards, Vlasik was responsible for ensuring the physical safety of all leading party and Politburo members. He was the right individual to be informed about this matter, and Timashuk expected him to show her letter to the Politburo, if not directly to Stalin himself. This, she assumed, would bring the responsible parties to justice so that correct medical treatment could be provided.

She could hardly have expected what happened next. Her letter of denunciation had been expeditiously delivered through covert and secure channels, but she soon suspected that it had nonetheless fallen almost immediately into the hands of Dr. Yegorov himself, chief among those she had accused. From the Politburo, from the Ministry of State Security (MGB), from Stalin she heard nothing. Nor would she for several years to come.

What went wrong? On September 4, 1948, two days before the special session held in the Kremlin Hospital, Dr. Yegorov summoned Timashuk to his office. Timashuk recalled that she had scarcely “crossed the threshold of [Yegorov’s] office, when Yegorov began to scold me. ‘What have I ever done to you?’” he demanded. “‘Why did you write about me? What have you got to complain of?’” When Timashuk began to defend herself, saying that she had never written any such document, Yegorov exploded: “‘What do you mean you didn’t write it? You wrote about us in a statement saying that we had incorrectly treated A. A. Zhdanov. And this statement…was given to me because they believe me and not some sort of Timashuk.’”⁷

Timashuk tried to deflect Yegorov’s anger by keeping silent, but he continued his reproach. According to Timashuk, he ran around the office, pounded the table with his fists. Afraid that the accusation had left the limits of the Kremlin Hospital, he shouted, “‘Why didn’t you send the statement to me? If you didn’t agree with us, you could have turned to Yefim Ivanovich Smirnov [minister of public health of the USSR].’” She tried in vain to deny that she had written any such document. “‘How dare you deny that you wrote this statement about me?!’” Yegorov countered. “‘I’ve even got it. I’ve read it myself. You mentioned my name twice in it, saying that we had incorrectly treated A. A. Zhdanov!!’”⁸

Timashuk’s behavior demonstrates much self-confidence. Yegorov was not, after all, just another colleague. As head of the Kremlin Hospital, he was her boss. He could unilaterally demote, reassign, or fire her—or conceivably worse. Furthermore, Yegorov held the military rank of major general, and, as Timashuk surely knew, had close administrative ties to important governmental networks, including the MGB (the KGB of the time), an organization that wielded ubiquitous, incalculable, and inexplicable power in the world of Stalin’s Russia. Although the details of this September 1948 encounter come from Timashuk’s own testimony and serve her own interests, other sources confirm her remarkable poise under Yegorov’s attacks and her confident insistence on the correctness of her diagnosis. Only much later—in fact not until the Doctors’ Plot was officially repudiated by Soviet authorities following Stalin’s death—did it emerge that Timashuk herself was a covert agent of the MGB, one among many, working in the Kremlin Hospital system.

Though Timashuk seems to have been unshaken by the fact that her letter had come into Yegorov’s possession, the meaning of this inevitably lodged in her mind. Did it signal a possible deeper betrayal of her personally but also of the security institutions in which she and the state had placed their trust? A letter from her to Lieutenant General Vlasik should have gone straight to the Politburo; to the minister of state security, V. S. Abakumov; and if necessary to Stalin. Appropriate action should have been taken. The safety of the state was in question. Her urgent warning should have elicited an instant response. She remained upset, and four days after Zhdanov’s death, on September 4, 1948,⁹ wrote another covert letter, this time to Suranov, her handler in the MGB. She complained again about the medical mistreatment of Zhdanov. On September 15¹⁰ she wrote the first of two letters to A. A. Kuznetsov, a Leningrad protégé of Zhdanov, then a secretary of the Central Committee and head of the Directorate of Cadres, who was entrusted with supervising the organs of state security.

The assassination of state and political leaders in the Soviet Union had a long, dark history. The assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934 had ignited the Great Terror. Had Zhdanov also fallen victim to a criminal conspiracy of immense proportions? Both Kirov and Zhdanov had been leaders of the Leningrad party. Both had been powerful Politburo members. Both had been close to Stalin. Rumors persisted, after almost twenty years, of an alleged medical conspiracy in the deaths of Maxim Gorky and V. V. Kuyibishev. Could forces again be at work linking high political conspiracy with medical malpractice? Could the leaders of the Soviet Union simply ignore Timashuk’s account of the machinations of doctors who willfully disregarded the objective results of her EKG examinations and had thereby murdered another Kremlin leader? This troubled Timashuk. She could not understand why nothing had been done.¹¹

Timashuk’s behavior set the first small piece of the machinery of conspiracy into motion. On the one hand, she acted out of what she thought were the interests of the state; on the other, she acted out of her own self-interests. If she did not denounce the doctors, she herself was in danger of being denounced. The Kremlin Hospital system, like every government agency in the Soviet Union, was filled with informants such as Timashuk who routinely supplied the security service with details about what they saw or heard. Being part of this system, Timashuk knew that she also was under surveillance and would be brought to account if she did not denounce her supervisors in Valdai. With or against her will, the system of covert surveillance compelled her to act as she did.

Unexpectedly, however, she now found herself, not the doctors, on the defensive. She was the one being unmasked and interrogated by a livid Dr. Yegorov. “They believe me and not some sort of Timashuk,” he had taunted. Yet his mocking tone disclosed his panic and insecurity. Yegorov, too, knew how the system worked; now he had discovered he had somehow miscalculated and had been denounced by “some sort of Timashuk.” What neither Yegorov nor Timashuk could know was who else might be involved and how.

All those present at the extraordinary September 6 session in Yegorov’s Kremlin Hospital office were leading figures of Soviet medicine: the consulting professors of medicine V. N. Vinogradov (who had accompanied Stalin to the Tehran Conference in 1943 as his personal physician¹²) and V. Kh. Vasilenko, both of whom had been with Zhdanov during his final illness; Zhdanov’s attending phys...