THE DOCTORS' PLOT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91T01172R000200140001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 15, 1953
• Content Type: MEMO

D
DOS review(s) completed.
"THE DOCTORS' PLOT"
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Central Intelligence Agency
Office of Current Intelligence
14+ July 1953
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The attached article, "The Doctors' Plot, is the first in a ? ",,A
was established by the Director of Central Intelligence
to study all available information on the members of the Soviet hier-
archy, the middle ranks as well as the higher.
On the whole, information under scrutiny, like
most categories of information on the Soviet Union, is inconclusive
and frequently contradictory. The work has served, 25X1
however, to stimulate reconstruction of developments an events af-
fecting the Kremlin hierarchy, of which the first to be issued is
"The Doctors' Plot". It will be followed by articles dealing with
both the subsequent and preceding periods.
The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors
and do not represent official views of the Agency.
It is suggested that recipients retain their copies of the var-
ious chapters as issued, for later binding in chronological order
into a loose-leaf book.
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THE DOCTORS' PLOT
The 13 January Pravda article disclosing the doctors' plot must
have had a shattering effect on the citizens of the USSR. It set the
stage for what was probably anticipated in many quarters as a repeat
performance of the devastating purge that shook the Soviet Union from
1934-1938.
The announcement singled out nine doctors -- most of them Jewish
-- as part of a ring of spies working for a "Jewish-bourgeois nationa-
list group," which in turn was sponsored by the American and British
intelligence organizations. They were accused of murdering by mis-
treatment two former Soviet leaders -- A. S. Shcherbakov, who died in
May 1945, and A. A. Zhdanov, who died in August 1948. In addition to
other leaders, the doctors were further specifically accused of at-
tempting to murder five military figures: Marshals Vasilevski, Konev
and Govorov, General Shtemenko and Admiral Levchenko.
The "plot" had clearly anti-Semitic overtones. The observation
was made at the time that since no Jews had attended Zhdanov and
Shcherbakov, it was necessary to include among the participants the
names of three non-Jews who had. In addition, it represented a new
stage in the fierce propaganda war, the "hate America" campaign,
which Ambassador Kennan had found so virulent upon his arrival in
Moscow. Inter alia, it brought proof of US hostility directly to the
Soviet people by proving that this country had many agents inside the
USSR.
The leaders of the US and UK were in effect accused of having
assassinated two prominent Soviet government officials and of con-
spiring to assassinate more, in particular, these five military lead-
ers of the USSR. Shcherbakov's "murder" was committed at a time when
the US and UK were allied with the USSR in a war against Germany and
were awaiting Soviet participation in the war against Japan. Shcher-
bakov, a Colonel General, at the time of his death was Chief of the
Army's Political Administration, Deputy Commissar of Defense, Secre-
tary of the Moscow City and Oblast Committees, and alternate member
of the Politburo.
The wording of the announcement carried the clear suggestion
that the doctors might have succeeded either in murdering others not
specified in the announcement or at least in reducing their life
span. Yegorov, one of the accused, had actually been Chief of the
Kremlin's medical directorate, and hence had probably treated at one
time or another all of the Politburo members, including Stalin
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himself. It is known, for example, that Yegorov treated Kalinin,
Dimitrov, and Choibalsan. The French Communist press had reported
that Vinogradov and another of the accused doctors, Grinstein, had
treated Thorez.
Singled out as the doctors' intermediaries were A. B. Shimele-
vich, last identified as head doctor at the Botkin Hospital in Moscow
in 1947, and Solomon Mikhoels, Chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee during World War II. Mikhoels had died in Byelorussia in
1948 under somewhat mysterious circumstances.
This particular part of the announcement appeared purposefully
open-ended. Few people in the USSR would be ready to accept the fact
that only these two relatively minor figures were to be accused of
handling the purported plot inside the country. The last time doc-
tors had been accused of medical murder in the USSR, the head of the
secret police (Yagoda) had allegedly prompted them and he in turn al-
legedly had been directed by a Politburo member -- Abel Yenukidze;
both had paid with their lives. The stage was set, therefore, for
more arrests and more disclosures and by directly censuring the MGB
the Pravda article had suggested that history might repeat itself.
Abakumov, the MGB Chief in 1948 when Zhdanov died, had already
been ousted as Minister (August-1951) although his removal had never
been publicly announced. The plot could serve as a good reason for
justifying this earlier removal if one were needed. His link-up with
US "espionage" could have been well documented. To take one example,
Ambassador Kennan was visited in July 1952, almost a year after Aba-
kumov's replacement, by a provocateur claiming to be Abakumov's son.
Abakumov, however, was not the only MGB chief involved. V. N.
Merkulov had been head of the Commissariat of State Security in 1945
when Shcherbakov died. At the time of the plot's announcement he
was serving as USSR Minister of State Control. Merkulov had suf-
fered a setback at the October Party Congress when he was dropped
from a full to alternate status on the Central Committee. He is
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Beria. he was among those who accompanied
25X1 Beria to Moscow w en a was called by Stalin to take over Yezhov's
job and end the purge. Abakumov also had been associated with Beria
and he, of course, did not figure at the Party Congress at all.
The implication that both Abakumov and Merkulov were involved
cast a shadow on one of the big luminaries in the Kremlin itself, L.
P. Beria. There are other suggestions with regard to Beria and the
purge: Beria had been universally regarded as retaining Politburo
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level responsibility for security affairs
There were.afew straws in the wind in the fall of 1952 indicat-
ing that Beria had slipped among the ranks of Stalin's favorites. He
was listed as the sixth Politburo member to enter the Hall of Columns
at the opening of the Party Congress, when previously he had ranked
as number four. This lower ranking was later repeated in the order
in which the pictures of the Politburo members were hung on 7 Novem-
ber, the anniversary of the October revolution. (Beria later re-
gained his number four spot on 21 January.)
Beria had been in charge of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs
from 1937 to 1947. In 1943 the Commissariat of State Security had
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been formed out of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs and Merkulov
had been given charge of it. All the Commissariats were renamed Min-
istries in March 1946, and Merkulov continued to head the Ministry of
State Security (MGB) until some time in the middle of that year, when
he was replaced by Abakumov. The indirect implication of Beria was
modified by the fact that on 12 January, the evening before the an-
noucement, Stalin and five of his biggest lieutenants -- Molotov,
Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov and Kaganovich -- attended a concert at
the Bolshoi theatre. There is little doubt that this appearance was
intended to avert the panic which was expected with the announcement
of.the doctors' plot the following day.
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Beria was probably not the only Soviet leader concerned about
the outcome of the doctors' plot. Certainly the anti-Semitic nature
of the affair caused concern among those of Jewish background. L.-/
M. Kaganovich is Jewish and so, too, is the wife of V. M. Molotov.
In addition, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, N.
M. Shvernik, has been reported to be Jewish.21
The question which immediately arose with regard to the star-
tling announcement was who had started it and why. Something big had
been brewing since Suslov's 24 December attack on Fedoseyev for daring
The status of Kaganovich at the time of the plot was unclear.
in Kiev Kaganovich was referred to as "our father" by e
Jewish residents there. Several Jews in Kiev were arrested in the
wake of the vigilance campaign. The American Jewish Yearbook for
the year 1948-49 quotes a Jewish writer from Wilno as stating that
the uoet I. Fefer and the theatre director S. Mikhoels interceded in
1945 with Kaganovich who in turn interceded with Zhdanov to li-
cense a Yiddish daily paper in the USSR. The license was refused
(Fefer, incidentally, had toured the US with Mikhoels in 1943.)
Fefer was arrested in 1948 but Soviet authorities never gave any
reason for this action.
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to write about Stalin's opus without previously confessing to the
sins of Voznesenskyism. This in turn had been followed by the mass
recantation of economists on 8 January. Yet the timing of the deci-
sion as well as its perpetrators were difficult to fix.l It was nec-
essary to go back to the October Party Congress to find anything con-
crete and even then the evidence was slight. What evidence there was
pointed to Malenkov, Khrushchev, Suslov, and Poskrebychev.J
Malenkov in a paragraph of his report to the 19th Party Congress
had referred to "the enemies of the Soviet State who are working per-
sistently to smuggle their agents into our country" and had warned
against "the remnants of bourgeois ideology and relics of private
property, mentality and morality" still prevalent in the Party's
ranks. Suslov had said a little more along this line. Soviet domes-
tic propaganda following the Congress, however, had echoed Soviet
strength and was characterized by a tone of confidence and assurance
as was exemplified, for example, in Pervukhin's speech on 7 November.
Thus, there had been no real effort after the Congress to prepare the
people for the doctors' plot or the heightened vigilance campaign set
off by its announcement.
One of the few harbingers was seen in the December 1952 Agita-
tors Notebook, which attacked Zionism as a "reactionary nationalist
current of the Jewish bourgeoisie." This was in contrast to the
line of Moscow radio which during the Slansky trial in November had
Some of the principals in the plot were apparently still free men
as late as October 1952, even though the 13 January announcement
had indicated that the plot had been uncovered "some time ago".
On 23 October an institute of the Academy of Science in the Geor-
gian SSR congratulated Vinogradov, one of the nine doctors in-
volved, on his70th birthday, indicating that he had probably not
been arrested by that date. On 3 November a laudatory article on
Vinogradov appeared in Evening Moscow.
Most of the principal lines which were utilized by Soviet propa-
ganda media during the vigilance campaign were mentioned in Party
Congress speeches by Malenkov, Khrushchev, Moskatov, Suslov,
Fadeyev, and Poskrebychev. Curiously, Stalin, Molotov, Beria, and
Kaganovich did not mention any of these lines. For example, while
Malenkov, Khrushchev, Suslov, and Poskrebychev spoke of the dan-
gers of "capitalist encirclement" and admitted the existence of
"hostile elements" within the USSR, neither of the points was men-
tioned by Stalin, Molotov, Beria, or Kaganovich.
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played down the Zionism issue. Something may have happened in the
period between October and January to cause the "doctors' plot" deci-
sion or affect its timing, but whatever it was it remained under the
surface.
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One probable clue was the curiously belated announcement on
30 October that Marshal Govorov had been elected an alternate member
of the Central Committee of the Party at the Congress, but had been
erroneously left off the lists. Obviously something very strange was
going on and great pressure must have been exerted to get Govorov on
the Central Committee. It has been speculated that Malenkov, who ap-
parently dominated the October Congress, had for one reason or another
begun to have trouble with the Central Committee and that some ele-
ments in it were rebelling against him.
Govorov was one of the military men allegedly marked for death
by the doctors. This was of some interest because Govorov had links
with Zhdanov. He had served with him in Leningrad and had delivered
one of the eulogies at his funeral. In a Pravda article on 27 Janu-
ary 1949, Govorov had praised Zhdanov for his role in the defense of
Leningrad. Here again the reasons why precisely these five -- Vasi-
levsky, Konev, Govorov, Shtemenko, and Levchenko -- were singled out
for notoriety and other military leaders, such as Zhukov, Sokolovsky,
and Timoshenko were not, is unknown. Another curious note regarding
the selection of the five military leaders was that they did not in-
elude an Air Force representative.
In addition, amid the mass of speculation regarding the purpose
of the doctors' plot no clear reason for the inclusion of the five
military figures stood out. Speculation at the time ranged from
(a) an effort to bolster morale of the military by putting them on
the side of the vigilantes, to (b) a warning to precisely these five
and others of their ilk to remain passive in the events which were
to transpire. It seems hard to visualize the military, with the ex-
perience of the 30's still in their minds, as looking with favor on
any purge. It seems reasonable to assume, however, that the announce-
ment was intended as a warning -- a warning against individuals or a
group of individuals unknown to the West, who were contesting the
status quo. This opposition may have been real or it may have been
imagined. The Govorov appointment to the Central Committee suggested
that it was real.
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THE INTENSIFIED VIGILANCE CAMPAIGN
At any rate, once the original announcement of the plot was made
there was little time lost in building on the symbolism of the purges
of the 30's. An article in the 14 January issue of Kommunist linked
the "Kostovs, Rajks, and Slanskys" with the "Trotskyites and Bukharin-
ites" of the 30's and the timing suggested that all would be linked
to the doctors' plot. The magazine also charged that many Party
cards had been acquired by "alien enemy elements" in Leningrad. This
effort to re-create a situation allegedly existent at the time of the
Kirov assassination in 193+ appeared to be an obvious attempt to con-
nect that earlier situation with the present.
In addition, the Pravda editorial which accompanied the announce-
ment had referred to "right wing opportunists who held an anti-Marxist
position regarding the extinguishing of the class struggle," thereby
adopting a line which had run through the previous trials in the Sat-
ellites and which had been levied against Pauker in Rumania and
Gomulka in Poland. The fact that representatives of the accused Jew-
ish agency "Joint" were still present in Hungary indicated that the
Satellites were not to be spared further purging.
In connection with his statements regarding "capitalist encircle-
ment" and the existence of "hostile elements" in the USSR, Malenkov
in his speech at the Congress had also mentioned the purges of the
30's. The purge of "all kinds of enemies of Marxism-Leninism,
Trotsky-Bukharinitk, degelerates, against capitulators and traitors who
endeavored to lead the earty off the correct path and to split
the unity of its ranks"' said Malenkov made it possible for the USSR
to be sure there were .o internal traitors when the Germans attacked
it. In this connection, some observers have inferred that one of the
purposes of the vigilance campaign was to root out all potential
forms of opposition within the USSR in expectation of a war with the
United States.
On 15 January Izvestia ran a lead article entitled, "Increase
Political Vigilance, which did not mention the plot but appeared to
associate Malenkov with the general idea of it. The American Embassy
in Moscow noted at the time that the article presented an unusual
example of quoting from Malenkov in as great a length as from Stalin.
This pattern was to be followed throughout the remainder of the vigi-
lance campaign. Malenkov was to be the only Soviet leader other than
Stalin cited in the vigilance literature, although these citations
.were usually with reference to his speech at the Party Congress.
As mentioned previously, a survey of major themes in Soviet
broadcasts between the 19th Party Congress and the subsequent reversal
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of the doctors' plot indicated that there was no effort to prepare
the Soviet people for the doctors' plot and the vigilance campaign.
The broadcasts during this period did not appear to be based on the
directives set forth by Malenkov in his report to the Congress. How-
ever, the survey noted that the announcement of the doctors' plot
set off an extremely intense "vigilance campaign," with the main em-
phasis on eliminating "the remnants of bourgeois ideology, relics of
private-property mentality and morality" which Malenkov had warned
the Party against in his speech to the 19th Party Congress.
Later material in the "vigilance campaign" stressed the need
to "end the self-satisfaction, infatuation with achievements, smug
complacency, and inattentiveness" in the ranks of the Party. Again,
the elimination of these "evils" had been cited by Malenkov, in his
report to the 19th Party Congress, as one of the basic tasks of the
Party.
Other second flight Soviet leaders took an active part in the
campaign. On 3 February Vyshinsky excoriated leaders of Soviet law
for their "serious mistakes." In his speech at the Congress Poskre-
byshev had specifically singled out the jurists as needing some self-
criticism and he had done so in roughly the same language now em-
ployed by Vyshinsky. He called on Soviet jurists to direct their
attention to exploding "bourgeois principles" of international law
that served the American and English "war mongers." Bagirov, Melni-
kov, Mikhailov, Patolichev, Yudin, and Alexandrov were all publicly
associated with the campaign. Malenkov was also quoted with refer-
ence to the "capitalist encirclement" idea which was to accompany
the vigilance campaign, a theme which had not been dominant in Soviet
propaganda for some time but one which had been stressed by Malenkov,
Khrushchev, Suslov, and Poskrebyshev at the Congress.
Since both Stalin and Malenkov were employed as oracles of the
"vigilance campaign" in the days following the "doctors plot" an-
nouncement, and since Malenkov had been linked in Soviet propaganda
with the hard line on "class-warfare" (he bad been quoted by Ulbricht
to this effect in a December speech), it is most probable that both
were closely connected with its origins. In. retrospect the theme
would seem particularly adapted to the picture of an aged Stalin
verging on senility, mistrustful of his doctors and darkly suspi-
cious of a new administration in Washington. His lieutenants of the
earlier days of purging --- Malenkov, Poskrebyshev and Shkiryatov
were still with him and perhaps it was one of them who had planted
the seed. Vyshinsky too was still in the foregound. In this con-
nection, certain items are worthy of note:
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1. Ambassador Kennan has stated his view that Malenkov
during 1951 had succeeded in securing predominant influence
over Stalin, had misinformed Stalin about Western intentions,
and was in fact largely responsible for preventing Kennan
from seeing Stalin during his Moscow tour. Mr. Kennan also
identifies Malenkov with the hate America line.
2. The view that Poskrebyshev
and Stalin ran the woes ow seems mos un ikely. We believe
that Poskrebyshev was robabl intimately involved, but that
so too was Malenkov.
4. There was later to be one rather curious statement by
a foreign Communist explicitly associating Stalin with the doc-
tors' plot. The Indian Communist Party's parliamentary leader,
A. K. Gopalan, held a press conference in New Delhi on 19 May
after returning from Moscow and declared that Stalin, as Premier
at the time, must have shared in the responsibility for the ar-
rest of the accused doctors. This statement brought immediate
protests from other top Indian Communists at the Conference.
It is the only known statement of this sort by a Communist
source.
The doctors' plot announcement was shortly followed by a major
campaign for the intensification of security measures. On 16 Janu-
ary, Pravda demanded increased vigilance from Soviet scientists and
members of the intelligensia. Yuri Zhdanov, Chief of the Science
Section of the Party Central Committee and son of the late Andrei
Zhdanov, named a number of scientists who were guilty of subjectiv-
istic distortions. This, of course, reminded observers of his recan-
tation in 19+8 after his, father's decline and shortly before his
father's death, when Yuri had to grovel before Lysenko.
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At the same time certain leading Soviet historians, including
Maisky, the former Ambassador to Great Britain, were criticized for
their "bourgeois" thinking, while Kiev radio attacked individuals in
the Ukraine who had not been sufficiently vigilant, particularly in
light industry and the meat and dairy, food and timber industries.
The next day Trud reached new heights of invective in an attack on
"American and British war mongers and their weapon -- Zionism." On
20 January a newspaper in the Lithuanian USSR admitted that some or-
ganizations there had been penetrated by "bourgeois nationalists"
and Jewish Zionists, while Red Fleet charged that Western powers were
utilizing diplomatic representatives and newspaper correspondents for
"undermining" the USSR. Papers in the Ukrainian and Latvian SSR's
accused specific individuals, mostly Jews, of criminal activities.
On the eve of the 21st, the Lenin day address was given by N. A.
Mikhailov, the ex-Komsomol chief, who had been made a secretary of
the Central Committee at the Party Congress. He stressed Party vigi-
lance in the class struggle and denounced complacency in Party ranks
as "counter-revolutionary". Stalin was quoted as holding that "such
people...are turncoats-or hypocrites who should be chased out of our
Party." Curiously enough, this quote as well as most of the others
attributed to Stalin during the campaign were taken from his writings
of an earlier period. He had said nothing at the Congress usable for
these purposes.
On 21 January New Times appeared with a strong attack on Zionism
and on Israeli government officials who were called the executors of
a US State Department spy ring in the USSR. Israel was attacked for
racial bigotry. As was the case in the doctors' plot, most of the in-
dividuals cited after 13 January in the vigilance campaign as being
harmful to Soviet security bore Jewish names.
The vigilance drive was also vigorously pushed in the European
Satellites. In Hungary, Jews were arrested for their association
with "Joint." In Rumania the party press warned that the deviation
exemplified by former Finance Minister Luca had not been eliminated
and that it would be "dangerous opportunism" to say that it had. In
Bulgaria, ten members of an "espionage and plotting" organization
guided by the "American intelligence in Turkey" were arrested, tried,
and convicted between 18 and 20 January. In East Germany Georg Der-
tinger, the CDU Foreign Minister, was arrested on charges of treason
and the anti-Zionist campaign which developed there resulted in the
flight of numerous Jews to West Berlin, who were apparently under no
illusion as to what the future would hold for them. In Poland the
government continued its campaign against alleged US espionage and
on 16 January delivered a note to the US protesting such activities.
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In Austria, the Communist Party conducted a purge related to
the Slansky trial. It was in Austria, also, that a Soviet-sponsored
broadcast suggested that the principal reason for the Satellite trials
was to be found in the policy of Secretary of State Dulles, who sought
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separation of the Satellites from the Soviet Union.
Elsewhere throughout the world, the various Communist arties
were attempting with some difficulty to hew to the new line, particu-
larly in France and in Italy where the damaging effect was noticeable.
Within the USSR, the campaign continued in full swing. On 6
February Pravda announced the arrest of four persons on espionage
charges. On 8 February Izvestia stated that Soviet security agents
had liquidated a nest of American spies established in 19+7 by a
former US assistant naval attache in Vladivostok. The American Em-
bassy in Moscow observed at that time that the Pravda article of
6 February had gone beyond previous press statements in its revela-
tions of disputes over theory and in its citation of names and details
of alleged espionage. The article had stated that "certain rotten
theories" were still in existence among which were the beliefs that
capitalist encirclement no longer existed and that the capitalist
world would renounce its attempts to harm the increasingly stable
Soviet Union. The class struggle was said to remain one between cap-
italism and socialism, and hence the capitalists would continue their
attempts to overthrow the USSR.
In the face of this threat, Soviet foreign policy was described
as "firm." and one which "admits of no concessions or little conces-
sions to the imperialist aggressors." Stalin had not touched on
capitalist encirclement in either his Bolshevik article or his short
speech at the close of the Congress. His point in Economic
Problems of Socialism that wars between the capitalist states were
more likely than wars against the Soviet Union was not in keeping
with the propaganda line. Louis Fisher, viewing this part of Stalin's
article as a tension-relaxing device, has pointed out that the Soviet
people may have taken it too seriously and hence provided another con-
tributory cause for the vigilance campaign. Pravdats admission that
"hostile elements" existed in the USSR indicated that the purge would
definitely continue.
A new height in invective was reached on 8 February when an
Izvestia book review attempted to rewrite history to put the United
States on the German rather than the Soviet side during World War II.
The article accused the United States and American espionage of try-
ing "to facilitate military actions of the ffitleritc: Army against the
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Soviet Union." The vigilance theme remained the most dominant topic
in broadcasts to the Russian people, and while the US and UK were
cited as the chief external enemies, much emphasis was given to in-
ternal enemies as well. Two types of crimes were emphasized: politi-
cal and economic. Specific accusations were made against the manag-
erial class and petty Party and government officials. Most of the
managers charged with security violations were in charge of consumer
goods enterprises. The charges against Party officials emphasized
malfeasance in the selection of cadres.
Yet the world was never to learn just who had been marked for
purging, if indeed the Soviet leaders themselves knew. Most of the
actual cases cited were small ones; most of the crimes were petty.
The biggest official implicated was one S. M. Petrov, a Deputy Minis-
ter of Non-ferrous Metallurgy, who was said to have lost a number of
secret documents through negligence and laxness. The provincial
ass seemed to be waiting for the final word from Moscow. Yet possi-
bly in the scramble to predetermine the arty line, hackneyed cases,
some of which had been aired before, were once more dragged into the
open. This same pattern seemed to be aired by the Moscow propaganda
media also. All the old standard cases against the West were repro-
duced, but few new ones were created. This dearth of major culprits
also appeared to enhance the theory that the initial announcement
had been intended as a warning rather than a direct accusation.
FURTHER INDICATIONS OF TENSION
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Meanwhile, another event had transpired which proved to be of
more than marginal interest. On 27 January the candidate lists for
the approaching elections to the local Moscow Soviets were published
in the Moscow Pravda. Several members of the Council of Ministers
were given no place on this list, which is actually a Whole Who for
the City of Moscow, numbering as it does more than fifteen hundred
leaders.
Among those not listed were I. A. Benediktov, Minister of Agri-
culture; U.Yu. Yusupov, Minister of Cotton Growing; D. G. Zhimerin,
Minister of Electric Power Stations; I. K. Sivolap, Minister of Food
Industry; I. A. Bovin, Minister of Forest Economy; P. A. Zakharov,
Minister of Geology; Ye. I. Smirnov, Minister of Health; N. S. Kazakov,
Minister of Heavy Machine Building Industry; P. I. Parshin, Minister
of Machine and Instrument Industry; N. V. Novikov, Minister of Mari-
time Fleet; P. F. Lomako, Minister of Non Ferrous Metallurgy; I. Ye.
Voronov, Minister of Paper and Wood Processing Industry; N. A. Skvortsov,
Minister of State Farms; V. S. Abakumov, Minister of State Security; S. A.
Stepanov, Minister of Agricultural Machine Building.
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The fate of these men was later to be reflected in the March
decrees consolidating the Soviet Government, indicating that at
least some of the changes wrought by the decrees had been under ac-
tive consideration during the period between the October Congress
and Stalin's death. Another interesting development was the nomina-
tion of S. D. Ignatiev by a group of Moscow workers of the MGB. This
was the first time that he had been publicly identified with the MGB.
Evidently, now that the doctors' plot had broken, the time was con-
sidered ripe to reveal Abakumov's replacement and explain why Igna-
tiev had been accorded high honors at the October Party Congress,
where he had been made a member of the Party's Presidium.
Also significant was the fact that the name of A. A. Andreev
appeared. He was listed as a Deputy Chairman of the Council of
Ministers. This was the first indication since October that Andreev,
who had been left off the Party's Presidium, was still relatively
prominent. Smirnov, the Minister of Health, who had been directly
censored in the original announcement of the doctors' plot, failed
to make an appearance on the list. It had been rumored in Moscow
that he disappeared about six weeks before the announcement. Smir-
nov's fall, however, had been presaged at the October Party Congress,
where he was not listed as a member of the Central Committee in spite
of the fact that the Minister of Health in the RSFSR was named. This
suggested that the doctors'plot was under consultation at that time.
A further significant fact noted in the lists was the position
of P. N. Pospelov, who was listed as deputy editor of Pravda. He bad
been removed on 19 January from his position as Director of the Marx-
Engels-Lenin Institute and had failed for the first time in five years
to give the annual Lenin anniversary address on 21 January, which was
delivered by Mikhailov. This indicated that Pospelov was not com-
pletely in disfavor, although he had definitely suffered a loss of
prestige. It was thought significant at the time of the October
Congress that Pospelov had not been named to one of the leading Party
organs in spite of the fact that other Party theoreticians, such as
Mitin, Yudin, and Chesnokov, had been. Interest in Pospelov"s case
was heightened by the fact that he bad been reliably reported to be
Jewish.
The vigilance campaign tapered off somewhat near the end of
February, which was marked by very few significant events. Neverthe-
less, there were certain noteworthy events during the month. Three
foreigners bad interviews with Stalin -- on the 7th, the Argentine
Ambassador, and on the 17th, both the Indian Ambassador and a repre-
sentative of the Indian peace movement, Kitchlew, who had won a Stalin
prize. In his interview with the Argentine Ambassador, Stalin dis-
cussed trade in political terms. This was in keeping with the remarks
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in his Economic Problems of Socialism, where he had indicated that
the Soviet Union would sooner or later move into an offensive economic
policy of competing with the West for markets in underdeveloped areas.
This was in contrast to the defensive policy of the post-war period
which was directed primarily at the acquisition of critically needed
goods from Western countries. I/
Two other events suggested that all was not well within the
Soviet Union. On 14+ February the death of L. Z. Mekhlis once more`
gave evidence of the tension that was in the Moscow air. Mekhlis was
a leading Soviet official who had retired from Soviet life in 1950,
when V. N. Merkulov re laced him as Minister of State Control.
25X1 this retirement was due to ill health.
Mekhlis was elected to the Central Committee of the Party in October
1952 and had appeared on the lists of candidates to the Moscow Soviets
published on 27 January. He was also a Jew. Soviet propaganda treat-
ment of his death strongly suggested that it was necessary to taper
the anti-Semitic aspects of the internal security drive, lest the
death of Mekhlis be taken as another example of murder perpetrated by
a new group of "doctor-wreckers."
Although Mekhlis had been an important Soviet official in earlier
years, his death announcement was. made in a form usually reserved for
only'the very highest Soviet leaders; condolences were received from
the various top Soviet organizations as well as Party and State leaders.
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A relatively detailed medical report on Mekhlis attributed his
death to heart failure, due to general arteriosclerosis affecting
primarily the heart and brain. The fact that Soviet authorities
took such pains to describe precisely how Mekhlis died was an indi-
cation of their fear-that the Soviet people as well as the rest of
the world would assume that this prominent Jew had been murdered.
The signatures of the medical report identified I. I. Kuperin as
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He
apparently had replaced Egorov, who had been one of the accused doc-
tors, as Chief of the Kremlin medical staff.
On 17 February, Izvestia carried another curious death announce-
ment -- that of General Kosynkin of the Kremlin guard. It noted that
the death had occurred two days earlier and had been "sudden". This
unusual announcement, coming at the time that it did, was another
indicator that something was amiss.
The only other occasion of note in February was the annual Red
Army day ceremonies on the 23rd, when the usual line that the Soviet
Army was defensive in nature was replaced by one stressing its role
as one of liberation.
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