Opposition and Stalin's death

• Stalin now demanded an excessive isolationism from the

  non-Soviet world.

  This was due to 2 main factors:

  1. To maintain national security during the new Cold War

  with the USA

  2) An obsessive fear of ideological contamination.

  Stalins change after ww2
• • Across the USSR, and particularly in the newly

  incorporated areas of Eastern Europe, a careless word

  or brief contact with a foreigner could send you to a

  Gulag.

  • Lots of organisations were keeping watch: the Party,

  police, friends, colleagues and the Procuracy (a

  government office responsible for ensuring that all

  government ministries and institutions, as well as

  individuals, obeyed the law).

  • This was all supervised by Lavrenty Beria.


  Dtalins approach to the west
• Lavrenty Beria replaced Yezhov as the leader of the NKVD

  after the Purge.

  He carried out atrocities in WW2 and his private life was even

  worse.

  During the period of High Stalinism, the NKVD was

  strengthened and split into two group

  Beria
• 1. The MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs): This controlled

  all domestic security and the Gulags.

  2) The MGB (Ministry of State Security): This was the

  forerunner to the KGB. It took charge of counter-

  intelligence and espionage.

  2 groups of the NKVD
• • By 1953, Stalin was fragile and spent most of his time at his

  dacha, watching movies and drinking with Malenkov, Beria,

  Khrushchev and Bulganin.

  • In October 1952, he finally called a Party Congress but he

  didn’t say anything about a successor.

  • Instead, he shut down the Orgburo and turned the Politburo

  into the Presidium. This was much bigger with lots of new

  faces. To many, this seemed like Stalin’s preparation for a new

  purge of the Party.


  Presidium
• • But on 29th February, there was no call or word from Stalin.
  • Fearing repercussions, his guards and house servants didn’t check on him until 10:30 at night. Stalin was found on the ground in his pyjamas after suffering a stroke.
  • It took until about 7am the next morning until a doctor was called. They found him unresponsive, his right arm and leg were paralysed and his blood pressure was alarmingly high.

  Stalin’s death
• • On 5th March, Stalin vomited blood and his stomach started to haemorrhage. His death was recorded at 9:50pm that night.
  • There is some suspicion that Stalin may have been poisoned by one of the 4 at his dacha in fear of being purged but it’s a mystery we probably never will know.

  Deep dive into his death
• Stalin was portrayed as a “man of the people” who knew what everyone was doing or thinking.

  However, he hadn’t visited a peasant village or kolkhoz in 25 years and speng most of his later years

  in his dacha or his home on the Black Sea. He relied on films and written papers for his knowledge

  and was probably misled by his own propagandists. On his 70th birthday, a giant portrait of him was

  suspended in the sky in Moscow and illuminated by a halo of searchlig


  Cult of personality after 1945
• Towns competed to be named after him (Stalingrad, Stalino, Stalinsk, Stalinabad, Stalinogorsk) but a

  proposal to rename Moscow as Stalinodar was rejected. Stalin prizes were set up for artistic or

  scientific work to counter the Nobel Prizes. Special workshops were set up to produce standard

  models for gigantic Stalin statues; deluxe models were made in copper.

  Stalins honour
• In February 1947, a law was passed which outlawed hotels and marriages to foreigners. Restaurants

  and embassies were watched by police for Soviet girls who met foreign men

  Terror laws
• Anyone that had already fallen from favour was now literally removed from the history books. Stalin

  manipulated photographs using airbrushing and other techniques to remove old, disgraced

  Bolsheviks. The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia was full of such altered images.

  History books
• • Stalin had always considered the Leningrad Party as too independent in their views and actions and some of their members had been promoted to senior positions in Moscow under Zhdanov.
  • Stalin falsified evidence and several leading officials were arrested, including the Head of Gosplan and Voznesensky, an economic reformer on the Politburo.
  • Voznesensky was considered a possible successor to Stalin and had planned the Soviet war economy which so successful after 1942.
  • Politburo members had signed the accused’s death warrants before the trial had even happened.

  Leningrad case 1949
• • Stalin had initially supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine but when Israel sided with the USA he reverted to anti-semitism.
  • The Israeli ambassador, Golda Meir, arrived in 1948 and was enthusiastically cheered by Soviet Jews, reinforcing Stalin’s fears that they could be potential enemies.
  • The director of the Jewish theatre in Moscow, Solomon Mikhoels, was mysteriously killed in a car accident, almost certainly arranged by the MVD.
  • Molotov and Kalinin (Politburo members) had Jewish wives and the wives were both arrested in 1949.


  Anti semitism
• The Mingrelian Case (Georgian Purge) 1951-52: In 1951, a purge was launched in Georgia against

  followed of Beria, head of the NKVD. They were accused of collaborating with the West and Beria

  was himself of Mingrelian ethnic descent. Aspects of this purge are unclear but it appears to have

  been an attempt to weaken Beria’s authority.

  Georgian purge
• • The Doctors’ Plot 1952: Lydia Timashuk, a female doctor in the Kremlin hospital and a part-time informer for the MGB, wrote to Stalin 2 days before Zhdanov’s death in 1948, informing him that 9 highly-placed doctors had failed to diagnose and treat Zhdanov professionally. 


  doctors plot
• • Stalin didn’t do anything at the time but in 1952, he reopened the case and ordered the arrest of the doctors.
  • Hebaccused them of being part of a Zionist/Jewish conspiracy to murder Zhdanov and other members of the Soviet leadership.
  • Stalin claimed that Jews, under the pay of the USA and Israel, were using their positions in medicinr to harm the USSR and had infiltrated the Leningrad Party, the MGB and the Red Army.


  How did Stalin use the doctors plot to his advantage
• • The Minister of State Security, Nikolai Ignatiev, was threatened with execution if he didn’t obtain confessions and hundreds of doctors were arrested and tortured.
  • Thousands of ordinary Jews were rounded up and deported, a new network of labour camps was established, and the 9 original doctor's were executed. Stalin died though before this could take place.
  • Anti-Jewish hysteria was whipped up by the press and Soviet citizens were scared to enter hospitals and shunned all Jewish professionals.

  Jews