1953 - Doctors Plot

• One feature of the purges which followed the war was the increased focus on anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews in the USSR.
• In 1948, the Jewish Anti Fascist Committee, which had helped to send thousands of Jews to fight in the Red Army was closed down with its leader arrested and 13 executed.
• Other Jewish politicians were arrested or sacked
• In addition, Jewish writers and artists were also arrested, synagogues and Jewish schools were closed and plans were drawn up for a Jewish area in eastern Siberia.
• Molotov's wife was Jewish which partly explains her treatment and a number of the doctors implicated in the Doctors Plot were Jewish.
• The reason for Stalin's suspicion of the Jewish population was that many had family in America and the West and many supported the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 which was heavily backed by the US government.
• Stalin declared that Jews were "rootless cosmopolitans" who owed more loyalty to Jewish internationalism than to the Soviet state.
• Stalin suspected that many Jews could be agents for the western capitalist powers.
• As his own health deteriorated, Stalin became acutely suspicious of the doctors treating him and the medical profession in general.
• In January 1953, Pravda announced that 13 top doctors who had all treated high-ranking party officials had been accusing of conspiring with the USA and of murdering Zhdanov.

  • It was also claimed that they planned to wipe out the entire communist leadership.
• Hundreds of other doctors were arrested and interrogated as the purge began to widen.
• The 13 doctors confessed after torture during which 2 of them died.
• However, before the others were executed, Stalin himself died and the remaining doctors were eventually released and cleared of all charges.
• Ironically, when Stalin lay dying after having a stroke at the end of February 1953, a doctor could not be found as his own personal doctor was in prison as a result of the Doctors Plot accusations.