viii Final Years; 1949-1953

!!!" !#$%&'$
Stalin’s SSSR

session viii-Final Days; 1949-1953

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

this session’s major topics

• The East is Red!

• Korea

• “Our American Friends”

• more Enemies

• the Doctors Plot

• ﬁnal rest


the East is Red!


Kuomintang (also Guomindang) (KMT)

• 1894-origins in Sun’s founding of the Revive China
Society in Honolulu, Hawaii

• 1911-a revolution overthrew the Quing (Ching or
Manchu) Dynasty

• attempts to found a successful democratic republic
faced resistance by warlords and a would-be
strongman Yuan Shikai

• 1920-Sun proclaimed a government in Guangzhou
(Canton) Dr. Sun Yat-sen
1866-1925
“Father of the Nation”
• 1923-unrecognized by the western powers, he
accepted aid and advisors from the USSR


communist origins

The May Fourth Movement (traditional Chinese:
; simpliﬁed Chinese: ; pinyin: Wǔsì
Yùndòng) was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and
political movement growing out of student
demonstrations in Beijing on May 4, 1919 protesting
Sun Yat Senʼs government's weak response to the
Treaty of Versailles, especially the Shandong
Problem. These demonstrations sparked national
protests and marked the upsurge of Chinese
nationalism, a shift towards political mobilization
and away from cultural activities, and a move
towards populist base rather than intellectual
elites.
The broader use of the term "May Fourth Movement"
often refers to the period during 1915-1921 more
usually called the New Culture Movement.


Marxist ideas started to spread widely in
China after the 1919 May Fourth
Movement. In June 1920, Comintern agent
Grigori Voitinsky was sent to China, and
met Li Dazhao and other reformers. He
Chen Duxiu
financed the founding of the Socialist Youth
Corps. The Communist Party of China
(CPC) was initially founded by Chen Duxiu
Li Dazhao
and Li Dazhao in the French concession of
Shanghai in 1921 as a study society and an
Voitinsky
informal network. There were informal
groups in China in 1920, and also overseas,
but the official beginning was the 1st
Congress held in Shanghai and attended by
53 men in July 1921, when the formal and In 1920 Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao met Comintern
unified name Zhōngguó Gòngchǎn Dǎng Russian agent G.N. Voitinsky

(Chinese Communist Party) was adopted


Russia’s guiding hand

• 1920-the Comintern established the Far
Eastern Bureau in Siberia

• the bureau’s deputy manager, Voitinsky, went
to Beijing and contacted Li Dazhao who sent
him south to meet other comrades

• August 1920-Shanghai, he begins to establish
the Comintern China Branch

• 1919-Russian ex-pat Shemeshko had already
set up the Shanghai Chronicle with Soviet $

Grigori Naumovich Voitinsky
• Voitinsky and others used it as a “cover” and
1893-1956
as a propaganda organ in the early days


Mikhail Borodin
architect of the Guomindang-CCP alliance
• born near Vitebsk, Belarus

• 1903-joined RSDLP(b)

• 1908-arrested, chose exile to the US, attended Valparaiso
University

• 1918-returned to Russia

• 1919-1922--Comintern agent in Mexico, the US and UK

• 1923-28--in China; arranged arms shipments to Kuomintang (KMT)
government in Canton, prominent adviser to Dr. Sun Yat Sen,
following his suggestion, the KMT allowed communists to join and
the Whampoa Military Academy was established Mikhail Markovich Borodin
1884-1951
picture in 1919


Mikhail Borodin
• born near Vitebsk, Belarus

• 1903-joined RSDLP(b)

• 1908-arrested, chose exile to the US, attended Valparaiso
University

• 1918-returned to Russia

• 1919-1922--Comintern agent in Mexico, the US and UK

• 1923-28--in China; arranged arms shipments to Kuomintang (KMT)
government in Canton, prominent adviser to Dr. Sun Yat Sen,
following his suggestion, the KMT allowed communists to join and
the Whampoa Military Academy was established Mikhail Markovich Borodin
1884-1951
picture in 1919
• 1925- Dr. Sun dies


• 1925- Dr. Sun dies. Borodin remains an advisor to the KMT while
Chiang-Kai-Shek gains power against the Left Wing

• 1927-the Shanghai uprising is suppressed by General Chiang

• 1928-orders for Borodin’s arrest are issued

• he escapes back to Moscow

• 1930-works as editor-in -chief of the English language Moscow
News, founded by his American friend Anna-Louise Strong

• 1937-two assistant editors were executed in the Great Purge

• 1949- Borodin is accused of being an enemy of the people, (the Mikhail Markovich Borodin
1884-1951
newspaper was shut down until 1956) sent to the Gulag, where he picture after 1928
dies two years later


Moscow meddles in China’s revolution; 1926-1927

• early 1926-the Comintern admitted the KMT as an associate party and Chiang
as an associate member of its Executive Committee

• 20 March-Chiang barred communists from all posts at the KMT headquarters,
demanded membership lists

• Chen Duxiu bowed to Moscow’s pressure to submit, still he feared that the
KMT was preparing for civil war with the CPC

• Trotsky had voiced misgivings as early as 1924 and repeated them now

• Stalin and Bukharin felt it was more important to back the KMT


the Northern Expedition and Shanghai massacre, 1927

• 1923- Dr. Sun had sent Chiang to Moscow for
several months study

• 1926-Chiang led the KMT north against the
Warlords

• April 6,1927-after the Left Wing of the KMT
declared Wuhan to be the new capital, Chiang
called a meeting demanding the end of Borodin’s
inﬂuence

• April 12-when he didn’t receive satisfaction, he
unleashed the massacre of hundreds (?) thousands
Chiang-Kai-Shek (?) of CPC members
1887-1975
picture 1926


CPC members being led
KMT soldiers escort them
to their deaths

remember the debate between the Trotskyist
Opposition and Stalin over Socialism in one Country?

In December 1927 the communist rising of Canton had been suppressed. The
rising had been the last act...of the drama of 1925-7. The shock of the defeat
was making itself felt in all Bolshevik thinking: it sapped even further and
submerged the internationalist tradition of Leninism; and it enhanced Russian
self-centeredness. More than ever socialism in one country appeared to offer
the only way out…

Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 355


Unsuccessful urban insurrections (in Nanchang, Wuhan and
Guangzhou) and the suppression of the Communist Party in
Shanghai and other cities ﬁnally drove many party supporters to
rural strongholds such as the Jiangxi Soviet organized by Mao
Zedong. By 1928, deserters and defecting Kuomintang army
units, supplemented by peasants from the Communist rural
soviets, formed the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.
The ideological confrontation between the CCP and the KMT
soon evolved into the ﬁrst phase of the Chinese Civil War.


the rivals

Chiang in 1934 Mao in 1935


The Changzheng (Long March); 8,000 miles over 370 days


Hostilities ceased while the Nationalists and Chinese
Communists formed a nominal alliance during the
Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 until 1945.
During these years, the Chinese Communist Party
persevered and strengthened its inﬂuence. The Red
Army fought a disciplined and organized guerilla
campaign against superior Japanese forces, allowing it
to gain experience.


Chiang’s
son Chiang Mao
US diplomat
Patrick J Hurley

The ﬁrst post-war peace negotiation was attended by both Chiang Kai-
shek and Mao Zedong in Chongqing (Chunking) from August 28, 1945
to Oct 10, 1945. Both sides stressed the importance of a peaceful
reconstruction, but the conference did not produce any concrete result.
Battles between the two sides continued even as the peace negotiation
was in progress, until the agreement was reached in January 1946.
However, large campaigns and full scale confrontations between the
CPC and Chiang's own troops were temporarily avoided.


The CPC were able to capture a large number of weapons abandoned
by the Japanese, including some tanks but it was not until large
numbers of well trained KMT troops surrendered and joined the
communist forces that the CPC were ﬁnally able to master the
hardware. But despite the disadvantage in military hardware, the CPC's
ultimate trump card was its land reform policy. The CPC continued to
make the irresistible promise in the countryside to the massive number
of landless and starving Chinese peasants that by ﬁghting for the CPC
they will be able to take farmland from their landlords. This strategy
enabled the CPC to access an almost unlimited supply of manpower to
use in combat as well as provide logistic support, despite suffering
heavy casualties throughout many civil war campaigns.


the “War of Liberation,” June 1946-Dec 1949

The People’s Liberation Army enters Peking/Beijing 31 Jan 1949


The Chinese Civil War was in its last throes. Stalin had miscalculated how
quickly Chiang Kai-shek’s regime would collapse. Until 1948, Mao Tse-tung’s
success was an inconvenience to Stalin’s policy of a realpolitik partnership with
the West but the Cold War changed his mind. He began to think of Mao as a
potential ally even though he told Beria that the Chairman was a “margarine
Marxist.”

Monteﬁore, p. 590


Mao proclaiming the PRC
1 October 1949


At 6 p.m. [16 December 1949], Mao and Stalin met for the first time at
the Little Corner. The two Communist titans of the century, both
fanatics, poets, paranoiacs, peasants risen to rule empires whose
history obsessed them, careless killers of millions, and amateur military
commanders, aimed to seal America’s worst nightmare: a Sino-Soviet
treaty that would be Stalin’s last significant achievement.

Montefiore, p. 603


21 December 1949

Mao at the Bolshoi for Stalin’s seventieth birthday celebration. He
comes, not to submit to “the Genius Leader of All Progressive
Mankind,” but as an equal to bargain determinedly for a treaty
recognizing China’s interests. Stalin is not pleased.


Korea


…[As early as the 1920s] the Korean Communists attached themselves to the
Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet administrations in Siberia and the
Maritime Territory. Even before the Sino-Japanese War became the Asia-Paciﬁc
War in 1941, the Korean Communists had made greater headway than the
nationalists in preparing to ensure that their revolution would triumph after
liberation. The nationalists failed to organize an effective disciplined party, a
mass population base and an armed force, and they failed to secure foreign
patronage.

Allan R. Millett, The War for Korea,1945-1950, p. 31


• 1943-at the Cairo Conference FDR & Churchill agreed
that Korea would become independent, “in due
course.” Stalin agreed at Teheran.

• 1945-at Yalta, they failed to agree upon a trusteeship,
and at Potsdam, they divided the occupation zones at
the 38th parallel. Once again, Korea wasn’t consulted

• 10 August-the Red Army stopped at the line and waited 38º
3 weeks for US forces to arrive and take the Japanese North
surrender jointly Latitude

• Korean nationalists chafed under yet another
occupation. There were strikes and uprisings

• both sides put forward their “strongmen;” Kim Il-sung in
the North and Syngman Rhee in the South


Stalin counsels caution

• 1948-rejecting the original 5-year trusteeship period, the US scheduled
nationwide elections. North Korea refused to participate as did communists in
the South

• Rhee’s party won 80% and was recognized by the US as the Republic of Korea

• March 1949-Kim Il-sung travelled to Moscow seeking military assistance and
approval for an invasion of the South

• Stalin refused and advised him to continue preparing, but only counter-
attacking if invaded

• Kim wanted war and continued to make border provocations and repeated his
requests to Stalin for military aid and the “green light”


a “green light” for invasion from the US?

• Acheson's speech on January 12, 1950, before the National
Press Club seemed to say that South Korea was beyond the
American defense line and that American support for the new
Syngman Rhee government in South Korea would be limited.
Critics later charged that Acheson's ambiguity provided Joseph
Stalin and Kim Il-sung with reason to believe the US would not
intervene if they invaded the South. However, evidence from
Korean and Soviet archives demonstrates that Stalin and
Kim's decisions were not inﬂuenced by Acheson's speech.
Dean Gooderham Acheson
David S. McLellan, "Dean Acheson and the Korean War," Political Science
(1893 – 1971)
Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 16-39
US Secretary of State

January 21, 1949 – January 20, 1953


Stalin changes his mind

After ambassador Shtykov informed Moscow of this wave of demands by Pyongyang,
Stalin (on 30 January 1950) replied (through diplomatic channels): "I understand the
unhappiness of comrade Kim II Sung, but he must understand that such a large
matter regarding South Korea... requires thorough preparation. It has to be
organized in such a way that there will not be a large risk. If he wants to talk to
me on this issue, then I'll always be ready to receive him and talk to him...I am
prepared to help him in this matter."


Why he became more willing to risk war

• April 1949-the establishment of NATO and a general deterioration of Soviet
relations with the West

• August 1949-the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb

• October 1949-the victory of the communists in China

• a perceived weakening of Washington’s position and its will to become
militarily involved in Asia

• US troop levels in South Korea had been drawn down from 40,000 to a Military
Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) of 425 ofﬁcers and men

• North Korean forces: men, Soviet tanks and aircraft were vastly superior to the South’s


Mao and Stalin
On 1 October 1950 Kim Il-sung sent a telegram to China asking for military intervention. On the same day, Mao Zedong
had received Stalin's telegram, suggesting China send troops into Korea.
■ On 5 October 1950, under Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai's pressure, the Chinese Communist Central Committee had
ﬁnalized the decision of military intervention in Korea.
■ On 11 October 1950 Stalin and Zhou Enlai sent a joint signed telegram to Mao, stating:
1. Proposed Chinese troops are ill prepared and without tanks and artillery; requested air cover would take two months to
arrive.
2. Within one month, fully equipped troops had to be in position; otherwise, US troops would step over the 38 parallel line
and take over North Korea.
3. Fully equipped troops could only be sent into Korea in six months times, by then, North Korea would be occupied by the
Americans, any troops would be meaningless.
■ On 12 October 1950 15:30 Beijing time, Mao sent a telegram to Stalin through the Russian ambassador: I agree with
your (Stalin and Zhou) decision.
■ On 12 October 1950 22:12 Beijing time, Mao sent another telegram: I agree with 10 October telegram, my troops stay
put, I have issued order to cease the advance into Korea plan.
■ On 12 October 1950, Stalin sent telegram to North Korean Kim Il-sung, telling him: Russian and Chinese troops are not
coming.
■ On 13 October, the Soviet ambassador (in Beijing) sent a telegram to Stalin, saying Mao Zedong had informed him that
the Chinese Communist Central Committee had approved the decision of sending troops to Korea.


the ﬁnal DMZ


Hell in the Hermit Kingdom


“Our American Friends”

Julius

“Our American Friends”

Ethel Julius

HUAC

• Vassar, Class of 1930. While attending grad school
at Columbia, joined a communist “front”

• 1938-1945--spied for the CPUSA, then USSR

• 1946-disillusioned and fearing for her life, became
an FBI informer

• she was “burned” by Kim Philby, her contacts went
“cold”

• 1947-the FBI turned its info over to HUAC and
hearings began
Elizabeth Bentley
in 1948
• the search for spies, “fellow travelers,” and “com
symps” began in earnest


Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss

August 25, 1948 – Whittaker Chambers testiﬁes before HUAC as Hiss (circled) listens


the ‘50s Red Scare

• 1949-1950--the triple shock of the Soviet
Bomb, the “Fall of China,” and the Korean
War produced an immediate increase of
tensions

• the search for traitors in government
focussed on “Who Lost China?”

• loyalty boards examined federal, state and
local ofﬁcials. Loyalty oaths were common

• Hollywood was examined and the overly
famous “blacklist’ was instituted


the Rosenbergs

• 1942-Julius was recruited by the NKVD to spy for the USSR

• he recruited others including his brother-in-law, Sgt.David Greenglass, a
machinist, who worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory

• August 1949-”First Lightning”/”Joe-1”

• January 1950-Klaus Fuchs was revealed as the premier Soviet spy/traitor after
prolonged interrogation by Britain’s MI-5

• 23 May 1950-Fuchs gave up his contact “Raymond,” Harry Gold, who, in turn,
gave up Greenglass, who gave up his sister and Julius Rosenberg


the trial
• 6 March 1951-Judge Irving Kaufman presiding. Defendants:
Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, and fellow Soviet spy Morton Sobell

• primary witness, David Greenglass, who stated:

• his sister Ethel typed notes containing nuclear secrets in the
Rosenberg apartment, Sept 1945

• he turned over to Julius sketches of the implosion-type atom bomb

• some suggest that Ethel was indicted along with Julius to
pressure him to give up other names

• however both “took the Fifth,” and never confessed

• 29 March-the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death under the
Espionage Act of 1917. Sobell to 30 years in Alcatraz


The Rosenbergs were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-
related activity during the Cold War. In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman noted
that he held them responsible not only for espionage but also for the deaths of the
Korean War:

I consider your crime worse than murder...I believe your conduct in putting into the
hands of the Russians the A-Bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia
would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression
in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that
millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your
betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our
country. No one can say that we do not live in a constant state of tension. We have
evidence of your treachery all around us every day for the civilian defense activities
throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for an atom bomb attack.


American reaction
After the publication of an investigative series in The National Guardian [a newspaper
begun in 1948 as the “organ” of Henry Wallaceʼs Progressive Party] and the formation of
the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, some Americans
came to believe both Rosenbergs were innocent or received too harsh a punishment,
and a grassroots campaign was started to try to stop the couple's execution. Between the
trial and the executions there were widespread protests and claims of anti-Semitism; the
charges of anti-semitism were widely believed abroad but not so among the vast majority
in the United States where the Rosenbergs were not receiving any support from
mainstream Jewish organizations nor from the American Civil Liberties Union as the case
did not raise any civil liberties issues at all.

Wikipedia


World reaction

• Nobel Prize winner Jean-Paul Sartre: "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation. By killing the
Rosenbergs, you have quite simply tried to halt the progress of science by human sacriﬁce. Magic, witch-hunts, auto-da-
fés, sacriﬁces — we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear... you are afraid of the shadow of your own
bomb."

• Others, including non-Communists such as Albert Einstein and Nobel-Prize-winning physical
chemist Harold Urey, as well as Communists or left-leaning artists such as Nelson Algren,
Dashiell Hammett, Jean Cocteau, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, protested the position of the
American government in what the French termed America's Dreyfus Affair

• May 1951-Picasso wrote for L’Humanite, “The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime
against humanity take place.”

• Fritz Lang and Bertold Brecht protested from Hollywood

• 11 Feb 1953-Pope Pius XII also condemned the execution, appealed to President
Eisenhower for clemency


the execution, 19 June 1953


update
On September 12,
2008, co-defendant
Morton Sobell
admitted that he and
Julius Rosenberg
were guilty of spying
for the Soviet Union.
He believed Ethel
was aware of the
espionage, but did
not actively
participate.
Morton Sobell (left) at a visit in East Germany in 1976


“Are you now, or have you ever been…?”

• 9 Feb 1950-Wheeling, WV-[a month after
Fuchs made headlines]”I have the names
of 205 communists in the State
Department…”

• a tremendously polarizing ﬁgure, to this day

• drew much support in conservative and
Catholic circles, ties to the Kennedys

• 1954-the tide turned against him during the
televised Army-McCarthy hearings
Joseph Raymond McCarthy
1908-1957
twice (1946, 1952) elected to the • object of a rare censure vote by his fellow
US Senate
senators


epilogue

And yet the most famous and effective anticommunist measures were carried
out not by conservatives, but by liberals seeking to uphold the New Deal. It
was the liberal Truman administration that chased the Communists out of
government agencies and prosecuted Communist Party leaders under the
Smith Act. It was liberal Hollywood executives who adopted the blacklist,
effectively forcing Communists out of the movie business. The labor leaders
who purged Communists from their unions were, similarly, liberals. Most
anticommunism--the anticommunism that mattered--was not hysterical and
conservative, but, rather, a methodical, and, in the end, successful attempt on
the part of New Deal liberals to remove Communists from speciﬁc areas of
American life, namely, the government, unions, the universities and schools,
and civil rights organizations.

Jennifer Delton, “Re-thinking Post-World War II Anticommunism,” in The Journal of the
Historical Society, vol. x, March 2010, p. 2


more enemies


but first, Vyacheslav & Polina--the final act
• late 1948-in the aftermath of Golda Meir’s visit, the
“Jewish Case” was trumped up

• Its ultimate target was Molotov and his Jewish wife
Polina

• Malenkov and Beria envied him as Foreign Minister and
Deputy Premier

• he was told by Stalin to divorce his wife and vote for her
expulsion from the Party for “close relations with Jewish
nationalists”

• 21 Jan 1949- Polina was arrested, interrogated and A loving couple destroyed by Stalinist
sentenced to five years exile in Central Asia politics

• all Molotov knew until after Stalin’s death was a brief
whispered message: “Polina is alive!”


Stalin’s heir apparent as Premier, Nikolai
Vosnesensky, “thought himself the cleverest
person after Stalin”….At forty-four, the
youngest Politburo member distinguished
himself as a brilliant planner who enjoyed an
unusually honest relationship with Stalin.
However this made him so brash “that he
didn’t bother to hide his moods” or his
strident Russian nationalism. Rude to his
colleagues, no one made as many enemies
as Voznesensky. Now his patron Zhdanov
was dead, his enemy Malenkov resurgent.
Beria “feared him” and coveted his economic
powers. Mikoyan loathed him. Voznesensky’s
arrogance and Stalin’s touchiness made him
vulnerable.

Monteﬁore, p. 592

Никола́й Алексе́евич Вознесе́нский,
1903 – October 1, 1950

Summertime chez Stalin

The other anointed heir was “young handsome”
Kuznetsov, who had helped Zhdanov remove
Malenkov in 1946 and replaced Beria as curator
of the MGB, thus earning their hatred. Sincere
Mikoyan Kuznetsov and affable, Kuznetsov was the opposite of
Molotov
Poskrebyshev Voznesensky: virtually everyone liked him…. He
worshiped Stalin, treasuring the note he had
received from him during the war--yet he did not
understand him. He made the mistake of
examining old MGB ﬁles on Kirov’s murder and
the show trials. Kuznetsov’s blundering into such
sensitive matters aroused Stalin’s suspicions.

Monteﬁore, p. 593

Алексе́й Алекса́ндрович Кузнецо́в
1905 - October 1, 1950


the Leningrad Affair (!"#$#%&'()*+" (",+, Leningradskoe Delo)
• January 1949-Kuznetsov and Voznesensky organized a Leningrad Trade Fair to boost the post-
war economy and support the survivors of the siege of Leningrad

• the fair was attacked by Malenkov as a scheme to use government funds for Leningrad
development with an eye to making it the capital of the USSR

• Beria brought to Stalin’s attention some economic “fudging” which Voznesensky had done as
director of Gosplan. This was enough to get the Boss to order an investigation into the
Leningraders and their Party cell

• 30 September 1950- the two, along with four others, were found guilty of “anti-Soviet treason”
for embezzlement of the Soviet State budget for “unapproved business in Leningrad.” They
were shot that night after midnight

• about 2,000 of Leningrad’s public ﬁgures were removed from their positions, which were then
ﬁlled with Stalinist loyalists

• over 200 respected intellectuals, scientists, writers and educators were exiled or sent to the
Gulag

the Doctors Plot


He was one of the physicians accused in the
Doctor's Plot, an alleged Zionist plot to kill off
the Soviet leadership. Dr. Etinger was
tortured by M. D. Ryumin, the Deputy
Minister of State Security, who then reported
to Minister Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov,
who did not believe there was a plot
although he and Ryumin were both present
at a later interrogation of Dr. Etinger. Yet
another interrogation in the presence of
Abakumov was to follow the next morning, in
Ryumin's hope to convince Abakumov that
Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger such a case existed, but Etinger died under
1887-1951 interrogation during the night.


Riumin, thirty-eight, plump and balding, stupid and vicious, was the latest in the
succession of ambitious torturers who were only too willing to please and encourage
Stalin by ﬁnding new Enemies and killing them for him….now in danger for killing the
elderly Jewish doctor, the Midget decided to act. Perhaps to his own surprise, he lit
the fuse of the Doctors’ Plot.

On 2 July 1951, Riumin wrote to Stalin and accused Abakumov of deliberately killing
Etinger to conceal a Jewish medical conspiracy to murder leaders such as the late
Shcherbakov. This brought together Stalin’s fears of ageing [sic], doctors and Jews.
It was not Beria but Malenkov who sent Riumin’s letter to Stalin….it may have been
the spark that inspired him to reach back to Zhdanov’s death and create a maze of
conspiracies to provoke a Terror that would unite the country against America
outside and its Jewish allies within.

Monteﬁore, pp. 612-613


That spring [1952], Stalin was examined by his veteran doctor, Vinogradov,
who was shocked by his deterioration. He suffered from hypertension and
arteriosclerosis with occasional disturbances in cerebral circulation, which
caused minor strokes and little cysts in the brain tissue of the frontal lobe.
This exacerbated Stalin’s anger, amnesia and paranoia. “Complete rest,
freedom from all work,” wrote Vinogradov on the ﬁle but the mention of
retirement infuriated Stalin who ordered his medical records destroyed and
resolved to see no more doctors. Vinogradov was an Enemy.

Monteﬁore, p. 620


The death of the Mongolian dictator Marshall Choibalsang in Moscow that
spring worried [Stalin] enough to conﬁde in his chauffeur: “They die one
after another. Scherbakov, Zhdanov, Dimitrov [the Bulgarian leader],
Choibalsang...die so quickly. We must change the old doctors for new
ones.”


• July 1951-Dr Etinger’s torture death

• Sept 1952-the MGB had tortured the
evidence out of their prisoners to
“prove” that the Kremlin doctors, led
by Stalin’s own physician, were guilty

• 4 Nov 1952- Vinogradov is arrested

• 13 Nov-Riumin is sacked for moving
too slowly. “Beat them until they
confess. Beat, beat, and beat
again.”--Stalin

• Stalin offers Vinogradov his life if he
would confess

a cartoon in the humor magazine Krokodil


...Stalin unveiled the horror of what he called “the killers in white coats” to the
Presidium: “You’re like blind kittens,” he warned them….”What will happen without
me is that the country will die because you can’t recognize your enemies.” Stalin
explained to the “blind kittens” that “every Jew’s a nationalist and an agent of
American intelligence” who believes ”the U.S.A. saved their people.”….A Great Terror
was again imminent.



DECREE
(OF THE) PRESIDIUM OF THE
SUPREME SOVIET USSR

for the awarding of the Order of Lenin
to Doctor Timashuk L.F.

The doctor who had written about
Zhdanov’s misdiagnosis and death in
1948 was now made the hero of
uncovering the “doctor-killers.” She would
be stripped of her medal in the year
following Stalin’s death when Beria and
the other survivors repudiated the
Doctors Plot.


ﬁnal rest


Plotting the destruction of Molotov and
Mikoyan, the aging but determined Stalin
watches Malenkov give the chief report at
his last public appearance at the
Nineteenth Congress in 1952. While
organizing the anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot,
he ordered his secret police to torture the
doctors: “Beat, beat, and beat again!” he
shouted. But he still found time to play
with his grandchildren …

Monteﬁore


Riven by arthritis, diminished by raging arteriosclerosis, dazed by fainting
spells, embarrassed by failing memory, tormented by sore gums and
false teeth, unpredictable, paranoid and angry, Stalin left on 10 August
[1951] for his last and longest holiday. “Cursed old age has caught up
with me,” he muttered.

Monteﬁore, p. 614


STALIN’S RESTLESS LAST HOLIDAY IN 1952

He effectively ruled Russia for months on end
from...the Likani Palace, which once belonged
to Tsar Nicholas II’s brother Grand Duke
Michael(top). When Khrushchev and Mikoyan
visited, they had to share a room. He spent
weeks in this remote house at Lake Ritsa
(bottom). Stalin was now so frail that his
guards built these green metal boxes (inset)
containing special phones so that he could call
for help if he was taken ill on his daily strolls.

Monteﬁore


A Lonely Old Man on Holiday

“While everyone talks about the great man, genius in
everything,” Stalin muttered to Golovanov, “I have no
one to drink a glass of tea with.”

Monteﬁore, p. 570


ﬁnal days

• 28 Feb 1953-after a movie at the Kremlin with Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov
and Bulganin, back to the dacha for a dinner and business session:

• Korea

• torturing the doctors to get their confessions for their public trials

• 4 a.m. 1 March-Stalin ﬁnally saw them out. “pretty drunk...in high spirits”
boisterously jabbing Khrushchev in the stomach, crooning ‘Nichik’

• he then lay down on the sofa in the dining room and gave the guards the night
off

• midday that morning-still no sign of life from the Big House, guards nervous


ﬁnal days

• 6 p.m. 1 March-ﬁnally a light went on. Guards relieved, everything OK, he
would call for them soon. But he did not. Four hours pass. None brave enough
to go in.

• 10 p.m.-the !" mail arrived and a guard cautiously took it over to the Big
House “saw a terrible picture”


Stalin lay on the carpet in pyjama bottoms [soaked in his urine] and
undershirt, leaning on one hand ‘in a very awkward way.’ He was
conscious but helpless. When he heard [the guard] Lozgachev’s steps,
he called him by ‘weakly lifting his hand.’ The guard ran to his side:
‘What’s wrong, Comrade Stalin?’

Stalin muttered something, ‘Dzhh,’ but he could not speak. He was cold
… He had wet himself.

Monteﬁore, p. 638


final days

• 6 p.m.-finally a light went on. Guards relieved, everything OK he would call for them
soon. But he did not. Four hours pass. None brave enough to go in.

• 10 p.m.-the !" mail arrived and a guard cautiously took it over to the Big House “saw a
terrible picture”

• the guards knew that Stalin had thrown his personal doctor Vinogradov to the wolves
for suggesting that he should retire

• they were afraid to do anything which the Khozyain might resent

• so they finally called MGB boss Ignatiev, who tried to locate Beria, failing that, Malenkov

• no one had the courage to call for doctors, the best of whom were in prison!


ﬁnal days

• 3 a.m. 2 March-Beria and Malenkov arrive to see for themselves what shape the Boss
was in


The limousine drove away to meet the waiting Khrushchev and Bulganin.
The bargaining for power surely started that night….

Dawn broke over the ﬁrs and birches of Kuntsevo [Stalin’s dacha]. It was
now twelve hours since Stalin’s stroke and he was still snoring on the
sofa, wet from his own urine. The magnates surely discussed whether to
call doctors. It was extraordinary that they had not called a doctor for
twelve hours but it was an extraordinary situation. This is usually used as
evidence that the magnates deliberately left Stalin without medical help in
order to kill him. But...if Stalin awoke feeling groggy, he would have
regarded the very act of calling doctors as an attempt to seize power.
Stalin’s own doctor was being tortured merely for saying he should rest.

But the Four had those hours to divide power. The decision to do
nothing suited everyone.

Monteﬁore, p. 640


final days

• 3 a.m. 2 March-Beria and Malenkov arrive to see for themselves what shape the Boss
was in

• the Four returned home without calling for doctors

• 7 a.m.-at the guards’ insistence, doctors finally arrived, a new team who had never seen
Stalin before

• a dentist removed his false teeth but was so nervous he dropped them on the floor

• with the magnates present, the doctors nervously examined their once omnipotent
patient

• only palliative measures were undertaken. For the next three days, wrapped in secrecy,
the magnates, Stalin’s two children and the servants and guards kept the death watch


Once it was proved that he was incapacitated, Beria ‘spewed forth his
hatred of Stalin’ but whenever his eyelids flickered...Beria, terrified that he
would recover, ‘knelt and kissed his hand’ like an Oriental vizier at a
Sultan’s bedside. When Stalin sank again into sleep, Beria virtually spat
at him, revealing his reckless ambition and lack of tact and prudence.
The other magnates observed him silently, but they were weeping for
Stalin, their old but flawed friend, longtime leader, historical titan, and the
supreme pontiff of their international creed, even as they sighed with
relief that he was dying. Perhaps 20 million had been killed, 28 million
deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags. Yet, after so
much slaughter, they were still believers.

Montefiore, p. 643


“Take all measures to save Comrade Stalin!” ordered the excited Beria.
So the doctors continued to struggle to keep the dying Generalissimo
alive. An artiﬁcial respirator was wheeled in and never used but it was
accompanied by young technicians who stared ‘goggle-eyed’ at the
surreal things happening all around them.

On the 5th, Stalin suddenly paled and his breathing became shallower
with long intervals. The pulse was fast and faint. He started to wiggle his
head. There were spasms in his left arm and leg. At midday Stalin
vomited blood….

After 9 p.m. he started to sweat. His pulse was weak, his lips turned
blue. The Politburo, Svetlana Stalin, Valechka [his faithful housekeeper],
and the guards gathered round the sofa. The junior leaders crowded
outside, watching from the doorway.



ﬁnal hours--5 March 1953

• 9:30 p.m. Stalin’s breaths were 48 a minute. His heartbeats grew fainter

• 9:40 p.m. his pulse virtually disappeared. Beria ordered and injection of
camphor and adrenalin

• Stalin gave a shiver and became increasingly breathless. He slowly began to
drown in his own ﬂuids

• “His face was discoloured, his features becoming unrecognisable...He literally
choked to death as we watched. The death agony was terrible...At the last
minute, he opened his eyes. It was a terrible look, either mad or angry and full
of the fear of death”--Svetlana Stalin


leavetaking

• Beria was the ﬁrst to go. “He’s off to take power,”-- Mikoyan, to Khrushchev

• “then, with frenzied haste, the members of government rushed for the door”

• just the servants and family remained: “cooks chauffeurs and watchmen,
gardeners and women who waited at table’’ Many were sobbing, with rough
bodyguards wiping their eyes with their sleeves “like children.”


leavetaking

• Beria was the ﬁrst to go. “He’s off to take power,”-- Mikoyan, to Khrushchev

• “then, with frenzied haste, the members of government rushed for the door”

• just the servants and family remained: “cooks chauffeurs and watchmen,
gardeners and women who waited at table’’ Many were sobbing, with rough
bodyguards wiping their eyes with their sleeves “like children.”

• “then Stalin’s closest companion, the comfort of the cruel loneliness of this
unparalleled monster, Valechka, who was now aged thirty-eight and had
worked with Stalin since she was twenty, pushed through the crying maids,
dropped heavily to her knees and threw herself onto the corpse with all the
uninhibited grief of the ordinary people...wailed at the top of her voice as the
women in the villages do. She went on for a long time and nobody tried to stop
her.”-- Svetlana Stalin in Monteﬁore, p. 650


Bulganin
Lazar
Klim Malenkov Nikita
Molotov Beria Kaganovich
Mikoyan


and now...


Postscript

Link on the Drudge Report
5 March 2010


...from the long contests of the Bolshevik factions [1921-1928] there had
emerged Stalin’s ‘ﬁrm leadership’ for which he may have striven for its own
sake. Once he wielded it, he employed it to industrialize the Soviet Union, to
collectivize farming, and to transform the whole outlook of the nation; and then
he pointed to the use he was making of his ‘ﬁrm leadership’ in order to
vindicate it.

Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 392


viii Final Years; 1949-1953

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