Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Jonathan Brent, editorial director of Yale University Press and founder of its distinguished Annals of Communism series, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is writing a biography of the Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel.

Vladimir P. Naumov, a professor of history, has been executive secretary of the Presidential Commission for the Rehabilitation of Repressed Persons in Moscow since its inception under former president Mikhail Gorbachev.

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Stalin's Last Crime

The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953By Brent, Jonathan

Perennial

Copyright ©2004 Jonathan Brent
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060933100

Chapter One

The Untimely Death Of Comrade Zhdano

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 untimelydeath 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. Hisdeath 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 inRed 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 harlotrywith 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." Another time he had rebuked Shostakovich for not writing music the average Sovietworker 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." 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, vetlana Alliluyeva, something that was possibly more a sign of political realities than of personal choice.

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 signedthe 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." 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 governmentafter 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 ...

Continues...

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