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Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953
A new investigation, based on previously unseen KGB documents, reveals the startling truth behind Stalin's last great conspiracy. On January 13, 1953, a stunned world learned that a vast conspiracy had been unmasked among Jewish doctors in the USSR to murder Kremlin leaders. Mass arrests quickly followed. The Doctors' Plot, as this alleged scheme came to be called, was Stalin's last crime. In the fifty years since Stalin's death many myths have grown up about the Doctors' Plot. Did Stalin himself invent the conspiracy against the Jewish doctors or was it engineered by subordinates who wished to eliminate Kremlin rivals? Did Stalin intend a purge of all Jews from Moscow, Leningrad, and other major cities, which might lead to a Soviet Holocaust? How was this plot related to the cold war then dividing Europe, and the hot war in Korea? Finally, was the Doctors' Plot connected with Stalin's fortuitous death? Brent and Naumov have explored an astounding arra of previously unknown, top-secret documents from the KGB, the presidential archives, and other state and party archives in order to probe the mechanism of on of Stalin's greatest intrigues -- and to tell for the first time the incredible full story of the Doctors' Plot.
- GenresHistoryRussiaNonfiction
399 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 25, 2009
I agree with the readers who cite serious flaws in this book: "tedious", "ruminative", "repetitive". However, I consider STALIN'S LAST CRIME well worth reading, because the authors have produced an analysis with a high degree of granularity that illuminates the actual mechanics of Stalin's use of terror.
The weaknesses in the book are the obverse of its great strengths: teasing out the many subtle filaments that Stalin wove into his hideous plots requires sustained intellectual concentration, for example. The intense focus on seemingly minor details--which is the only way to detect the subtle discrepancies that are the only clue to the presence of something monstrous--can be tedious, and also tends to distract from the panoramic perspective required to get the structure right.
So it is only on pages 66 - 67, for example, that we learn what Stalin's motive for inventing the Doctor's Plot was. It would have been handy to have the scene set right up front before taking the reader into the bewildering labyrinth of accidental screw-ups, lies, denunciations, misunderstandings, and confessions extracted under torture that were the building blocks of the Doctor's Plot. Stalin's motive was his need to retain total control of the Soviet Union after World War II, when the victory over Nazi Germany, and the experiences of many Soviet soldiers and other Soviet citizens with countries where much higher standards of living prevailed, reduced the atmosphere of crisis and ignorance that had produced the abject national obedience to Stalin that he had enjoyed in the first part of his reign.
This theme is then fully illuminated only on page 105, when the authors quote the letter that the doomed Bukharin wrote in prison to his colleague and former friend Stalin in 1937, shortly before Stalin had him shot in the Great Terror: "There is something great and bold about the political idea of a general purge . . . . people inescapably talk about each other and in doing so arouse an everlasting distrust in each other . . . In this way, the leadership is bringing about a full guarantee for itself."
Only a deeply cynical man--or a total fanatic--like Bukharin could admire the logic of Stalin's decision to poison an entire society with distrust and fear in order to provide a "full guarantee" for himself and his comrades at the top of the Soviet pyramid. But this was still a possible reaction in the Great Terror of the 1930s; it was no longer so easy to traumatise an entire society again by using systematic deception to invent an artificial crisis.
And this is what Stalin was up to--he needed to create instability again throughout the Soviet Union in order to confirm his personal position on top, and to do so he began to weave together the most obscure threads into the elaborate image of a widespread conspiracy that had a false political meaning he could exploit to persuade the Soviet masses of his indispensability.
What makes this book so interesting is that it was much more difficult for Stalin to pull this off in the early 1950s, despite the comparative ease with which he had done so in the mid- to late-1930s. Spare a thought for his dilemma when he tried to kick off a new conspiracy by putting the members of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee (mainly a bunch of poets, theatre producers, and other cultural types) on trial for their lives in 1950: "despite the painstaking collection and falsification of evidence, the merciless interrogations, physical torture, and threats of death, the government could not extract the necessary confessions from the defendents (Pages 173)."
Of course, the defendents were all found guilty and shot, but unlike the Great Terror of the 1930s, when senior Communists had publicly confessed to fantastic crimes that they could never possibly have committed, the JAC members refused to do so in 1950, so the trial had to be kept secret to avoid embarrassing public recantations of confessions extracted under torture.
Stalin had to work much harder to spin his web in the 1950s, and this is what makes this book so interesting. Of course, all the usual ironies, tragedy, and almost over-whelming examples of absurdity and futility that one has become accustomed to in the best books about the Soviet Union abound in this one.
But what makes this book special is that the authors seem to have successfully reverse-engineered Stalin's development of the Doctor's Plot, and as a result, this book is truly a step-by-step master class in the techniques of manipulation and terror.
Why is this important? Why does it make this book worth reading despite its flaws? Because much of the manipulation and gratuitous deception portrayed in this book, minus the Lubyanka torture chambers and firing squads, is a recognisable feature of the corporate and institutional world in the 21st century. And all indications appear to suggest that this atmosphere is only going to get worse with globalisation. The cant, the hypocrisy, the jealousy, the perversion of language, and the Schadenfreude that was keyed up to a murderous degree in Stalin's system is recognisable everywhere in large organisations today, from the corporate to the government sectors to the transnationals and the NGOs.
If for no other reason than as self-protection against the ambitious mediocrities who always seem to thrive in large organisations (and Trotsky doomed himself by calling Stalin the "outstanding mediocrity of the Revolution"), read this book.
The weaknesses in the book are the obverse of its great strengths: teasing out the many subtle filaments that Stalin wove into his hideous plots requires sustained intellectual concentration, for example. The intense focus on seemingly minor details--which is the only way to detect the subtle discrepancies that are the only clue to the presence of something monstrous--can be tedious, and also tends to distract from the panoramic perspective required to get the structure right.
So it is only on pages 66 - 67, for example, that we learn what Stalin's motive for inventing the Doctor's Plot was. It would have been handy to have the scene set right up front before taking the reader into the bewildering labyrinth of accidental screw-ups, lies, denunciations, misunderstandings, and confessions extracted under torture that were the building blocks of the Doctor's Plot. Stalin's motive was his need to retain total control of the Soviet Union after World War II, when the victory over Nazi Germany, and the experiences of many Soviet soldiers and other Soviet citizens with countries where much higher standards of living prevailed, reduced the atmosphere of crisis and ignorance that had produced the abject national obedience to Stalin that he had enjoyed in the first part of his reign.
This theme is then fully illuminated only on page 105, when the authors quote the letter that the doomed Bukharin wrote in prison to his colleague and former friend Stalin in 1937, shortly before Stalin had him shot in the Great Terror: "There is something great and bold about the political idea of a general purge . . . . people inescapably talk about each other and in doing so arouse an everlasting distrust in each other . . . In this way, the leadership is bringing about a full guarantee for itself."
Only a deeply cynical man--or a total fanatic--like Bukharin could admire the logic of Stalin's decision to poison an entire society with distrust and fear in order to provide a "full guarantee" for himself and his comrades at the top of the Soviet pyramid. But this was still a possible reaction in the Great Terror of the 1930s; it was no longer so easy to traumatise an entire society again by using systematic deception to invent an artificial crisis.
And this is what Stalin was up to--he needed to create instability again throughout the Soviet Union in order to confirm his personal position on top, and to do so he began to weave together the most obscure threads into the elaborate image of a widespread conspiracy that had a false political meaning he could exploit to persuade the Soviet masses of his indispensability.
What makes this book so interesting is that it was much more difficult for Stalin to pull this off in the early 1950s, despite the comparative ease with which he had done so in the mid- to late-1930s. Spare a thought for his dilemma when he tried to kick off a new conspiracy by putting the members of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee (mainly a bunch of poets, theatre producers, and other cultural types) on trial for their lives in 1950: "despite the painstaking collection and falsification of evidence, the merciless interrogations, physical torture, and threats of death, the government could not extract the necessary confessions from the defendents (Pages 173)."
Of course, the defendents were all found guilty and shot, but unlike the Great Terror of the 1930s, when senior Communists had publicly confessed to fantastic crimes that they could never possibly have committed, the JAC members refused to do so in 1950, so the trial had to be kept secret to avoid embarrassing public recantations of confessions extracted under torture.
Stalin had to work much harder to spin his web in the 1950s, and this is what makes this book so interesting. Of course, all the usual ironies, tragedy, and almost over-whelming examples of absurdity and futility that one has become accustomed to in the best books about the Soviet Union abound in this one.
But what makes this book special is that the authors seem to have successfully reverse-engineered Stalin's development of the Doctor's Plot, and as a result, this book is truly a step-by-step master class in the techniques of manipulation and terror.
Why is this important? Why does it make this book worth reading despite its flaws? Because much of the manipulation and gratuitous deception portrayed in this book, minus the Lubyanka torture chambers and firing squads, is a recognisable feature of the corporate and institutional world in the 21st century. And all indications appear to suggest that this atmosphere is only going to get worse with globalisation. The cant, the hypocrisy, the jealousy, the perversion of language, and the Schadenfreude that was keyed up to a murderous degree in Stalin's system is recognisable everywhere in large organisations today, from the corporate to the government sectors to the transnationals and the NGOs.
If for no other reason than as self-protection against the ambitious mediocrities who always seem to thrive in large organisations (and Trotsky doomed himself by calling Stalin the "outstanding mediocrity of the Revolution"), read this book.
August 30, 2020
Pretty good book on the subject, but could have been better.
1. The first two chapters about Zhdanov's medical treatment went into way too much detail. It felt redundant and so much filler.
2. I was hoping for more analysis on what would have happened if Stalin had not been murdered by Beria (absolutely no doubt in my mind). Would it have been a second Jewish holocaust? What would have been the effect on Eisenhower's presidency? He was sworn in 9 days after the big conspiracy report was released to the public.
Phil Kuhn
1. The first two chapters about Zhdanov's medical treatment went into way too much detail. It felt redundant and so much filler.
2. I was hoping for more analysis on what would have happened if Stalin had not been murdered by Beria (absolutely no doubt in my mind). Would it have been a second Jewish holocaust? What would have been the effect on Eisenhower's presidency? He was sworn in 9 days after the big conspiracy report was released to the public.
Phil Kuhn
July 15, 2020
Not exactly beach reading. Terrifying and highly detailed account of Stalin's scheme to generate a wave of anti-Semitic purges and generally terrorize the USSR--foiled only by his death in 1953. Repetitive at times but the cast of characters are unforgettable, including one truly heroic female doctor, Sophia Karpai, who would not give in to the MGB's intimidation and torture. It would make a great Netflix series, in the right hands.
May 8, 2024
This is an admirable and painstakingly detailed account of Stalin's last major crime, creating a conspiracy out of thin air to accuse several doctors and government officials of killing Soviet leaders. The book shows Stalin's cunning genius in planning these plots far ahead of time and waiting for the precise right moment to launch it into action. This volume is yet another searing indictment of not just Stalin, but the Soviet Union and Communism as a whole.
September 9, 2019
Bogs down at times in tedious detail, but overall this is a fascinating insight into the shadowy world of Stalin’s Russia.
August 2, 2019
There is a lot of redundancy in the telling of the story of Stalin's plot against the Jewish Doctors, most of whom weren't Jewish btw, as each excerpt from a document is repeated several times, in the "let me tell ya what I just told ya" style of stretching a 10 page essay to a 320 page book.
It is was informative nonetheless. For example, the detailed notes that the interrogators were supposed keep about each session could be used against the prisoners, and then when the purge inevitably came, against the interrogator! Everyone was right to be scared. The fact that you were arrested is proof of your guilt, as Beria said.
It does get intense and even more interesting for a bit in the last few chapters when the fake confessions are revealed. My heart bleeds (no pun intended) for the innocent young ECG physician/technician/nurse, Karpai, whose nascent career was on the up until she was dragged into the chaos over her interpretation of the ECG of an senior politician who died a few weeks/months(?) later. She was only a minor character, but her reluctance to confess to the fabricated conspiracy, despite severe interrogation and her incarceration in a damp refrigerated cell for years, which broke her health and led her to an early death, however, held up the proceedings long enough ...
It is was informative nonetheless. For example, the detailed notes that the interrogators were supposed keep about each session could be used against the prisoners, and then when the purge inevitably came, against the interrogator! Everyone was right to be scared. The fact that you were arrested is proof of your guilt, as Beria said.
It does get intense and even more interesting for a bit in the last few chapters when the fake confessions are revealed. My heart bleeds (no pun intended) for the innocent young ECG physician/technician/nurse, Karpai, whose nascent career was on the up until she was dragged into the chaos over her interpretation of the ECG of an senior politician who died a few weeks/months(?) later. She was only a minor character, but her reluctance to confess to the fabricated conspiracy, despite severe interrogation and her incarceration in a damp refrigerated cell for years, which broke her health and led her to an early death, however, held up the proceedings long enough ...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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August 8, 2013'This harrowing, unforgettable account dwells, as its authors themselves observe, “in the borderland between Marx Brothers absurdity and Shakespearean tragedy.” It provides an improbable assurance that major commercial publishers can still issue serious historical research, as opposed to what Garry Wills and Daniel Goldhagen peddle.'
Read the full review, "Joe Bananas," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Read the full review, "Joe Bananas," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
December 12, 2007
While a bit on the dry side, this book gives an amazing documentary evidence to support long-held belief that Stalin's plot against Jewish doctors in 1950's was his version of "final solution." This book uses actual records declassified in teh 1980's - unbelievable!
January 20, 2009
Not the easiest read, writing is a bit difficult but a good account of a little known plot.
January 23, 2011
Indispensable if you are interested in the so-called Doctors Plot, but pretty dry stuff, I must say.
March 25, 2015
Zzzzzzz! Boring!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews