"THE DOCTORS' PLOT" 

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Office of Current Intelligence 

CENTRAL INTEEL€GENCE A.&ENHR70-14 

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Central Intelligence Agency 

OfPice of Current Intelligence 

14 July 1953 I 

The attached article, "The Doctors' Plot, is the first in a 

series of working papers prepared by the staff of Project CAESAR. 

Project CAESAR was established by the Director of Central Intelligence 

to study all available information on $he members of the Soviet hierarchy, the middle ranks as well as the higher. 

most categorieer of information on the Soviet Union, is incmcluslve 

and frequently contradictory. 

however, to stimulate reconstruction of developments and events affect- the Qetulin hierarchy, of which the first to be issaed is 

"The Doctors' Plot". 

both the subsequent ana preceding periods. 

On the whole, the biographic information under scrutiny, like 

The work of Project CAESAR has served, 

It all be followed by articles dealing with 

All parts of CIA are contributlng to the Project a8 are certain 

elements of other agencies, notably the National Security Agency and 

the Biopphic Register of the Department of State. a. 

The articles in this series Will be identified by the word 

CAESAR in the upper left hand corner of the cover page of each. 

articles are subJect to revision, and suggestions and criticisms Will 

be welcouted, They shauld be addreseed to Mr.'James P, Hanraban 

Indications Staff, Office of Current Intelligence 

, 

The 

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The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors 

and do not represent official views of the Agency. 

ious chapters as issued, for later binding in chronological order 

Into a loose-leaf book. 

It is suggested that recipients retain their copies of the var- 
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The 13 January F'ravda article disclosing the doctors' plot must 

have had a shatteN-ct on the citizens of the USSR. It set the 

stage for what was probably anticipated in many quarters as a repeat 

performance of the devastkting purge that shook the Soviet Union from 

1934-1938. 

The announcement siugled oat nine doctors -- most of them Jerlsh 

-- as part of a ring of spies working for a "Jewish-bourgeois nationalist group," which in turn was sponsored by the American and British 

Intelligence organizations. 

treatment two former Soviet leaders -- A. s. Shcherbakov, who died in 

May 1945, and A. A. Zhdanov, who died in August 1948. In addition to 

other leaders, the doctors were further specificaUy accused of attempting to murder five military figures: Marshals Vastlevski, Konev 

and Govorov, General Shtepaenko and AZtmirrrl Levchenko. 

They were accused of murdering by misThe "plot" had clearly antiSemitic overtones. 'Phe observation 

was made at the time that since no Jews had attended Zhdanov and 

Shcherbakov, it was necessary to include among the participants the 

names of three non-Jews who hcid. In addition, it represented a new 

stage in the fierce propaganda war, the "hate-America" campaign, - 

which Ambassador Kennsa had found BO Ment upon his arrival in 

Moscow. Inter alia, it brought proof of US hostility directly to the 

Sovlet people by proving that thi? country had many agents inside the 

USSR. , 

The leaders of the US and UK were in effect accused of having 

assassinated two prominent Sovlet government officials and of cmspiring to assassinate more, in particular, these five military Leaders of the USSR. Shcherbakov'e "murder" was committed at a time when 

the US and UK were allied with the USSR in a war against Germany and 

were awaiting Sovlet participation in the war against Japan. Shcherbakov, a Colonel General, at the time of his death was Chief of the 

Army's Political Administration, Deputy Coarmissar of Defense, Secretary of the Moscow City and Oblast Committees, and alternate member 

of the Politburo. 

The wordlug of the announcement carried the clear suggestion 

that the doctors might have succeeded either in murdering others not 

-8pecified in the announcement or at least in reducing their life 

span. 

Kremlin's medical directorate, and hence had probably treated at one 

time or another all of the Politburo members, including Stalin 

Yegorov, one of the accused, had actually been Chief of the 

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himself. 

Dimitrov, and Choibalsan. The French Communist press had reported 

that Vinogradov and another of the accused doctors, Grinstein, had 

treated Thorez. 

It is known, for example, that Yegorov treated Kislinin, 

Singled out as the doctors' intermediaries were A. B. Shimelevich, last identified as head doctor at the Botkin Hospital in Moscow 

in 1947, and Solomon Mikhoels, Chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist 

Committee during World War 11. Mikhoels had died in Byelorussia in 

1948 unhr sanewhat mysterious cir, numstance 8. 

\ This particular part of the announcement appeared purposefully 

open-ended. Few people in the USSR would be ready to accept the fact 

that only these two relatively mlmr figures were to be accused of 

tors had been accused of medical murder in the USSR, the head of the 

secret police (YagOaa) had allegedly prompted them and he in turn allegedly had been directed by a Politburo member -- Abel Yenukidze; 

both had paid with their lives. The stage was set, therefore, for 

more arrests and more disclosures and by directly censuring-the IGB 

the Pravda article had suggested that history might &peat itself. 

handling the purported plot inside the country. The last time docAbakumov, the MGB Chief in 1948 when Zhdanov died, had already 

The plot could serve as a good reason for 

been ousted as Minister (August .1951) although his removal had never 

been publicly announced. 

justifying this earlier removal if one were needed. 

US "espionage" could have been well documented. 

Ambassador Kennsn was visited in July 1952, almost a year after Abakamov's replacement, by a provocateur claiming to be Abakumov's son. 

Merkulov had been head of the Cammissariat.-of State Security In 1945 

when Shcherbakov died. At the time of the plot's announcement he 

es serving as USSR Minister of State Control. Merkulov ha-d suffered a setback at the October Party Congress when he was dropped 

from a full to alternate status on the Central Coarmittee. He is 

listed 

Beria. M e re was among those who accompanied 

Beria to' MoAcov whAn he was calied by Stalin to take over Yezhov's 

job and end the purge. 

and he, of course, did not figure at the Party Congress at all. 

His link-up with 

To take one example, 

Abakumov, however, was not the only qB chief involved. V. N. 

s having been a close associate of 

Abakumov also had been associated with Beria 

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cast a shadow on one of the big luminaries in the Kremlin itself, L. 

P. Beria. 

purge: 

Iphe implication that both Abakumw and Merkulov were involved 

lzlere are other suggestions with regard to Beria and the 

Beria had been universally regarded as retaining Politburo 

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level responsibility for security affairs. I 

There were 4 few ktgws in the wlnd lq the fall of 1952 indicating that Beria had slipd among the ranks-of Stalin's favorites. He 

was listed as the sixth Politburo member to enter the Hall of Colurmis 

at the opening of the Party Congress, when previously he had ranked 

8s number four. This lower ranlrin@I was later repeated in the or&r 

In which the pictures of the Politburo members were hung on 7 Amember, the anniversary of the October revolution. 

gained his number four spot on 21 January,) 

(Beria later re- 

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Beria had beeh in charge of the Commissariat of Internal Affeirs 

from 1937 to 1947. In 1943 the Commissariat of State- Security had 

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been formed out of the Commissariat of Internal Affaire and Merkalov 

had been given charge of it. All the Commissariats were renatned Ministries in March 1946, and Merkulov continued to head the Ministry of 

State Security (EB) until some time in the middle of that year, when 

he was replaced by Abakumov. The indirect implication of Beria was 

modified by the fact that on 12 January, the evening before the an- . noucement, Stalin and five of his biggest lieutenants -- Molotov, 

Malenkov, Beria, Voroshilov and Kaganovich -- attended a concert at 

the Bolshoi theatre. There is little doubt that this appearance was 

intended to avert the panic which was expected with the announcement 

of the doctors' plot the following day. 

Beria was probably not the only Soviet leader concerned about 

the outcome of the doctors' plot. Certainly the antiSemitic nature 

of the affair caused concern among those of Jevish background. L.u 

M. Kagsnwlch is Jewish and so, too, is the wife of V. M. Molotov. 

In addition, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Sofiet, N. 

M. Shvernlk, has been reported to be Jew5sh.a 

The question which immediately arose with regard to the startling announcement was who had Something big had 

been brewlng since Suslov's 24 December attack on Fedoseyev for daring 

started it and why. 

L/ The status of Kaganovich at the time of the plot was unclear. He 

had been identified ips Chief of Gosenab 

(Committee for the State Supplies to the National Economy) as late 

as May 1952. However, when the election lists for the Supreme 

Soviet were made public at the end of January 1953, I. G. Kabanov 

that in Kiev Kaganovich was referred to as "our GG! a rrr has by the 

was listed as Chairman of Gossnab. 0ne:Soviet 

Jewish residents there. Several Jews in Kiev were arrestM in the 

wake of the vigilance campaign. 

the year 1948-49 quotes a Jewish writer from wilno as stating that 

the Doet I. Fefer and the theatre director S. Mikhoels interceded in 

1945 wlth Kaganovich who in turn interceded With Zhdanov to 11- 

cense a Yiddish daily paper in the USSR. 

(Fefer, incidentally, had toured the US with Mikhoels la 1943.) 

Fefer was arrested in 1948 but Sovlet authorities never gave any 

reason for this action. 

The American Jewish Yearbook for 

The license was refused 

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to write about Stalin's opus without previously confessing to the 

sins of Voznesenskylsm. 

recantation of economists on 8 January. 

sion as well as its perpetrators were difficult to fix. It was necessary to go back to the October Party Congress to find anything conarete and even then the evidence was slight. What evidence there wss 

pointed to Malenkov, Khrushchev, Suslw, and P0slmebychev.d 

This in turn had been followed by the 11tass 

Yet the t Yf the 

Malenkov in a paragmph of his report to the 19th Party Congress 

had referred to "the enemies of the Soviet State who are working persistently to wmggle their agents Into our country" and bad warned 

against "the remnants of bourgeois ideology and relics of private 

property, mentality and morality" still prevalent in the Party's 

ranks. 

tic propaganda following the Congress, however, had echoed Soviet 

strength and VLLB characterized by a tone of confidence and assurance 

as W~S exemplifYed, for example, in Pervukhin's speech on 7 november. 

Thus, there had been no real effort after the Congress to prepare the 

people for the doctors' plot or the heightened vigilance campaign set 

off by its announcement. 

Suslw had said a little more along this line. Soviet domesOne of the few harbingers was seen in the December 1952 Agita- - 

tors Notebook, which attacked Zionism as a "reactionary~nationalist 

current of the Jewish bourgeoisie." 

line of Moscow radio which during the SLansky trial in November had 

This was in contrast to the 

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Some of the principals in the pl9t were apparently still free men 

88 late 88 October 1952, even though the 13 January announcement 

had indicated that the plot had been maovered "SOU& time ago". 

On 23 October an inst;ltute of the Academy of Science in the Georgian SSR congratulated Vinogradov, one of the nine doctors involved, on hi$':7Oth-liirthday, indicating that he had probably not 

been arrested'by that date. On 3 November a laudatory articie on 

Vinogradov a*cired in Evening MOSCOW. 

Mmt of the principal 1-8 which were utilized by Soviet propaganda media during the xtgilance campaign were mentioned in Party 

Congress speeches by Maknkov, Khrushchev, Moskatov, Suslov, 

Fadeyev, a114 Poskrebychev. 

- Kaganovich did not mention any of these lines. 

Curiously, Stalin, Molotov, Beria, and 

For example, while 

kh&OV, Khrushchev, SUSlw, and PO6krebycheV spoke Of the dangers of "capitalist encirclement" and admitted the existence of 

"hostile elements" within the USSR, neither of the points was mentioned by Stalin, Molotov, Beria, or Kaganovich. 
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played dam the Zionism issue. 

period between October and January to cause the "doctors' plot" decision or affect its timing, but whatever it was it rekined under the 

Something may have happened in the 

surface. i 

One probable clue was the curiously belated announcement on I 

30 October that Marshal Govorov had been elected an alternate member 

of the Central Committee of the Party at the Congress, but had been 

erroneously left off the lists. 

going on and great pressure must have been exerted to get Govorov on 

the Central Committee. 

parently dominated the October Congress, had for one reason or another 

begun to have trouble with the Central Committee and that some eleObviously something very strange was 

It has been speculated that Malenkov, who apI 

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ments in it were rebelling against him. .. I 

Gmov was one of the military men allegedly marked for death 

by the doctors. This was of some interest because Govorov had link8 

with Zhdanw. He had served with him in Leningrad and had delivered 

one of the eulogies at his fnneral. In a Pravda article on 27 January 1949, Govorov had praised Zhdanov for his role in the defense of 

Leningrad. Here again the reasons why precisely these five -- Vasilevsky, Konev, Govorw, Shtemenko, and kvchenko -- were singled out 

for notoriety and other military leaders, such 8s Zhukov, Sokolovslry, 

and Timoshepko were not, is unborn. Another curious note regardlng 

the selection of the five militaq leaders was that they did not include an Air F 

r+ry notices recentLy P-I=sQeQ, ~mueuv's 

outranked only by those marshals who were members of the Politburo 

and government, the Chief of Staff and Marshal Konev. 

In addition, amid the mass of speculation regarding the purpose 

of the doctors' plot no clear reason for the inclusion of the five 

militsry figures stood out. 

(a) an effort to bolster morale of the military by putting them on 

the side of the vigilantes, to (b) a warnlug to precisely these five 

and others of their ilk to remain passive in the events which were 

to transpire. 

perience of the 30's still in their minds, as looking with favor on 

any purge, 

ment was intended as a warning -- a warning against individuals or a 

group of individuals unknown to the West, who were contesting the 

-8StatUe quo. 

imsglned. 

that it was real. 

Speculation at the time ranged from 

It seems bard to ~i8UdiZe the military, with the ex- ' 

It seems reasonable to assme, however, that the announce- 

!Chis opposition may have been real or it msy have been 

The Govorov appointment to the Central Connnittee suggested 
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THE ImTEmSIE'IED VIGILANCE CAMPAIGN 

At any rate, once the original announcement of the plot was made 

there was little time lost in building on the symbolism of the purges 

of the 30's. An article in the 14 January issue of Kammunist linked 

the "Kostm, Rajks, and Slanskys" with the "Trotskyites and Bukhsrinites" of the 30's and the timing suggested that all would be linked 

to the doctors' plot. 

cards had been acquired by "alien enemy elements" in Leningrad. This 

effort to re-create a situation allegedly existent at the time of the 

KirOv assassination in 1934 appeared to be an obvious attempt to connect that earlier situation with the present. 

In addition, the Pravda editorial which accompanied the announcement had referred to "WtkLng opportunists who held an anti-Marxist 

position regarding the extinguishing of the class struggle," thereby 

adapting a line which had nm through the previous trials in the Satellites and which had been levled against Pauker in Rmania and 

Gomt,~lka In Poland. The fact that representatives of the accused Jewish agency "Joint" were still present in Hungary indicated that the 

Satellites were not to be spared further purging. 

The magazine also charged that many Party 

In connection with his statements regarding Ocapitalist encirclement" and the existence of "hostile elements" in the USSR, Malenltov 

in his speech at the Congress had also mentioned the purges of the 

30.8. !I%e purge "all kids of enemies of Marxism-Leninism, 

Trotsky-Bukharinitt degelerates, against capitalators and traitors who 

endeavored to lead the party off the correct path and to split 

the unity of its ranks''' said Malenkov made it possible for the USSR 

to be stme there were im internal ditors when the ~erplans attacked 

it. 

purposes of the vigilance campaign was to root out all potential 

fonns of opposition within the USSR in expectation of & war vith the 

United States. 

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In €his connection, some observers have inferred that one of the 

On 15 January Izvestia ran a lead eicle entitled, "Increase 

Political Vigilance," vhich did not mention the plot but appeared to 

associate Mslenkov with the general idea of it. The American Embassy 

in Moscow noted at the time that the article presented an unusual 

example of quoting from %lenkov in as great a length as from Stalin. 

!Chis pattern was to be followed throughout the reminder of the vigilance campaign. Malenkov was to be the only Soviet leader other than 

Stalin cited in the vigilance literature, although these citations 

.were usually with reference to his speech at the Psrty Congress. 

As mentioned previously, a aurvey of major themes in Soviet 

broadcasts between the 19th Party Congress and the subsequent reversal 

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of the doctors' plot indicated that there was no effort to prepare 

the Soviet people for the doctors' plot and the vigilance campaign. 

The broadcasts during this period did not appear to be based on the 

directives set forth by Malenkov in his report to the Congress. 

ever, the survey noted that the announcement of the doctors' plot 

set off an extremely intense "vigilance campaign," with the main emphasis on eliminating "the remnants of bourgeois ideology, relics of 

private-property mentality and morality" which Malenkov had warned 

the Party against in his speech to the 19th Party Congress. 

HowLater material in the "vigilance campaign" stressed the need. 

to "end the self-satisfaction, infatuation with achievemnts, mug 

complacency, and inattentiveness" in the ranks of the Party. Again, 

the elimhatioa of' these "evils" had been cited by Malenkov, in his 

report to the 19th Party Congress, as one of the basic tasks of the 

Party. 

Other second flight Soviet leaders took an active part in the 

campaign. 

for their "serioue mistakes." 

byshev had specifically singled out the jurists as need- some selfcriticism and he had done so in roughly the same language now employed by Vyshinsky. He called on Soviet jurists to direct their 

attention to exploding "bourgeois principles". of international lawthat served the American ana English "war mongers." Bagirov, Melnikov, likhailov, Patolichev, Yudin, and Ale=- were all public9 

associated with the campaign. Malenkov was ab0 quoted with reference to the "capitalist encirclement" idea which was to accompany 

the vigilance campaign, a theme which had not been dminant in Soviet 

propaganda for some time but one which had been stressed by Malenkav, 

Khrushchev, Suslov, and Poskrebyshev at the Congress. 

On 3 February Vyshlnsky excoriated leaders of Soviet law 

In his speech at the Congress Poskre- 

. Since both Stalin and Malenkov were employed as oracles of the 

"vigilance campaign" in the day^ following the "doctors plot" announcement, and since Malenkov had been linked in Soviet propaganda 

with the hard line on "class-warfare" (he had been quoted by Ulbricht' 

to this effect in a December speech), it is most probable that both 

we= closely connected with its origins. In retrospect the theme 

wuld seem particularly adapted to the picture of an aged Stalin 

qerging on senility, mistrustful of his doctors and darkly suspicious of a new administration in Washington. 

earlier days of purging --- Malenkov, Poskrebyshev and Shkirgatov 

_were etill with him and perhaps it was one of them who had planted 

the seed. In this connection, certain items are worthy of note: 

His lieutenants of the 

Vyshinslg too was still in the foregound. 

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hat Poskrebyshev 

1. Ardbassador Kennan has stated his Hew that Malenkw 

during 1951 had succeeded in securing predominant influence 

over Stalin, had misinfonaed Stalin about Western intentions, 

and was in fact largely responsible for preventing Kennan 

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from seeing Stalin during hi6 Moscow tour. Mr. Kennsn also 

identifies Malenkov with the hate-America line. 

4. rllhkre was later to be one rather curions statement by 

a foreign Communist explicitly associating Stalin with the doctors' plot. The Indian Camnhmist Party's parliamentary leader, 

A. K. Gopalan,- laeld a press conference in New Delhi on 19 May 

efter returning from Moscow and declared that Stalin, as Premier 

at the time, must have shared in the responsibility for the arrest of the accused doctors. 

protests from other top Indtan Communists at the Conference. 

It is the only known statement of this sort by a Communist 

source. 

This statement brought imnmliate 

The doctors' plot announcement was shortly followed by a major 

campaign for the intensification of security measures. On 16 January, Ramh demanded increased vigilance from Soviet scientists and 

members of the intelllgensia. 

Section of the Party Central Committee and son Crp the late Anhi 

Zbdanov, named a nuinber of scientists who were guilty of subjectlvAstic distortions. This, of course, reminded observers of his recantation in 1948 after his. father's decline and shortly before his 

father's death, when Yuri had to grovel before Lysenko. 

Yuri Zhdanov, Cpief of the Science 

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At the same time certain leading Soviet historians, including 

Mabky, the former AuibassaBor to Great Britain, were criticized for 

their "bourgeois" thinking, while Kiev radio attacked individuals in 

the Ukrahe who had not been suff'iciently vigilant, particularly in 

li&rt-Industry and the meat and dam, food and timber industries. 

The-ne~ day - Trud reached new heights of invective in an attack on 

"American and British war-mongers and their weapon -- Zionism." 

20 Jabk-y a newspaper in the Lithuanian USSR admitted that some orgauizations there had been penetrated by "bourgeois asti~nalists" 

and Jewish Zionists, while Red Fleet charged that Western powers were 

utilizing diplomatic representatives and newspaper correspondents for 

"undermining" the USSR. Papers in the ukraiaian and Iatvlan SSR's 

accmed specific individuals, mostly Jews, of criminal actirLties. 

On 

On the eve of the 21st, the Lenln day address was gi=n by M. A. 

He stressed Party vigiMikhailov, the ex-Komsmol chief, who had been made a secretary of 

the Central Committee at the Party Congress. 

lance in the class strug@;le and denounced complacency in Party ranks 

as "counter-revolutionary". Stalin was quoted as holding that "such 

people. , ,are turncoats or hypocrites who should be chased out of our 

Party." 

attributed to Stalin during the canqraign were taken from his xritings 

of an earlier period, He had said nothing at the Congress usable for 

these purposes. 

Curiously enough, this quote as well as most of the others 

On 21 January New Times appeared with a strong attack on Zionism 

and on Israeli government officials who were called the executors of 

a US State Department spy ring in the USSR. Israel was attacked for 

racial bigotry. As was the case,- the doctcm' plot, most of the individuals cited after, 13 January in the vigilance campaign as 'being 

haruEul to Soviet security bore Jewish names. 

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I The vigilance drive was also vigoroyly pushed in the European 

with "Joint," In Rumania the party press warned that the deviation 

exemplified by foraher Finance Minister Luca had not been eliminated 

and that it would be "dangerous opportunfsm" to say that it had. In 

Bulgaria, ten members of an "espionage and plotting" organization 

guided by the "American intelligence in Turkey" were arrested, tried, 

and convicted between 18 and 20 January. In East Gennany Georg Dertinger, the CDU Foreign Mbister, was arrested on ch~rges of treason 

and the anti-Zionist campaign which developed there resulted in the 

flight of nupberou8 Jews to West Berlin, who were apparently under no 

In Poland the 

government continued its campaign against alleged US espionage ana 

on 16 January delivered a note to the US protesting such activities. 

Satellites. In Hungary, Jews were arrested for their associstion 1 

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L illusion as to what the future would hold for them. 

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In Austria, the Communist Party conducted a purge related to 

the SlansQ trial. 

broadcast suggested that the principal reason for the satellite trials 

was to be found in the policy of Secretary of State Dulles, who sought 

separation of the Satellites from the Soviet Union. 

It was in Austria, also, that a Soviet-sponsored 

Elsewhere throughout the world, the various Communist parties 

were attempting wlth some difficulty to hew to the new llne, particuhsa 

ana in Italy where the damaging effect was noticeable; 

at the tine said that the Italian Communist Party 

cia1 support as a result. 

Within the USSR, the campaign continued in full swing. On 6 

February Pravda announced the arrest of four persons on espionage 

charges. -February Izvestia stated that Swiet security agents 

had liquidated a nest af American spies established in 1947 by a 

former US assistant naval attache in Vladivostok. The American Embassy in Moscm observed at that time that the Pravda article of 

6 February had gone beyond prevloue press statements in its revelations of disputes over theory and in its citation of names and details 

of alleged espionage. 

theories" were still in exietence among which were the beliefs that 

capitalist encirclement no longer exlsted and that the capitalist 

world would rknounce its attempts to harm the increasingly stable 

Soviet Union. The class struggle was said to remain one between capiblirsm and socialism, and hence the capihliste would continue their 

attempts to overthrow the USSR. 

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The article had stated that "certain rotten 

In the face of this threat,' Soviet foreign policy was described 

as "firm" and one which'"a8mits of no concessions or little concessions to the imperiglist aggressors." 

capitall& encirclement in either his Bolshevlk article or his short 

speech at the close of the C&ss. 

stalin had not touched on 

Hfs point in Economic 

more likely than wars against the Soviet Union was not in keeping I 

wlth the propaganda line. Louis Fisher, vie- this part of Stalin's 

article as a tension-relaxing device, has pointed out that the Swiet 

people may have taken it too seriously and hence provided another contributory cause for the vigilance campaign. 

"hostile elements" existed' in the USSR indicated that the purge would 

A new height in Invective was reached on 8 February when an 

States on the German rather than the Soviet side during World War 11. 

The article accused the United States arid &nerican eepionage of trying "to facilitate military actions of the Hitlerite Army against the 

pravda's admission that 

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definitely continue. I 

- Izvestia book review attempted to rewrite history to put the United I 

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Soviet Union." The vigilance theme remained the most dominaat topic 

in broadcasts to the Russian people, and while the US ana UK were 

cited as the chief external enemies, much emphasis was given to internal enemies as well. Two types of crimes were enphasized: pcMtical and economic. Specific accusations were made against the vgerhl class and petty Party and government officials. Most of the 

managers charged with security violations were in charge of comumer 

goods enterprises. The charges against Pvety officials emphasized 

malfeasance in the selection of cadres. 

Yet the world was never to learn just who had been marked for 

purglng, if Indeed the Soviet leaders themselves knew. Most of the 

actual cases cited were small ones; most of the crimes were petty. 

The biggest official impUcated was one S. M. Petrov, a Deputy Minister of N.on-ferrous Metallurgy, who was sald to have lost a number of 

secret documents through negligence and laxness. 

aeas seemed to be waiting for the final word from Moscow. Yet possibly in the scrauible to predetermine the party line, hsclukyed cases, 

some of which had been aired before, were once more dragged into the 

own. This same pattern seemed to be aired by the Moscow prapaegnda 

media also. All the old stRnilnrd cases against the West were reproduced, but few new ones were cksted. This dearth of major cqlprits 

also appeared to enhance the theory that the initial announcement 

had been intended as a warning rather than a direct accusation. 

The provincial 

FURTHER INDICATIONS OF TEXSION 

Meanwhile, another event had transpired which proved to be of 

more than marginal iqterest. 

the 8pprmChhg elections to the local MOSCOW Soviets were published 

in the Moscow Prad. Several members of the Council of Ministers 

were given no place on this list, which is actually a Whole Who for 

the City of MOSCOW, ntmibering as It does'more than fifteen hundred 

leaders. I 

Among those not listed were I, A. Benediktov, Minister of Agriculture; U.Yu._Yusupov, Minister of Cotton Growing; D. G. Zhimerin, 

Minister of Electric Power Stations; I. K. Sivolap, Minister of Food 

Industry; I. A. Boa, Minister of Forest Economy; P, A. Zalrharov, 

Minister of Geology; Ye. I. Smirnov, Minister of Health; N. S. Kazakov, 

Minister of Beavy Machine Building Industry; P. I. Parshin, Minister . of Machine and Instrument Industry; 19. V. Novikov, Minister of Maritime Fleet; P. F. Lomako, Minister of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy; I. Ye. 

Miaiater of State Farms; V. S. Abakumov, Minister of State Security; S. A. 

Stepanov, Minister of Agricultural Machine Building. 

On 2'7 January the candidate lists for 

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-Voronov, Mipister of Paper and Wood Procesehg Industry; N. A. Skvortsov, 

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The fate of these men was later to be reflected in the March 

decrees consolidating the Soviet Gcmernment, indicating that at 

least some of the changes wrought by the decrees had been under active consideration during the period between the October Congress 

and Stalin's death. Another interesting: development was the nmlnation of S. D. Ignatiev by a group of Moscow workers of the MGB, This 

was the first time that he had been publicly identified with the EB, 

hridently, nuw that the doctors' plot had broken, the time was considered ripe to reveal Abakumov8s replacement and explain why Ignatiev had been accorded hlgh honors at the October Party Congress, 

where he had been msde a meniber of the Party's Presidium. 

Also significant was the fact that the name of' A. A. Andreev 

appeared. He was listed as a Deputy Chairman of the Council of 

Unisters. 

who had been left off the Party's Presidium, was still relatively 

promirtent. 

censorea in the original announcement of the doctors' plot, failed - 

to make an appearance on the list, It had been rumored in Moscow 

that he disappeared about six weeks before the announcement. 

nw's fall, however, had been presaged at the October Party Congress, 

ere he was not listed as a member of the Central Committee in spite 

of the fact that the Minister of Health in the IisFsR was named. Tixis 

suggested %hat the doctors' plot was nnder consultation at that time. 

!Chis was the first indication since October that Andreev, 

Smirnov, the Minister of Health, who had been directly 

SmirA further slgnlficant fact noted in the lists was the position 

of P, 1. Pospelov, who was listed as deputy editor of Pravda. He had 

been removed on 19 January from his position as Director of the MarxEngels-Lenin Institute and had failed for the first time in five years 

to give the annual hnin anniversary address on 21 January, which wss 

delivered by Mikhailov. This indicated that Pospelov was not completely in disfavor, although he had definitely suffered a loss of 

prestige. 

Congress that Pospelov had not been named to one of the leading Party 

organs in spite of the fact that other psrty theoreticians, such as 

Mitin, Yudin, and Cheanokov, had been, Interest in Pospelov's case 

was heightened by the fact that he had been reliably reported to be 

Jewish. 

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It was thought significant at:the time of the October 

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The vigilance campaign tapered of'f somewhat near the end of 

February, which was marked by very few significant events. 

less, there were certaln noteworthy events during the month. 

foreigners had interviews with Stalin -- on the 7th, the Argentine 

L Ambsssador, and on the l7th, both the Indian Anbassador and a representative of the Indian peace movement, Kitchlew, who had won a Stalln 

prlze. 

cussed trade in political terms. This was in keeping with' the remarks 

MevertheThree 

In his interview with the Argentine Ambassador, Stalln as- 

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in his Economic Problems of Socialism, where he had indicated that 

the Soviet Union would sooner or later move into an offensive economic 

policy of competing with the West for markets In underdeveloped areas. 

This was in contrast to the defensive policy of the post-war period 

which was directed primsrily at the acquisition of critically needed 

goods from Western countries. 

Two other events suggested that all was not well within the 

Soviet Union. 

gave evidence of the.tensIon that was in the Moscow air. 

a leading Strvlet official who had retired from Soviet life in 1 

when V. N. Merkulw replaced him as Minister of State Control. 

On 14 February the death of L. Z. Mekhlis once more 

Mekhlis was 

IN this retirement vas due to ill h&alt D 

ewis was eLected t Central Comtttee of the PSrty in October 

1952 and had appeared on the lists of candidates to the Moscow Soviets 

published on 27 January. He was also a Jew. Sovlet propaganda treatment of his death strongly suggeeted that it was necessary to taper 

the anti-Semitic aspects of the internal security drive, lest the 

death of Mekhlis be taken as another example of murder perpetrated by 

a new group of "doctor-wreckers." 

Although Mekhlis had been an important Soviet; official in earlier 

years, his death announcement was made in a form usually reserved for 

only 'the very highest Swviet leaders; condolences were received from 

the various top Soviet organizations as well as Party and State leaders. 

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