Doctors' plot
Shcherbakov died of heart failure on 10 May 1945, right after Victory Day, and the following year the town of Rybinsk was renamed "Shcherbakov" in his honour (its original name was restored in 1957). In January 1953, TASS announced that he had been murdered, a victim of the Doctors' plot. This story was discredited later that same year, after Stalin's death.