In the manner of a political thriller, this documentary exhibits all the parts of a file which speaks volumes about the paranoia which reigns in the Kremlin a few weeks before the death of the little father of the peoples, in 1953.
by Guillaume Fraissard
On January 13, 1953, PRAVDA, the official pressing body of communist power, revealed the arrest of several doctors – Jews for the majority of them – accused of having participated in a plot aimed at several dignitaries party. Joseph Staline himself would have been one of the targets of conspirators.
This revelation raises a wave of anti-Semitism skillfully orchestrated by power, while the country has entered the Cold War with the United States. “Every Jew is a potential enemy in the balance of the United States,” said the Kremlin master a few months earlier.
Several works have already revealed the underside of this conspiracy mounted from scratch by Stalin with the help of Mikhail Rioumine – who will finish executed a year later, after the death of the tyrant, to have acted as an enemy of the State ” – against these” white blouses “which, for the most part, belonged to the nomenklatura and treated the high personalities of the party. In 2006, historians Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov published the latest crime of Stalin. Back on the “conspiracy of white blouses” (Calmann-Lévy), with many unpublished documents revealing the cogs of the machination.
theory of conspiracy
The film by Philippe Saada rebroadcast on Saturday January 14 on Public Senate is based on this book and on the declassified documents consulted by British historian Jonathan Brent. In the manner of a rich and documented political thriller, the director exhibits all the pieces of a file which, beyond the “conspiracy”, speaks volumes about the paranoia which reigns at the Kremlin a few weeks before the death of Stalin, March 5, 1953.
But the case truly dates back to the year 1948 and to the death of Andreï Jdanov, ideologist of the party and dolphin of the little father of the peoples. At the time, a letter informed the Kremlin that Jdanov would not have received the appropriate care. Stalin does not immediately exploit the information, but will use it a few years later as one of the evidence of the supposed conspiracy.
In November 1950, the first doctor to find himself in the hands of the political police was called Jacob Einger. Imprisoned – as well as his son – for his outspokenness and his “discordant” opinions, he is accused of the murder of a high dignitary. The plot takes shape. He will go as far as the arrest of Viktor Abakoumov, head of state security, whose judgments under a false pretext served to fuel the theory of the conspiracy of which Stalin wanted to use to organize a new purge at the top of the state.
Only a few days after Stalin’s death, Pravda announced the liberation of doctors and their exemption from any criminal charge.