Stalin's Last Crime: The Doctor's Plot

Stalin's Last Crime: The Doctor's Plot

by Jonathan Brent (Author), Vladimir P Naumov (Author)

Synopsis

This is the full story behind Stalin's last, most complex and most puzzling conspiracy unravelled for the first time through access to previously unseen secret Soviet documents. On 13th January 1953, a stunned world learned that a vast conspiracy among Jewish doctors to murder Kremlin leaders had been unmasked. Pravda reported that several of the doctors had confessed to the crime. Mass arrests followed. The Doctors' Plot, as this action came to be called, was Stalin's last great criminal conspiracy. In the years since Stalin's death many myths have grown up about the Doctors' Plot, while Stalin's motives have been the object of endless speculation. Did Stalin himself invent the conspiracy against the Jewish doctors or was it engineered by subordinates who wished to eliminate Kremlin rivals? Was Stalin merely motivated by venomous anti-Semitism? How was this plot related to the Cold War? And, finally, was the Doctors' Plot connected with Stalin's fortuitous death?

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 416
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: John Murray
Published: 01 May 2003

ISBN 10: 0719554489
ISBN 13: 9780719554483

Media Reviews
A great study of paranoia inside the Cold War Soviet Union -- Good Book Guide 'Complicated, scholarly and fascinating book, the best so far on the doctors' plot' -- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Times 'Thanks to Brent and Naumov, the twists and turns of what was in fact a remarkable 'Stalin Plot' have at last been unearthed in the former Soviet archive. Their detective work has been prodigious... this is a remarkable case study of the dictator at work' -- Richard Overy, Literary Review 20030503 'The best book ever on the Doctor's Plot and one of the best analyses of the Stalinist soul.' -- Financial Times magazine 20031220 'In this horrifying story the authors unravel one of the dictator's last bizarre enterprises in which he urged on the discovery of a 'conspiracy' among Jewish doctors to assassinate leading Communist officials' -- Contemporary Review 20040801 'Welcome to the world of smoke and mirrors ... a fascinating account of a dreadful world' -- Newsquest (Sussex) 20040228
Author Bio
Jonathan Brent is Editorial Director of Yale University Press, New Haven, Conneticut and founder of the widely praised 'Annals of Communism' series. His book 'The Secret World of American Communism' (1994) led to the release of classified Second World War information by the CIA and the FBI. Vladimir P Naumov is a Professor of History at Moscow State University and the leading researcher for the Presidential Commission on the Rehabilitation of Repressed Persons. He is the author of numerous articles on the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s.