Lev Sedov - Death

Death

After an acute attack of appendicitis in 1938, he was taken to a private clinic instead of a Paris hospital. The clinic was operated by a White Russian with connections to Soviet intelligence, who performed an appendectomy. Complications set in after the operation, but Sedov apparently received no further treatment. He was later taken to a Paris hospital, where he died.

Some historians who have analyzed the matter believe Sedov was murdered by agents of Stalin who were in Paris watching him, either while in hospital or by poisoning him causing his condition. In 1956, an NKVD agent, Mark Zborowski, who had posed as Sedov’s comrade and friend, testified in a United States court that he had reported to the NKVD as soon as Sedov had entered the hospital under a secret name. However, Pavel Sudoplatov, a lieutenant general in the NKVD who at that time was in charge of planning assassinations abroad, including the one of Sedov's father, claimed in his memoirs, Special Tasks, that Soviet agents played no part in his death.

Sedov's grave is at the Parisian cemetery at Thiais.