Doctors' Plot - Background

Background

Further information: Stalin's antisemitism, Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and Night of the Murdered Poets

As early as 1907, Stalin wrote a letter differentiating between a "Jewish faction" and a "true Russian faction" in bolshevism. Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov stated that Stalin made crude anti-Semitic outbursts even before Vladimir Lenin's death. Anti-Semitic trends in the Kremlin's policies were fueled by the exile of Leon Trotsky. After dismissing Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Minister in 1939, Stalin immediately directed Vyacheslav Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews". This was likely a signal to Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for talks on non-aggression; however, some critics see a purely anti-Semitic reason for this. According to historian Yakov Yakovlevich Etinger, many Soviet state purges of the 1930s were anti-Semitic and after more intense anti-Semitic policy toward the end of World War II, Stalin in 1946 reportedly said privately that "every Jew is a potential spy." Furthermore, after purportedly ordering the development of bombers capable of reaching America, supposedly convinced that Harry Truman was Jewish, Stalin reportedly remarked in private that "we will show this Jewish shopkeeper how to attack us!"

Nevertheless, during the period 1945 to 1947, overt anti-Semitism had been suppressed in the USSR, because Stalin was considered the savior of the Jews, the man who defeated Hitler and had liberated the Eastern European concentration camps from the Nazis. Moreover, during those years Stalin needed the Jews for propaganda purposes, and besides many of the old Bolsheviks were Jewish, Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, Lazar Kaganovich, Maxim Litvinov, Yakov Sverdlov, Polina Zhemchuzhina (the wife of Molotov), etc. Jewish communists Abram Slutsky, Sergei Shpigelglas, and Genrikh Yagoda, had led the intelligence and security organs of the Bolsheviks and subsequently the Soviet state. And there were still many Jewish cadres in the cultural organs, the Party, the intelligence services, and the security apparatus. Thirdly, Stalin had initially supported the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.

With the beginning of the Cold War, the State of Israel allying with the West, and Stalin's suspicions of any form of Jewish nationalism (and indeed nationalism in general), the Soviet regime eliminated the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in 1948 and launched a campaign against so-called "rootless cosmopolitans." Also, in the course of his career, Stalin became increasingly suspicious towards physicians. In his later years, he refused to be treated by doctors, and would only consult with veterinarians about his health. After show trials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 13 Jewish members were secretly executed on Stalin's orders in the Night of the Murdered Poets.