Solomon Mikhoels - Anti-fascist Activities and Assassination

Anti-fascist Activities and Assassination

By the mid-1930s, Mikhoels' career was threatened because of his association with other leading intelligentsia, who were victims of Stalin's purges. Mikhoels actively supported Stalin against Adolf Hitler, and in 1942, he was made chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In this capacity, he travelled around the world, meeting with Jewish communities to encourage them to support the Soviet Union in its war against Nazi Germany.

While this was useful to Stalin during World War II, after the war, Stalin opposed contacts between Soviet Jews and Jewish communities in non-Communist countries, which he deemed as "bourgeoisie". The Jewish State Theater was closed and the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested – all except for two were eventually executed in the purges shortly before Stalin's death.

Mikhoels was the most visible of the intellectual Jewish leadership, and a show trial would have cast aspersions on Stalin's rule. Thus in January 1948, he was assassinated on Stalin's personal orders in Minsk. His death was disguised as a hit-and-run car accident. Mikhoels received a state funeral and was buried at the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. According to documents unearthed by the historian Gennady Kostyrchenko, the organizers of the assassination were L.M. Tsanava, S. Ogoltsov and Pavel Sudoplatov on the pretext that he was an "American spy", and the "direct" murderers were Lebedev, Kruglov and Shubnyakov. Mikhoels was bludgeoned to death along with his non-Jewish colleague Golubov-Potapov and their bodies were dumped on a road-side in Minsk and run over by a truck. He was eventually buried in the New Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.