Long buried in Soviet mass consciousness, the ill-famed "doctors' plot" was recalled by President Gorbachev in his now famous speech of 1987 in which he called for certain "dark spots" in Soviet history to be fully and finally elucidated. This speech led directly to the opening up of the KGB archives and to the publication in Russia in 1988 of this book. Nine doctors refused to ascribe death by natural causes to Stalin's wife who had in fact committed suicide. Stalin's revenge was to set abroad fake reports of attempts by a ...
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Long buried in Soviet mass consciousness, the ill-famed "doctors' plot" was recalled by President Gorbachev in his now famous speech of 1987 in which he called for certain "dark spots" in Soviet history to be fully and finally elucidated. This speech led directly to the opening up of the KGB archives and to the publication in Russia in 1988 of this book. Nine doctors refused to ascribe death by natural causes to Stalin's wife who had in fact committed suicide. Stalin's revenge was to set abroad fake reports of attempts by a so-called terrorist group of doctors to shorten the lives of active statesmen in the Soviet Union by means of sabotage in the course of medical treatment. In the following months thousands of doctors were arrested and labelled "killer doctors". The hysteria was also used to escalate anti-semitic feelings. Yakov Rapoport, the only survivor of the original nine doctors, tells his story.
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