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Doctors' Plot
The "doctors' plot" () was a Soviet state-sponsored anti-intellectual and anti-cosmopolitan campaign based on a conspiracy theory that alleged an anti-Soviet cabal of prominent medical specialists, including some of Jewish ethnicity, intended to murder leading government and Communist Party officials. It was also known as the case of saboteur doctors, doctor-poisoners or killer doctors. In 1951–1953, a group of doctors from Moscow were accused of a conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders. They were accused of working for Western (primarily American and British) intelligence. Following this, many doctors were dismissed from their jobs, arrested, and tortured to produce admissions. A few weeks after Stalin's death in 1953, the new Soviet leadership dropped the case due to a lack of evidence. Soon after, the case was declared to have been a fabrication. Beginnings A number of theories attempt to explain the origins of the doctors' plot case. Historians typically relate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rootless Cosmopolitan
"Rootless cosmopolitan" ( ) was a pejorative epithet that was mostly applied to intellectuals and Jews with ties to the West during the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. It became especially prevalent during the country's anti-cosmopolitan campaign, which began in 1948 and continued until Stalin's death in 1953, as part of a post-1946 assault on " bourgeois Western influences" that widely targeted writers and other intellectuals, culminating in the doctors' plot against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the Communist Party's discourse, rootless cosmopolitans were defined as unpatriotic Soviet citizens, chiefly Jewish intellectuals with ties to the West, who disseminated foreign influence favouring the socio-political atmosphere or aesthetics of Western Europe or the United States. The term is considered to be an antisemitic trope. Origin The expression was coined in the 19th century by Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky to describe writers who lacked ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleksandr Shcherbakov (20th-century Politician)
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Shcherbakov (; – 10 May 1945) was a Soviet Union, Soviet politician and statesman who was a wartime head of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Soviet Navy, Main Political Directorate of the Red Army as well as the director of the Soviet Information Bureau. Career Shcherbakov was born into a working-class family in Ruza, Ruzsky District, Moscow Oblast, Ruza, near Moscow. The family moved to Rybinsk after his father's death in 1907. After primary school, he was sent to work as an apprentice, at the age of 12, in a Rybinsk print works. He was sent to work in a factory at the age of 10. He joined the Red Guards in 1917, and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Communist Party in 1918. He worked for Komsomol in Rybinsk during the Russian Civil War. In 1921–24, he studied at Sverdlov University, Moscow. In 1924, he started work as a party official in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Nizhny Novgorod, where he gained the trust of the prov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov ( rus, Андрей Александрович Жданов, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪdʑ ˈʐdanəf, a=Ru-Андрей Жданов.ogg, links=yes; – 31 August 1948) was a Soviet politician. He was the Soviet Union's "propagandist-in-chief" after the Second World War,V. M. Zubok and Konstantin Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: from Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard: Harvard UP, 1996, p.119 and was responsible for developing the Soviet cultural policy, the Zhdanov Doctrine, which remained in effect until the death of Joseph Stalin. Zhdanov was considered Stalin's most likely successor but died before him. Zhdanov joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and quickly rose through the party ranks. A close associate of Stalin, he became a secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Central Committee in 1934, and later that year he was promoted to Saint Petersburg, Leningrad party chief following the assassinati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger
Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger (; 22 December 1887 – 2 March 1951) was a Soviet medical doctor. He was one of the accused in the Doctor's Plot in 1952-1953, an alleged Zionist plot to kill off the Soviet leadership. Dr. Etinger was tortured by Mikhail Ryumin, the Deputy Minister of State Security, who then reported to Minister Viktor Abakumov, who did not believe there was a plot although he and Ryumin were both present at a later interrogation of Dr. Etinger. Yet another interrogation in the presence of Abakumov was to follow the next morning, in Ryumin's hope to convince Abakumov that such a case existed, but Etinger died under interrogation during the night.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago ''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' () is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian ... (New York, Harper and Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viktor Abakumov
Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov (; 24 April 1908 – 19 December 1954) was a high-level Soviet security official who from 1943 to 1946 was the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 of the Minister of State Security or MGB (ex- NKGB). He was removed from office and arrested in 1951 on charges of failing to investigate the Doctors' Plot. After the death of Joseph Stalin, Abakumov was tried for fabricating the Leningrad Affair, sentenced to death and executed in 1954. Early life and career Abakumov was an ethnic Russian. Recent scholarship suggests that he was born in Moscow, though he was previously said to be from the Don Cossack region of south Russia. His father was an unskilled labourer and his mother a nurse. At the age of 14, Abakumov joined the Soviet Red Army in spring 1922 and served with the 2nd Special Task Moscow Brigade in the Russian Civil War until demobilization in December 1923.Parrish, 1996, He then joined the Ko ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mikhail Ryumin
Mikhail Dmitrievich Ryumin Михаил Дмитриевич Рюмин (1 September 1913 – 22 July 1954) was a Soviet security officer and deputy head of the Soviet MGB (Ministry of State Security) who engineered the " Doctors' Plot" in 1952–1953. After the death of Joseph Stalin (March 1953), his successors dismissed the case and had Ryumin arrested and executed. Biography Early career Ryumin was born in (Большое Кабанье), in southwest Siberia. Reputedly, his family were wealthy farmers, his brother and sister were convicted thieves, and his father in law fought against the Bolsheviks in the White Army commanded by Admiral Kolchak. Despite his background, he survived the wholesale arrests of ' kulaks' instigated by Josif Stalin. Around 1931, he was working as bookkeeper on a collective farm in the Urals. His next break came after Nikolai Yezhov ordered the mass arrest of NKVD officers suspected of loyalty to his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ministry Of State Security (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of State Security (, ), abbreviated as MGB (), was a ministry of the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1953 which functioned as the country's secret police. The ministry inherited the intelligence and state security responsibilities of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). The MGB was led by Viktor Abakumov from 1946 to 1951, then by Semyon Ignatiev until Stalin's death in 1953, upon which it was merged into an enlarged Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Origins of the MGB The MGB was just one of many incarnations of the Soviet State Security apparatus. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong political police or security force to support and control their regime. During the Russian Civil War, the Cheka were in power, relinquishing it to State Political Directorate (GPU) in 1922 after the fighting was over. The GPU was then renamed The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svetlana Alliluyeva
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (née Stalina; 28 February 1926 – 22 November 2011), later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967, she became an international sensation when she defected to the United States and, in 1978, became a naturalized citizen. From 1984 to 1986, she briefly returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship reinstated. She was Stalin's last surviving child. Early life Svetlana Stalina was born on 28 February 1926. As her mother was interested in pursuing a professional career, Alexandra Bychokova was hired as a nanny to look after Alliluyeva and her older brother Vasily (born 1921). Alliluyeva and Bychokova became quite close, and remained friends for 30 years, until Bychokova died in 1956. On 9 November 1932, Alliluyeva's mother shot herself. To conceal the suicide, the children were told that she had died of peritonitis, a complicatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lydia Timashuk
Lydia (; ) was an Iron Age kingdom situated in western Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey. Later, it became an important province of the Achaemenid Empire and then the Roman Empire. Its capital was Sardis. At some point before 800 BC, the Lydian people achieved some sort of political cohesion, and existed as an independent kingdom by the 600s BC. At its greatest extent, during the 7th century BC, it covered all of western Anatolia. In 546 BC, it became a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire, known as ''Sparda'' in Old Persian. In 133 BC, it became part of the Roman province of Asia. Lydian coins, made of electrum, are among the oldest in existence, dated to around the 7th century BC. Geography Lydia is generally located east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir.Rhodes, P.J. ''A History of the Classical Greek World 478–323 BC''. 2nd edition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, p. 6. The boundaries of historical Lydia va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The First In-depth Biography Based On Explosive New Documents From Russia's Secret Archives
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War III
World War III, also known as the Third World War, is a hypothetical future global conflict subsequent to World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945). It is widely predicted that such a war would involve all of the great powers, like its two predecessors, and the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, thereby surpassing all prior conflicts in scale, devastation, and loss of life. World War III was initially synonymous with the escalation of the Cold War (1947–1991) into direct conflict between the US-led Western Bloc and Soviet-led Eastern Bloc. Since the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons in 1945 and their use by the United States in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the risk of a nuclear apocalypse causing widespread destruction and the potential collapse of modern civilization or human extinction has been central in speculation and fiction about World War III. The Soviet Union's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
