Table Of ContentJOSHUA RUBENSTEIN
THE LAST
DAYS OF
STALIN
THE LAST DAYS OF STALIN
i
ii
JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN
THE LAST
DAYS OF
STALIN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
iii
Copyright © 2016 Joshua Rubenstein
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rubenstein, Joshua, author.
Title: The last days of Stalin / Joshua Rubenstein.
Description: New Haven : Yale University Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
LCCN 2015047378 | ISBN 9780300192223 (hardback : alkaline paper)
LCSH: Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953—Death and burial. | Stalin,
Joseph, 1878-1953—Relations with Jews. | Stalin, Joseph,
1878-1953—Political and social views. | Stalin, Joseph,
1878-1953—Influence. | Heads of state—Soviet Union—Biography. | Soviet
Union—Politics and government—1936-1953. | Social change—Soviet
Union—History. | Soviet Union—Foreign relations—1953-1975. | BISAC:
HISTORY / Europe / Russia & the Former Soviet Union. | BIOGRAPHY &
AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Presidents & Heads of State. | HISTORY / Military / World
War II. Classification: LCC DK268.S8 R83 2016 | DDC 947.084/2092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047378
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction viii
1 The Death of Stalin 1
2 A New Purge 35
3 Stalin’s Paranoia and the Jews 56
4 The Kremlin Moves On 96
5 The Surprise of Reform 124
6 A Chance for Peace? 146
7 The End of the Beginning 189
Epilogue 222
Notes 230
Select Bibliography 251
List of Illustrations 254
Index 256
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A number of colleagues and friends helped me with this book.
I am especially grateful to Heather McCallum, my editor at Yale
University Press in London, who proposed the project to me. She
proved to be a reliable friend and resource, firm, helpful, and clear-
headed as I made my way through a thicket of historical events and
challenges with the manuscript. My agents, Robin Straus and
Andrew Nurnberg, were also particularly encouraging at moments
when I wondered if I could sort out what needed to be said and how
to get there.
Several colleagues at the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis
Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University,
which has been my intellectual home for over three decades, provided
much needed guidance and assistance. I relied on Mark Kramer for
his remarkable knowledge of documents and historical writing on
the period; he also proved to be a patient and insightful reader of the
manuscript. Hugh Truslow, the librarian for the Davis Center
Collection, was always ready to help me track down an obscure
volume or find my way through online archival materials. He and
other staff members at Harvard’s Widener Library provided much
needed bibliographic support.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Kimberly St. Julian worked as my research assistant when I first
began this project, while Sydney Soderberg located material for me
at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene,
Kansas. I want to thank both of them for their help.
David Brandenberger at Richmond College was among the
colleagues I first approached when I was considering how to fashion
a book about the events surrounding Stalin’s death; his feedback and
encouragement were always welcome. Maxim Shrayer of Boston
College was also a source of ideas and inspiration. My longtime
friend, Boris Katz, was kind enough to read parts of the manuscript
and, as always, was forthright and thorough in his criticism.
In addition, I would like to thank Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev
who welcomed me to his home in Cranston, Rhode Island, near the
outset of my research. I very much benefited from our conversation
about his father and his own experiences during those fateful days in
March 1953. And Tatiana Yankelevich shared a vivid story with me
from the life of her mother, Elena Bonner, who came close to being
a victim of the Doctors’ Plot. Jonathan Brent also shared a good deal
of material with me from his extensive collection of documents about
the Doctors’ Plot.
Finally, my wife, Jill Janows and our son, Ben, had to endure yet
another deep dive into Soviet history which required me to be in
libraries and behind a study door at all hours of the day and night.
Their patient love continues to be a crucial source of emotional
support.
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INTRODUCTION
Joseph Stalin collapsed and died in an atmosphere of medieval
recrimination. It was March 1953. The Kremlin seethed with fears of
a broad, new purge against members of his Presidium. A public
campaign against treasonous Jewish doctors threatened to engulf all
of Soviet Jewry. Tensions with the West were more and more
alarming: after three years of fighting, the war in Korea continued
unabated while American and Soviet armies faced each other in a
divided Germany. At the same time a new American administration
led by President Dwight David Eisenhower and Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles had come into office that January with the inten-
tion of “rolling back” communism only to find themselves confronting
Stalin’s heirs and a host of unexpected reforms.
At home and abroad Stalin’s longtime “comrades-in-arms” faced a
host of difficult dilemmas. They understood the need to release pris-
oners from the Gulag, disavow the Doctors’ Plot, and provide higher
living standards for the population. They also offered concessions to the
West, a dramatic “peace offensive” that included renewed and serious
negotiations to end the fighting in Korea and reduce tensions in Europe,
including in the satellite countries in Eastern Europe where Stalin’s
extreme policies were leading to popular unrest against communist rule.
viii
INTRODUCTION
But their overriding concern was preserving their hold on power.
Stalin had so dominated life in the country that his death provoked
an enormous outpouring of disoriented grief. “Stalin was inside
everyone, like the hammer alongside the sickle in every mind,” as the
writer Andrei Sinyavsky wrote.1 The regime feared that his death
would lead to panic and disorder, which in turn could undermine
their legitimacy and the authority of one-party rule. They had to
devise a way to distance themselves from Stalin’s crimes while
insisting that the Communist Party not be held responsible for the
tyrant’s brutality, that the party was more to be pitied for what it had
endured than condemned for what it had applauded. This dilemma
arose immediately after his collapse, then continued for decades,
with occasional flashes of candor and truth followed by renewed,
official respect for Stalin and his leadership. It affected his medical
treatment, the conduct of his funeral, relations with the West, and
everyday life in the country.
This book opens with Stalin’s death, moves backward in time to
the Nineteenth Party Congress in October 1952, when Stalin made
his last public speech, then proceeds through the winter of 1952–53
when the Doctors’ Plot and a broad campaign against the country’s
Jews unfolded. It explores how the Soviet and American press covered
Stalin’s death and how the new Eisenhower administration reacted
to the dramatic changes in Moscow that followed. It concludes with
the arrest of Stalin’s longtime security chief, Lavrenti Beria, in June.
Stalin’s death introduced an unprecedented opportunity. It gave
his heirs the chance to reverse many of his policies and move the
country forward in a hopeful, more relaxed direction. It presented
the United States with an urgent need to review assumptions about
how it could work with a brutal and menacing dictatorship that had
suddenly lost its leader and seemed ready to negotiate a new begin-
ning to its relations with the outside world. For complex reasons
both Soviet and Western governments could not overcome the
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