The “Doctors' Plot”

Historical Context Note

Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Domains

Politics

Dates

Date of occurrence 1953-01-1953-04

Places

Russia (Location)

The so-called “Doctors' Plot” was initiated in January 1953, just two months before the death of Stalin, and therefore counts as one of his last repressive acts. It may be seen as having been prefigured by attacks on prominent medical figures in the 1930s (including the physicians who had treated the dying Maksim Gorky), campaigns against “rootless cosmopolitans” in the late 1940s, and, more immediately before, the vicious action against Yiddish writers and other Jewish intellectuals. This new campaign was launched by a TASS announcement, “exposing” a number of Jewish doctors, working in the Kremlin hospital, as instigators of a plot to kill Stalin and other prominent officials. This initiative, which might have been …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

179 words

Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "The “Doctors' Plot”". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 September 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1591, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

The “Doctors' Plot”

Domains

Dates

Places

Save this article

Leave Feedback