In 1948, Stalin received a letter from a doctor which alleged that Andrei Zhdanov, a powerful Politburo member, had been incorrectly treated in the hospital before his recent death. Stalin read the letter and marked it “into the archive,” where it stayed for nearly four years, before the MGB—the predecessor of the KGB—“discovered” it, and launched an investigation into its allegations.
The investigation into this “Doctors’ Plot,” beginning in 1952 and gathering pace until Stalin’s death in 1953, initially centered on claims that Soviet doctors, aided by the security services, had been secretly poisoning and purposely mistreating Soviet leaders over a …read more
Source: Victims of Communism
