Mystery of Stalin's Death

[Ulysses]

Has anyone seen this BBC Documentary?

The mystery of Stalin's death
By Leonida Krushelnycky

Fifty years ago, on 5 March 1953, the Soviet leader Josef Stalin died.

His political life as a dictator who dominated millions has been minutely dissected over the decades.

But his last days continue to provoke speculation and argument.

Did he die of natural causes following a brain haemorrhage or was Stalin killed because he was about to plunge the Soviet Union into a war its people were in no position to fight?

Unusual order

The night of 28 February began in the usual manner for Stalin and his closest political circle, Lavrenty Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin and Georgi Malenkov.


We were glad when we got this order, and went off to bed without thinking twice
Pyotr Lozgachev
guard on duty
They watched a film in the Kremlin then retired to Stalin's country home, 10 minutes outside Moscow, for yet another night of feasting.
By the early hours of 1 March, Stalin's guests had gone back to their homes in Moscow.

What happened next was out of the ordinary for a man as obsessed with security as Stalin. He gave an order for his guards to retire for the night - he was not to be disturbed.

This change to Stalin's normal behaviour intrigued Russian historian Edvard Radzinski, and a few years ago he tracked down one of the guards on duty that night, Pyotr Lozgachev.

Guards worried

It was Lozgachev's testimony of that night that led Radzinski to speculate about what might really have happened.


The guards slept late the following morning, and so, it seemed, did Stalin - 12 o'clock, one, two o'clock came and no Stalin

The guard confirmed that it was not Stalin who gave the guards the order to go to bed, rather the order was conveyed by the main guard Khrustalev.
"Stalin would taunt the guards by saying 'Want to go to bed?' and stare into our eyes," Lozgachev said. "As if we'd dare! So of course we were glad when we got this order, and went off to bed without thinking twice."

The guards slept late the following morning, and so, it seemed, did Stalin. Twelve o'clock, one, two o'clock came and no Stalin.

The guards began to get worried, but no one dared to go into his rooms. They had no right to disturb Stalin unless invited into his presence personally.

At 6.30 a light came on in Stalin's rooms, and the guards relaxed a little. But by the time 10 o'clock had chimed they were petrified. Lozgachev was finally sent in to check on Stalin.

"I hurried up to him and said 'Comrade Stalin, what's wrong?' He'd, you know, wet himself while he was lying there. He made some incoherent noise, like "Dz dz". His pocke****ch and copy of Pravda were lying on the floor. The watch showed 6.30. That's when it must have happened to him."

'World War III'

The guards rushed to call Stalin's drinking companions, the Politburo. It was their tardiness in responding and calling for medical help that put questions of doubt in Radzinski's mind.


Did they already know too much and so did not need to hurry to the "old man's" side?
Mr Radzinski says Yes. He asserts that Stalin was injected with poison by the guard Khrustalev, under the orders of his master, KGB chief Lavrenty Beria. And what was the reason Stalin was killed?

"All the people who surrounded Stalin understood that Stalin wanted war - the future World War III - and he decided to prepare the country for this war," Mr Radzinski says.

"He said: we have the opportunity to create a communist Europe but we have to hurry. But Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov and every normal person understood it was terrible to begin a war against America because the country [Russia] had no economy.

"It wasn't a poor but a super-poor country which was destroyed by the German invasion, a country which had no resources but only nuclear weapons.


"It was the reason for his anti-Semitic campaign, it was a provocation. He wanted an answer from America. And Beria knew Stalin had planned on 5 March to begin the deportation of Jewish people from Moscow."
As always in Russia, conspiracy piles on conspiracy. Some saw buses parked all round Moscow to take away the Jews. Others glimpsed special barns erected for the deportees in Kazakhstan.

But while the drama unfolded over the next few days in Stalin's country house, the citizens of the Soviet Union were split in their reaction to the imminent death of their leader.

Many openly wept for the man they called '"Father", "Teacher", "God". Others in prison camps across the land allowed themselves to exchange secret smiles and hope that things would be different now.

At 9.50pm on 5 March Stalin died. By the next day his body was lying in state in the Hall of Columns, a few streets from Red Square. It is estimated that several millions came to see him one final time. Several hundred were rumoured to have died in the crush.

Fifty years on, the rumours of intrigues and conspiracies continue. For a tyrant like Josef Stalin, a simple death would be just too mundane.

The documentary The Last Mystery of Stalin - BBC Radio 4 on Monday, 24 February, 2000 GMT - charts the politics and emotions of a turbulent and truly significant week in Soviet history, through personal recollections and dramatic re-creations.

[johnstruthers]

The documentary is apparently based on a book of the same name of recent publication. There, though, they suppose that Stalin was not injected but simply given a tasteless, odorless clear blood thinner in his vodka. He had terrible internal hemhorraging as well, according to doctors that were finally called, consistent with this theory. Beria bragged later, to associates while partying, that he had done the job.

[Halina]

Hello Ulysses,

I have not listened to BBC Radio 4, but it is a rather interesting piece of information that you've posted here. I don't know if you are acquainted with Robert Conquest's books on Stalin and the Soviet Union. Some say Conquest is by far the best Western historian when it comes to the time of Russian Revolution, Purges and the details from Stalin's life.

In his book 'Stalin - Braker of Nations', Conquest claims that it was not so much poison that killed Uncle Joe as his toadies' 'reluctance' to call medical care on time. Apparently, between the stroke and the arrival of the doctors at least 10 hours passed, during which time Stalin did not receive any medical care.

Such a version of events would boil down to murder anyway.

His daughter's description of Stalin's final hours is horrifying. Svetlana Stalin writes;

'For the last twelve hours the lack of oxygen became acute. His face and lips blackened and he suffered slow strangulation. The death agony was terrible. He literally choked to death as we watched. At what seemed like the very last moment, he opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry, and full of fear of death(...).
/And then/ he suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something up above and bringing curse on all. The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace.'
(...).
He died a difficult and terrible death - if not so terrible as many of the millions he had himself procured, or was still planning.'

(Svetlana Stalin quoted by R. Conquest in 'Stalin - the Braker of Nations', Penguin Books, NY, 1991, pp.312-313).

It is a rather dramatic description, and even more so when one realises it's been related by Stalin's own daughter. Do you know where he is buried ? Is it Moscow ? Is it true that Svetlana escaped to the West and when was it? Does anyone know?

[vorosilov]

Dear Halina.

Nikita Hruschov gave Svetlana permission to move to the USA in 1963-64.

[Chalimei]

New evidence in the archives shows Stalin was killed with rat poisoned by the Politburo with Beria as organizer.

Certainly, the amount of time Stalin was allowed to lie unattended doesn't not suggest any anxiety for his well-being, but rather anxiety that he'd survive!

It was far too easy a death for such a Monster.

[Chalimei]

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/...7-91952419.htm

Check out this article for info on the murder revelation.

[Ulysses]

John, Halina, Chalimei. Thank you for your references. I will look for them shortly.

Vorosilov? Where have you been?