When Stalin Rounded Up Soviet Doctors

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2019

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In the last year of his rule Stalin ordered the imprisonment and execution of hundreds of the best Soviet doctors accusing them of plotting to kill senior Communist officials. Several hundred doctors were imprisoned and tortured, many of them died in detention. Professor Yakov Rapoport was among the few survivors of what was known as the 'Doctors' Plot'. His daughter Natasha remembers her family's ordeal in an interview with Dina Newman.

Photo: Professor Yakov Rapoport, 1990s. Credit: family archive.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
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0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.7	Hello you're listening to the Witness podcast with me Dina Newman.
0:34.0	Today we go back to 1953 to Moscow under communism when the Soviet dictator Joseph
0:40.9	Stalin had been in power for 24 years. All of a sudden many of the best
0:46.9	Soviet doctors were arrested and accused of spying and plotting to kill senior Communist Party officials, including comrade Stalin himself.
0:57.0	The State Security Services have uncovered a terrorist group of medical doctors who aim to shorten the lives of Soviet politicians
1:04.8	by providing harmful treatment.
1:07.0	It's January 13th, 1953 and Soviet Radio is announcing the so-called Doctor's Plot.
1:15.0	Relevant documents, expert research and confessions of the accused have all confirmed
1:21.0	that these criminals were the secret enemies of the people.
1:25.4	These killer doctors, scum of the earth, betrayed their signs and were paid by foreign secret
1:32.0	services.
1:33.0	Natasha Rappaport, a Soviet schoolgirl, is horrified as she is listening to the radio.
1:38.0	I was 14 when doctors exploded.
1:42.0	I knew all of those doctors. When doctors exploded.
	...

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