According to the following article, based on new evidence Stalin was actually murdered and did not, as the Soviets always claimed, die of natural causes. Apparently, he was killed during dinner by his inner circle who used an odorless rat poison to do the job. There seem to have been several things motivating the assassination: First and foremost, self-interest. Stalin’s inner-circle were dreading another purge which, considering the old man’s growing, psychopathic paranoia would probably have been incredibly bloody. Second, he was already constructing concentration camps in which he planned to imprison the Jews of Russia using the so-called “doctor’s plot” as a pretext. Third, he was planning a nuclear first strike on America. No choice but to kill him.
A nuclear first strike on the U.S.? How sharp was Uncle Joe? While it’s not too hard to believe that, in the early '50s, he might have successfully gotten a handful of A-bomb laden TU-4s over the outer reaches of the U.S., he had nowhere near the capability of putting the necessary manpower on the ground.
In light of his own WWII experience, I think he was well aware of the sleeping giant syndrome.
I find the realistic consideration of a first strike by Stalin at that stage in history awfully hard to believe.
I read the article this morning in the Globe and Mail and found it to be an interesting read. But hardly official proof. Guess warfarin would do it, though.
The USSR only had a few nukes at the time, and America only a few hundred. I’d hardly call it a holocaust. If anything, Stalin was (privately) unrealistically afaid of nuclear war, and I think any preperations he was making were probably to show a strong face to the West in case they tried to interfere in the Purges.
Beria was wise to kill Stalin. He went through more NKVD chiefs than toilet paper.
This is in a biography of Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky entitled, appropriately enough, Stalin. I don’t remember the details since it has been ages since I read it, but I believe it has some of the details of the mysterious circumstances surrounding Stalin’s death, guards that were sent home early, etc, plus his plans for instigating a nuclear war and concentration camps for Jews. I don’t think it names specifically who did the deed or what they used, though.
(Disclaimer: as said above, it’s been ages since I read it and I didn’t really read it that closely when I did, so this may not be all true. But I think it is. ;))
The theory is not new; the rumours about poisoning date back to 1953. For what it’s worth, the State Archives Service in Moscow have just made public documents on Stalin’s death which they claim disprove the poisoning theory.
Round up the usual suspects! Those jewish doctors were probably in on it! Damn, we can’t have people going around poisoning dictators!
For what it is worth, I recall reading in N.S. Kruschev’s memoirs, that Stalin was dying, and that a bunch of his henchmen (including Beria-the head of the KGB) were arrayed around the bed. Stalin closed his eyes, and appeared to be dead…Beria immediately broke into a joyful dance (he figured that HE would succeeed Stalin as ruler)…that ended when Stalin OPENED his eyes…Beria must have shat his pants!
Not that Beria was any less of a monster. You know what the really sad thing about the murder of Stalin is? The really really sad thing is that it was not done by his parents immediately post-birth