By 1953, Stalin was a sick old man-but like most tyrants, he hated giving up power. I was re-reading NS Krushchev’s memoirs (“Krushchev Remembers”), and it seems likely. Stalin had his right hand man (Beria) setting up the members of the Politburo (preparing ëvidence", setting up schemes for prosecuting them). Krushchev was one of the few who survived the 1930’s purges-he certainly must have been aware of what was going on. I think this explains why Stalin was very likely poisoned-it was a matter of survival.
At any rate, has any recent evidence emerged to support this?
For some reason the typo “porge” makes me hungry.
Ironically, it was the ethnic purges of the 1930’s that prevented Stalin from staging Porge and Bess in 1953.
Was the porge hot, cold, or nine days old?
[side-track]
Some years ago, I read Witness To History by Charles Bohlen (memoir of American diplomat who specialized in Soviet matters, and was ambassador to Russia, surviving attempted purge by McCarthy). Then I read Khrushchev Remembers (presumably by, you know, Khrushchev, although even that apparently wasn’t for certain).
I found it interesting how much their respective stories supported, or at least were consistent, with each other.
Example 1: Both authors described Stalin as a mad-man or monster or some words to that effect.
Example 2: Bohlen describes the Soviet attitude: They were so certain that they were building the Workers’ Paradise that they were genuinely dumbfounded when the masses didn’t go along. They couldn’t imagine why workers should be rioting in Prague, or Berlin, or elsewhere in the eastern European states. Hence, the only possible conclusion: It simply HAD to be the work of Western provocateurs! Khrushchev gives his take: Essentially, he proved Bohlen’s point by saying that those uprisings were incomprehensible and thus must have been the work of Western provocateurs!
[/side-track]
ETA: Did you know that the name Khrushchev, as written in Cyrillic, only has six letters? Хрущёв
I loves you, Porge
I’ve just finished reading ‘The First Circle’ by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn set in a late Stalin era special prison. Looking back it really is amazing and disturbing that such a society really existed, and worse that something like almost 50% of Russians think Stalin did a bang-up good job of things.
Personally I doubt Stalin was poisoned, I think he was just a sick and elderly man and his time had come, but people have difficulty accepting someone so notorius and powerful could just up and die like anyone else.
That’s not to say he wasn’t planning another inner-party purge, he quite possibly was, but he definitely was planning a crackdown on ‘cosmopolitan elements’ (Jews) when he took his allocated share in the great collective farm in the sky.
I do find it interesting that there is some evidence to suggest that while Beria definitely wasn’t a nice person he may not have been as villanous as subsequently painted by history and in fact may have been planning something of a relaxation of state control and ‘liberalisation’ if he had been able to hold onto the reigns of powers.
Is this like the way that the ruling elites in America and allied countries during the same era were generally convinced that Soviet supported Communist agitators were behind any industrial unrest or other forms of left-wing protest?
In reality. both sides were almost certainly at least partly right about about this. There really were agents provocateurs deployed (or bankrolled) by both sides, although each side also probably exaggerated the extent to which unrest within their system was due to these rather than to real discontents amongst their own people. In either case the provocateurs needed something to work with.
Of course, America also had its own purge in the '50s, even if the victims were not punished quite so harshly as Stalin’s were.
Bess, you is my gurl.
Ah, it’s a 1930’s-style death-porge.