Doctors' Plot

The Doctors' plot (Russian language: дело врачей, врачи-вредители or врачи-убийцы ) in 1952/53 was the most dramatic anti-Jewish episode in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime, involving the "unmasking" of a group of prominent Moscow doctors, predominantly Jews, as conspiratorial assassins of Soviet leaders. This was accompanied by show trials and anti-Semitic propaganda in state-run mass media. Scores of Soviet Jews were promptly dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to the Gulag, or executed. The doctor's plot was to be the catalyst of Stalin's campaigns against Soviet Jews, but was ultimately stopped short by Stalin's sudden death in March 1953. After the death of Joseph Stalin, the new Soviet leadership stated a lack of evidence and the case was dropped. In 1956, the Soviet leadership declared that the case was fabricated.