Last week, while discussing the death of Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of the Russian opposition, I made reference to the peculiar circumstances of Joseph Stalin's death, without going into specifics. Now, true to my word, I'll do my best to illuminate the circumstances surrounding Stalin's death, and the string of events that occurred in the months, weeks, and years beforehand.
What many people don't realize is that Churchill's plan was warranted. If you don't know what Churchill's plan was...Churchill wanted to keep the Nazis' military machine intact after the war and defend western Europe from the Soviets - possibly even invading Russia. And what we know of Stalin's intentions vindicates Churchill - the Soviet leader had every intention of turning all of western Europe into his own personal bloc. His entreaties towards de Gaulle, among other actions, serve as evidence of this. Knowing that Roosevelt was soft on communism, Stalin planned to walk all over the American president and have him hold Churchill back. In fact, when Roosevelt passed, Stalin was certain that the president had been assassinated by anti-communists and had Russian intelligence officials do their utmost to investigate the circumstances of FDR's death. Harry Truman was not so soft on communism, and refused to budge to the Soviet regime. It was under Truman's leadership that the US would airlift supplies into Soviet-blockaded Berlin and lead a UN coalition into Korea. This is the side of history everybody knows. What many people don't know is what was going on behind the Iron Curtain as these events transpired, and more specifically, what was going on in the heads of Joseph Stalin and some of his closest confidants, including one Ukrainian named Nikita Khrushchev.
Here's where things get twisted: Stalin wanted to start World War Three. He wanted to finish what he'd started in the early to mid-'40's and conquer western Europe, forcing the United States into submission. And what's more disturbing, Stalin was beginning to increasingly resemble one of his allies-turned-foes. Not Churchill or Truman, no. Stalin, in his later years, was taking actions that would have made Adolf Hitler quite happy. Stalin was, to put it mildly, an anti-Semitic. To put it more accurately, his brand of anti-Semitism would not have been out-of-place in Nazi Germany. In the late '40's and early '50's, Stalin was plotting to deport all Soviet Jews to the gulags of Siberia. He had many Jewish and non-Jewish physicians arrested as well. His paranoia increased as time went on, and he arrested his own doctors for suggesting he relax a bit. His health declined throughout the early '50's, which brings us to the first few days of March '53. Stalin was in his Kuntsevo dacha (vacation house). One night, though, he went silent. After almost an entire day, staff and guards entered Stalin's quarters, and found the dictator semi-conscious in a puddle of his own urine. The guards called Stalin's inner circle, a number that included Khrushchev, and they made their way out to Kuntsevo - hardly rushing to their comrade's side, I might add. Since his own physicians had been arrested, the inner circle sent out for a doctor. I might add that the accounts I've seen don't make their requests seem rushed or urgent.
Stalin died on the evening of March 5th, 1953. In the immediate aftermath, his inner circle publicly praised their late Secretary General. In private, though, many of them confessed their relief at Stalin's death. Most of them had been petrified of him. Whereas Hitler had been adored by his lackeys, Stalin ruled over his subordinates like the tyrant he was. Stalin's autopsy lists the cause of death as suffocation following a stroke (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2292123/Stalin-died-natural-causes-Autopsy-published-time-says-Soviet-leader-suffocated-suffering-stroke.html). But I still think some on Stalin's inner circle were involved in the death. At the very least, they weren't doing their utmost to pull Stalin back from the brink of death. I would say Khrushchev and his fellows let Stalin die, if they weren't involved directly in some sort of plot. It's entirely possible that they slipped something into Stalin's wine at some point. And quite frankly, I wouldn't trust any document coming out of the Soviet Union, not even an official autopsy. I'm not sure if the Soviet regime would censor sensitive details in the autopsies of the people it executed, but I would hardly put it past Stalin or Khrushchev to do so. Practically entire country lived in fear of Stalin. Perhaps the doctors were involved in some sort of a cover up, and Stalin died of poisoning. Or perhaps Stalin simply had a stroke, and his comrades simply did their utmost to let him die. I'm hardly a conspiracy theorist - I'm not going to say there's no way that Stalin died of natural causes. In fact, it's quite likely that he did die of natural causes. But we have no way of being certain. At any rate, Khrushchev was not sorry to see Stalin die. Khrushchev had no interest in going to war with the West, and he was hardly a fan of his predecessor. This makes me suspect Khrushchev may have tried to speed up his leader's inevitable passing.
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