It appears that Stalin suffered from Hypertension, but was too paranoid to accept medications. He suffered a sudden stroke and died in March of 1953. I recall reading in memoirs by Khrushchev (and, I believe, Zhukov) that the top bosses alternately thought that he was sleeping - and, sensing something wrong - were hoping that he was dying, but in any case, didn't disturb him - and didn't call for help.
By that time, the campaign against the "cosmopoitans" was in full swing, and it was about to escalate. (Cosmopolitans was the code name for Jews, not entirely unlike the way sometimes the term "Zionists" is used nowadays – or, in some circles, "Neocons" -g).
friends-partners.org
Stalin and his boys orchestrated the persecution of Jewish Physicians. They were ostracized, many were arrested.
Part of Stalin's anti-Semitism was to conjure up the so-called Doctor's Plot, in which the Kremlin doctors, most of them Jews, "confessed" under torture that they had deliberately misdiagnosed health problems of Soviet leaders. These accusations produced, says Mr. Lustiger, a "mass hysteria," so that Russians refused to accept medications by Jewish physicians. All these doctors were freed a few days after Stalin's death.
washingtontimes.com
Here is a BBC piece with some more theories and speculations about Uncle Joe's last hours:
news.bbc.co.uk |
