In addition to Pletnev, two other famous doctors – Levin and Kazakov – were thrown into prison. As mentioned earlier, Levin was a senior advisor to the Kremlin’s sanatorium, specializing in treating Politburo members and members of the government. The directors of the farce of the trial intended to make him the main accomplice of Yagoda in the “medical murder”, while Professor Pletnikov and Kazakov were supposed to be Levine’s accomplices.
Dr. Levin was old and had a large number of children and grandchildren. This was what Yerev wanted, because he could use his children and grandchildren as hostages. This was indeed the case, and fearing for the fate of his grandchildren, Levin decided to confess to all the charges that the powers that be wanted to impose on him. Before this misfortune, Levin’s privileges as the Kremlin’s “royal doctor” had been the envy of his colleagues. He had treated members of the Politburo and their families, and had treated Stalin and his only daughter Svetlana. And now, when he became a prisoner of the NKVD, no one came to his rescue. Among Kazakov’s patients there were many powerful people, but his situation was equally hopeless.
According to the myth, which Stalin and Yerev had co-authored, Yagoda secretly summoned the three doctors to his office and then, one by one, coerced them into pushing Gubishev, Mininsky and Gorky to their graves with faulty treatment plans. The three doctors, seemingly out of fear of Yagoda, did as they were told.
This myth is so absurd that it can be completely debunked by just one question: How could these famous medical authorities kill people out of fear of Yagoda? All they had to do was mutter these vicious thoughts of Yagoda to their patients in high places, who would immediately report them to Stalin and the government. Besides, these doctors could not only wait for their patients to come to them, but they could also go directly to the Politburo and report Yagoda’s plots. For example, Pletnev could have gone to Molotov, who often came for medical treatment, and Levin, since he was in the Kremlin at work, could have gone to Stalin himself.
In court, the prosecutor Vyshinsky was in a difficult position, because he could not produce any evidence to prove the guilt of the three doctors, while the doctors could easily disprove all the charges, but they desperately supported Vyshinsky, and kept admitting their guilt, saying that they had indeed fulfilled the demands of the leaders of the conspiracy and used certain drugs to hasten the death of several highly respected patients. Obviously, they would not give any other confession, because they had been promised that in order to save their lives, they would not deny their guilt, but on the contrary, would have to confess their guilt completely and “sincerely repent”.
In this way, three medical luminaries, non-party people who had never been involved in politics before, were sacrificed to fix the flawed story and to prove to the world that Kirov was not the only one assassinated by anti-Party elements.
In this fictional farce, the scene about the murder of Gorky best exemplifies the genius of Stalin, the forger.
Stalin paid special attention to how Gorky was portrayed as the target of the Tolstoy conspiracy, not only to arouse the people’s hatred for the leader of the opposition, but also to increase his personal prestige, to let people know that Gorky, the “great humanitarian”, was a good friend of Stalin’s, and that is why he became one of those accused by the Moscow trial. He wanted to make it known that Gorky, the “great humanitarian”, was a good friend of Stalin’s, and therefore an implacable enemy of the defendants who were sentenced to death in Moscow.
Moreover, Stalin sought not only to make Gorky his closest friend, but also to present the famous Writer as a strong defender of his Stalinist political line. This motive could be heard in the “confessions” of all the defendants in the third Moscow trial. For example, in explaining why the conspirators wanted to murder Gorky, Levin quotes Yagoda: “Alexei Maximovich was in sympathy with the supreme party leadership, ardently supported the current state policy, and was unquestionably loyal to Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin himself.” To this statement Vyshinsky played further in his indictment speech when he said, “He (meaning Gorky) would never have linked his whole Life with the great Lenin and the great Stalin without a reason, never have become their closest and best friend without a reason.”
Vyshinsky thought that in this way the bond of friendship and mutual loyalty would bind Stalin to Lenin and Gorky. Unfortunately, this bond was not strong, as evidenced by Lenin’s “will”, in which Lenin first proposed to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee. In this regard, see also Lenin’s personal letter declaring his intention to break all ties with Stalin. Therefore, the attempt to present Stalin as a close friend of Lenin is not only deceitful, but shameless.
Let’s analyze the “close friendship” between Stalin and Gorky. In court, the prosecutor, the defense, and the defendant all repeatedly emphasized this “close friendship”. This was not a coincidence, but rather a result of Stalin’s urgent need to create this illusion. After the first and second Moscow trials, Stalin’s prestige, which was not very high, was in ruins. The people finally saw Stalin for what he really was – a cruel and ruthless executioner, covered in the blood of the country’s pillars. Stalin himself knew this and was eager to use Gorky’s high moral prestige to whitewash himself – as if the latter were in agreement with him and enthusiastically supported his line.
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