> I've read that the so-called, (Jewish) Doctor's Plot in 1952, might have
>been, the final straw for the some of the rest of the CC of the CPSU, enough
>to murder Uncle Joe. Think that's a stretch, since, think that was in the
>dubious Edward Radetsky bio of Stalin. (On murderous Stalinists, anyone know
>the veracity of a story about Enver Hoxha shooting a fellow CC member of
>the Albanian Party of Labor to death. Unless I'm misremembering this was in
>an article by Arshi Piipa, in the anthology edited by Tariq Ali, entitled,
>"The Stalinist Legacy, " from Penguin originally, republished, by
>Lynne-Riener pubs. in Boulder, Co.)
> Cerbral Hemorreage or Stroke, is how Stalin died, right?.....
I never accepted the official version of Stalin's death. The time lapse between the "stroke" and the announcement was just too long. Then, very shortly, it was revealed that the Jewish Doctors were innocent, and all were released. Then we learned that Stalin's factotum Poskrybyshev and his immediate bodyguards had disappeared, never to be seen again. Then we learned that all of the top leaders (except, possibly, Malenkov), had been targets of the coming blood purge--especially Molotov (who had already been fitted for a noose in the 1930's), Khrushchev (on his own testimony), Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Kaganovich (as a Jew) and, not least, Beria, successor of Yagoda and Yezhov, on whose watch the Doctors Plot would have been hatched. In addition, the recent disgrace of Zhukov had told the Red Army leaders how much Stalin esteemed them. Stalin's death, whose real cause is still secret, was just too convenient for too many Dead Men Walking who for the moment still had power to protect themselves.
As for the Hoxha-Shehu "debate", the history is pure Albanian, quite unStalinist.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
(My apologies to all the Abakumovs dead, living, and to be)