![]() ![]() Almost too frightened to touch him, they announced that he had suffered a massive stroke. Not until the next day, with Stalin paralysed and speechless, were doctors summoned. The four men, embarrassed and not realising that anything was seriously wrong, went back to Moscow. At the dacha they were told that Stalin had been put on a sofa in the small dining room ‘in an unpresentable state’ and was now asleep. Nikita Khrushchev recalled that he and Malenkov, Beria and Bulganin went out to Kuntsevo after a telephone call from the guards to Malenkov. One account says he was conscious, but only able to make incoherent noises, and had wet himself. ![]() There are conflicting reports of what happened, but after a routine night of heavy drinking until the early hours of March 1st, the guards became alarmed when there was no sound from their master all day and late in the evening a guard or a maid ventured in and found him lying on the floor of his bedroom. Stalin left the Kremlin for his dacha at Kuntsevo, outside Moscow, in mid-February 1953, for the last time. Georgi Malenkov, in the chair, paled for fear that the other members would not instantly stand up to protest and demand that the request be denied. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the Party in October 1952 Stalin announced that he was too old to cope any longer and asked to be relieved of his post as Secretary General. His senior colleagues, their homes and offices bugged by the security police, were all terrified of him. He had begun to feel his age and tell his subordinates that he had not long left to live. The accused doctors’ lives were saved by Stalin’s own death. Stalin meantime was seriously considering a plan to deport all Soviet Jews to Siberia. More doctors were arrested and although many of them were not Jewish, there was an outbreak of anti-Semitism and Jews were attacked in the streets. In January 1953 the Tass press agency reported the arrest of nine members of ‘a criminal group of killer doctors’, accused of murdering prominent Soviet figures. There were whispers of babies killed in maternity wards and patients being given poisoned medicines. Some of them were Jewish and newspaper tirades against ‘murderers in white gowns’ provoked widespread rumours about a medical conspiracy. Several other medical men were arrested in 1952. When he suggested that the dictator start to take things more easily, the patient flew into a furious rage and had him arrested. His doctor, Vladimir Vinogradov, noticed a marked change for the worse in Stalin’s health early in 1952. There’s a theory that this may have exacerbated his temper, which became ever more savage as he grew older. Stalin was paranoid in any case and in his later years he suffered from arterio-sclerosis. To the end, when he was in his seventies and approaching his own death, his subordinates continued to carry out his murderous orders. Tsotne Gogiashvili, a Gori resident in his early twenties, said that while older people in the town still "worship" Stalin, younger generations have changed their mind: "The majority of the young people do not like him, and I think that's good.Just how many millions of deaths Joseph Stalin was responsible for is disputed, but that the figure runs into millions is not in doubt. ![]() In 2010, the Georgian government ordered the town's Stalin statue removed, saying he did not deserve it. Today, Gori's Stalin museum, located on the town's Stalin Avenue, is the town's most famous tourist attraction, drawing visitors from across the world. The younger generation is more aggressive towards him."īorn Ioseb Dzhugashvili to a humble family in 1878, the young Stalin spent his childhood in Gori, before studying in the nearby Georgian capital Tbilisi. "But the attitude towards him is changing. As a historical figure, as a great man and a person who ruled with an iron fist," said resident Jakob Kikriashvili, 48. "The majority in Gori value Stalin, of course. In Stalin's hometown of Gori in Georgia, many share positive appraisals of the Soviet leader even though their nation has broken with Russia and support for Ukraine is widespread. Ukraine says Putin is showing the same "genocidal" brutality as Stalin. "Unfortunately we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country," he said. In February, Putin visited Volgograd - which was briefly renamed Stalingrad - to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the battle that was a turning point in the war. ![]()
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