[JadeEmperor]

"Whatever the reason, Stalin fomented the Doctor's plot hysteria and broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. He was within days of preparing to exile the Soviet Jews to the Gulag (as was done previously with various other ethnic minorities such as the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, etc.), and initiate another great purge along the lines of 1938. The important thing to recall is that the Doctor's Plot happened at the same time as the McCarthy anti communist business from 1950-54 Stalin already had the concentration camps set up. And some of the preliminary accusations had gone out for the Doctor's Plot when he died in 1953."

While "The Doctors Plot" was a very real and sad affair (my paternal grandmother was affected by it, by losing her position as a head of the hospital and for awhile forbidden to undertake any medical profession) the "deportation" theory in connection to it is rather controversial, to say the least. The Deportation Controversy There is very little historical evidence to support the theory.

[ckilmer]

Rapoport quotes a Soviet Jewish engineer who reported seeing, in the early 1960s, a “never used camp with row after row of barracks: ‘Its vastness took my breath away.’ ”6 Other witnesses corroborated the existence of the deportation plans.

6. Rapoport, L. Stalin's war against the Jews: the Doctors' Plot and the Soviet solution. Toronto: Free Press; 1990.

[ckilmer]

In his secret speech at the Communist Party's Twentieth Congress, Nikita Khrushchev asserted that Stalin intended to use the doctors' trial to launch a massive party purge.

[ckilmer]

Stalin's onslaught against the Jews was not something random; there was a calculated purpose to his madness. At the time, rumors had already become widespread that he was planning to deport thousands of Jews to Biro Bidzhan (an alleged Jewish autonomous region) and Siberia. A broadcast on Voice of America stated, "Biro Bidzhan the 'Jewish autonomous republic' has been transformed into a concentration camp.

[ckilmer]

In January 1953 a group of doctors, most of them Jewish were arrested for plotting to kill Soviet leaders. They were linked to a Zionist plot by the Joint (JDC) to create an independent Jewish Republic in the Crimea which would then separate from the Soviet Union and become a Zionist entity. The intention was to make this a major show trial, execute the defendants and then deport the Jewish population to Central Asia and Birobidzhan.