Moscow has apparently confirmed foreign suspicions that the false charges against a group of doctors and “international Jewish organizations” of a plot to kill Soviet leaders were the work of Premier Georgi M. Malenkov and his faction in the Communist party high command, the New York Times reports today.
The report says that the February 16 issue of Izvestia, Soviet Government newspaper, identified Semyon D. Ignatiev as the first secretary of the Communist party in the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, a key oil-producing area of the Urals.
Last April Mr. Ignatiev was removed from his post as secretary of the Communist party’s Central Committee after Pravda had charged him with “political blindness.” He had served as Minister of State Security when the charges against the doctors were originally published in January, 1953. Nothing had been heard about Mr. Ignatiev’s fate until the announcement of his elevation to the provincial Communist party post.
“In the light of the evidence now available, it seems clear that the original charges made in January, 1953, and then repudiated last April were part of a behind the-scenes intrigue in the Communist hight command,” the Times says. “The factions in the dispute were apparently headed respectively by Premier Malenkov and by Lavrenti P. Beria, Minister of Internal Affairs, who was executed last December after his dismissal and arrest in June, 1953.
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