The State Department released today the full text of the speech which Nikita Khrushchev delivered at the Communist Party congress in Moscow on February 24, denouncing Josef Stalin and revealing that it was Stalin himself who had fabricated the notorious "doctors plot" in which eleven doctors were arrested on charges of serving as "agents" of American Jewish organizations and plotting against the Soviet regime.
Let us recall the ‘affair of the doctors-plotters,’ " Mr. Khrushchev is quoted as telling the Communist Party congress. "Actually there was no ‘affair’ outside of the declaration of the woman doctor Timashuk, who was probably influenced or ordered by someone to write to Stalin a letter in which she declared that doctors were applying supposedly improper methods of medical treatment.
"Such a letter, " Mr Khrushchev continued, "was sufficient for Stalin to reach an immediate conclusion that there are doctors-plotters in the Soviet Union. He issued orders to arrest a group of eminent Soviet medical specialists. He personally issued advice on the conduct of the investigation. This ignominous ‘case’ was set up by Stalin; he did not, however, have time in which to bring it to an end. He died just in time for an honest examination to be made of the case. As a result, all the doctors are still alive and back at their former jobs."
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
