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LOOK BACK DOCTOR
Whether intentional or not, the dictator's trusted inner circle delayed calling for medical help
Almost 53 years ago, on March 5, 1953, Josef Stalin was pronounced dead from a stroke. There are at least two versions as to exactly when "The Great Helmsman" passed away that day: at either 09:50 hours or 21:50 hours, depending on who reported it. And this discrepancy underlines the fact that the actual circumstances of his death are shrouded in the traditional secrecy of the Soviet state and confounded by the fear of those sycophants who were in Stalin's inner circle at the time.
There have long been various versions of his last days but it was not until the discovery of a document in the post-Soviet archives titled "The History of the Illness of J. V. Stalin," unearthed by the team of an American and Russian collaborators, that we have a clearer, although probably not final, picture of his demise.
Ironically, the dictator had long been ailing, suffering from the same condition, hypertension, that felled Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, Stalin distrusted doctors and as such did not consult with them, especially in his final years.
Much of what we used to think we knew about the historical puzzle of Stalin's death came from Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, but he had his own reasons to obfuscate and hide his behaviour. Recently, Amy Knight (the biographer of Lavrenti Beria, the head of Stalin's secret service) described why there are discrepancies in the various accounts of Stalin's last days.
"Members of the leadership may have deliberately delayed medical treatment for Stalin-probably for at least 10 or 12 hours-when they knew he was seriously ill. They then covered up this delay. (Whether Stalin would have died anyway is of course a matter of conjecture.) Although his daughter, Svetlana, seems to blame Beria above all for this, her account does not absolve the other members of the leadership present. She does not say who these men were, but implies that at least three others-(Georgi) Malenkov (First secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party), Khrushchev and (Nikolai) Bulganin (member of the Politburo)-were there, which Khrushchev attests to.... It is not difficult to come up with motives that Stalin's subordinates might...