by Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J. ; Cina, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J.
– The accused were paid agents of “American intelligence,” or of a spying
“international Jewish Zionist organization” or part of a terrorist organization masquerading as a charitable philanthropic organization
– A number of physicians were long-term agents of the British secret intelligence agency
– “Big-wig” American and English partners preparing for a new World War against the Soviet Union used several doctors as spies; and, as a public service reminder to the readers, and
– The Soviet people must be mindful and highly vigilant of the subversive schemes of warmongers and their agents and everyone must play their part in strengthening the Soviet Armed Forces and intelligence agencies
On January 20, 1953, Dr. Timashuk was summoned to the Kremlin and Georgi Malenkov, a powerful member of the Politburo, praised her “patriotism” in unmasking the
“criminal activity of professor doctors” and informed her that Stalin himself had investigated her complaints from 1948. Shortly thereafter she was awarded the Order of Lenin, the highest decoration of the Soviet Union for “unmasking doctors-killers.”
Furthermore the Soviet press showered her with high praise for her vigilance, comparing her with the French heroine Joan of Arc. This meeting marked a further inten-sification of the campaign against “the killers in white coats” as the press had branded them. The grave accusations against doctors engendered deep resentment by average citizens against all physicians and, by extension, against intellectuals in general. Yaakov Rapoport, a Russian researcher, wrote in his book “The doctors’ plot of 1953:”
Every physician was regarded as a potential murderer. I shall never forget the face of my laboratory assistant, distorted with fury and hatred, as she hissed through clenched teeth:
“Damn intellectuals, they all deserve to be cudgeled.” … Meetings were held at all factories Stalin and the Doctors
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and offices, some organized, some spontaneous, and almost all openly anti-Semitic.
Speakers would vehemently demand that the criminals should be put to a terrible death.
Many went so far as to offer their services in carrying out the actual executions.
At the start of Stalin’s libelous plot against physicians 37 doctors were arrested, but hundreds more incarcerations followed. Many doctors were fired from their jobs, imprisoned, and sent to gulags or executed. Outside of Moscow, similar plots were allegedly discovered. In Ukraine, Dr. Victor Kogan-Yasny, the first physician in the USSR to treat diabetes with insulin and the savior of thousands of lives, was accused of engineering a plot against the government. He was arrested along with 35 other “plotters.” While Pravda was preparing to publish a letter signed by many Soviet notables severely condemning all of the accused physicians and asking for maximum punishment for those already sentenced, it was never published because the incendiary campaign ended abruptly and unexpectedly in March 1953. If this vicious and contrived campaign against the doctors would have been a Greek tragedy, its dramatic and sudden collapse would be called a Deus ex machine, a totally surprising turn of events. In the case of the campaign against the doctors, many people of faith believed that their survival may have been the work of Deus ex Caelum, God in Heaven, with divine intervention coming in the form of a stroke.
On the night of February 28 or in the early morning of March 1, 1953, Stalin suffered a hemorrhagic stroke perhaps related to poisoning. Allegedly warfarin, a flavorless and powerful blood thinner (ironically also a rat poison), may have caused Stalin to bleed into his brain due to his high blood pressure. Perhaps his iodine drops weren’t working or he wasn’t listening to his veterinarian. He was found at midday on March 1 by a chambermaid who entered his room when he failed to get up as expected. Initially, his political “friends” denied him treatment but eventually he received some medical care. Comatose, he clung to life until March 5 or 6 when his death was officially announced. The Lord works in mysterious ways. After Stalin’s death, the new leadership admitted that the charges against the persecuted physicians and other intellectuals had been entirely invented under the direction of Stalin and acknowledged that all confessions had been extracted by torture. Nevertheless, the careers of most of the doctors involved effectively ended and they were forced to leave their practices in many of the larger cities such as Moscow and Leningrad. When an average person is besmirched and then exonerated, a return to normalcy may be difficult. When the allegations have been made against a person that you have to trust your life to, reparations are impossible. The case against the doctors was officially dismissed on March 31, 1953 by the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrenty Beria.
Several days later the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party officially arrested the Chief Investigator of the Secret Police and the Deputy Minister of State Security for their roles in the fabrication of the plot; the latter was eventually executed. On April 4 Pravda carried a statement by Lavrenty Beria exonerating nine Soviet doctors (seven of them Jews) who had previously been accused of “wrecking, espionage and terrorist activities” against the Soviet Government. Seven of the doctors were immediately released – but two had already died at the hands of their jailers. After ordering the release of the doctors Beria 120
12 Libel Plots Against Physicians (Who Killed Dr. Zhivago?)
revoked Timashuk’s Order of Lenin award. Weeks later, he boasted that he had poisoned Stalin saying: “I did him in! I saved you all.” As poetic Justice would have it Beria, who also participated in carrying out the campaign against the doctors, was eventually executed in December 1953 for complicity in the same criminal purge he claimed to have thwarted.
Three years later in a secret speech at the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress Nikita Khrushchev asserted that Stalin had personally ordered that the cases against physicians be developed and confessions elicited. He went on to state that the “doctors’ plot” was to be the first stage of a new “Great Purge.” Khrushchev revealed that Stalin had intended to include members of the Politburo in the list of victims after the doctors and other intellectuals had been taken care of. It is fortunate for them that politicians were not considered intellectuals to Stalin. No comment.
Many scholars researching the libelous plot against doctors agree with Khrushchev’s report. It seems likely that an aging, paranoid Stalin felt a campaign was necessary to purge the Soviet leadership in order to unify the country and prepare it for an anticipated new World War against the West. “Hardening of the arteries” of the brain may also have played a role in his twisted reasoning. A year before he died Stalin reluctantly saw a doctor who told the dictator he had cerebral arteriosclerosis and that he could have a stroke if he didn’t rest. Stalin responded by having him arrested, dissolving his family, and decimating a thriving career.
A dictator can choose to ruin one life or eradicate an entire social class based on some innate prejudice, paranoia or simply on a whim. Several million graves attest to Stalin’s fickle nature.
Chapter 13
Judge, Jury, Executioner, and Doctor
The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the
people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.
– Eric Hoffer
Power, particularly political power giving control of the few over the many, may be a very intoxicating draught. There is much truth in the adage coined by Lord Acton more than a century ago that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Less known but just as true is his adjacent pronouncement that “great men are almost always bad men.”
Nowadays most physicians, at least in Western countries and in the United States of America in particular, shy away from politics. Many physicians see in political life a descent from the high social standing of medicine to a much less respected and highly time-consuming social obligation. Another likely reason is that physicians can act autonomously as demigods, making life and death deci
sions without having to endure the media scrutiny inherent in politics. Aside from being monitored by insurance companies, state medical Boards, the federal government, and a slew of malpractice attorneys, physicians can basically do what they want without having to answer to anyone. Further, the physician of today has to try to pay off massive student loans by cramming as many patients into a day as possible effectively eliminating the time and energy required for successful public service. It is no wonder that political involvement by physicians has substantially diminished both in United States and abroad in recent decades (Howard Dean, the “yelping doctor,” being a notable exception).
An interesting question is whether the few physicians who choose to enter political life and walk the corridors of power are more compassionate than the average politician.
At first glance, one may believe that the physicians’ creed of “above all do no harm”
would encourage a physician-politician to do what is best for the people whenever possible. Unfortunately, successful politics is rather like the proverbial Bluebeard’s Castle with many sumptuous halls and elegant banquet rooms arrayed above a lattice of bloody secret rooms that few people see. It seems that the rare doctors who have become very powerful or autocratic leaders have had no reluctance to leave the ballroom, walk down the stairs and turn the key to enter the chamber of horrors. The following physician-politicians have distinguished themselves by an unusual disregard for human life. Their life and death decisions were made on a grand scale.
J.A. Perper and S.J. Cina, When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How, 121
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1369-2_13, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
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13 Judge, Jury, Executioner, and Doctor
Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara: A Physician
in Search of a Revolution
Che Guevara, the romantic revolutionary hero still depicted on t-shirts, was a trained healer. The many facets of his life can be compared to an Indian idol sprouting many arms, the multiplicity of hands holding the books of the Greek classical philosophers, the works of Marx and Lenin, the blazing pens of a fiery writer, grenades, machine guns, and a variety of executioner’s tools. In spite of a brilliant mind, Guevara’s compassion was very selective and selective compassion is not true compassion at all (sort of like unconditional love with a few strings attached). His fanatical devotees purged themselves of any humane feelings toward disobedient followers, dissidents, political opponents, their own families and people at large.
Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928 to a family with very strong leftist beliefs. His nickname “Che” was an affectionate term for “hey man” an early indicator of his endearing, charismatic way with people. He completed his medical studies at the University of Buenos Aires and after graduation worked for a short time as a physician. But he had more important things to do than to save lives.
In a 1960 speech, he readily confessed: “When I began to study medicine, most of the concepts that I now have as a revolutionary were absent from my store of ideals. I wanted to succeed just as everyone wants to succeed. I dreamed of becoming a famous researcher; I dreamed of working tirelessly to aid humanity, but this was conceived as personal achievement. I was – as we all are – a product of my environment.” Not long after finishing his studies, Guevara’s adventurous nature prevailed and the prospective medical researcher left his practice to tour South America. The striking poverty he encountered during his travels boosted his revolutionary beliefs and zeal and he became enthralled with the activities of the Bolivian socialist government of Jacobo Arbenz. Guevara recorded his South American road trip experience in a book the “Motorcycle Diaries” (made into a fine film in 2004) in which he reveals the first inklings of his burgeoning communist beliefs. He wrote: To be a revolutionary doctor or to be a revolutionary at all, there must first be a revolution.
The isolated effort of one man, regardless of its purity of ideals, is worthless. If one works alone in some isolated corner of Latin America because of a desire to sacrifice one’s entire life to noble ideals, it makes no difference because one fights against adverse governments and social conditions that prevent progress. To be useful it is essential to make a revolution. So today one has the right and the duty of being, above everything else, a revolutionary doctor, that is, a man who uses his professional knowledge to serve the Revolution and the people.
Dr. Guevara decided to pursue his revolutionary fantasies by joining forces with a young rebel named Fidel Castro. Che soon proved himself to be a very competent and creative commander and he became one of Castro’s closest associates. In 1956 Guevara, Castro and 80 other men and women arrived in Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the government of General Fulgencio Batista. This group later became known as the “July 26 Movement.” They planned to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains but were attacked by government troops prior to their arrival. They quickly rebounded from this defeat and enlisted local support by Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara: A Physician in Search of a Revolution
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redistributing lands to the poor peasants (“share the wealth!”) eventually overcoming Batista’s forces in spite of the American government’s opposition to this revolt.
For his service to the revolution, Guevara was appointed by Castro as the Commander of the Rebel Army Column. In this capacity, Guevara was given the task of purging the military and the government of undesirable and anti-revolutionary elements. Castro also put Che in charge of San Carlos de la Cabaña prison, a stone fortress that had defended Havana against English pirates in the eighteenth century. He would put this piece of real estate to good use.
During the first half of 1959, Dr. Guevara acted both as a judge and executioner of people accused of being contra-revolutionaries in a manner chillingly reminiscent of the Stalinist secret trials. He took to this task with relish and ordered the killing of many hundreds if not thousands of Cubans. Reliable reports indicate that Che was personally involved in torturing and killing his political opponents. He also occasionally psychologically tortured the relatives of his victims by having them beg for the lives of relatives who were already dead.
In a number of books and articles, Guevara expressed his radical revolutionary and communist philosophy by advocating guerilla warfare as the most desirable mechanism for social and political change. As a matter of fact, his beliefs were perhaps to the left of both Castro and the rulers of Russia. His contributions to Western communism cannot be underestimated. A cover story in Time magazine in August 1960 described the anatomy of the Cuban Revolution’s leadership as Che Guevara’s “brain”, Fidel Castro’s “heart” and Raúl Castro’s “fist.” The U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 offered Castro a perfect opportunity to further solidify his power and eliminate any perceived political threats. Tens of thousands of Cubans alleged to support the invasion were imprisoned leading to a new series of executions. As Guevara himself told the Soviet ambassador Sergei Kudriavtsev, the contra-revolutionaries were never “to raise their heads again.”
According to one biography, Guevara irresponsibly bragged in 1961 that, “this country (Cuba) is willing to risk everything in an atomic war of unimaginable destructiveness to defend a principle.” Just after the Cuban missile crisis ended – with Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev negotiating a deal with the United States behind Castro’s back – Guevara told a British periodical: “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression.” A couple of years later, at the United Nations, he reiterated: “As Marxists we have maintained that peaceful coexistence among nations does not include coexistence between exploiters and the exploited.”
Apparently the Soviets were saner than Guevara, as they were not in a hurry to rush into a mutually annihilating nuclear war. Perhaps Guevera and Dr. Strangelove could have formed their own nuclear medical society.
In April 1965, after l
ess than 4 years of working as an Economic Minister for Cuba, Guevara apparently became fed up with bureaucratic work. Energized by his restless spirit and revolutionary zeal, Guevara jumped at the chance to lead a group of Cuban soldiers to the Central African Republic of Congo in late 1965. Their plan was to spark a revolt by mobilizing the people against the pro-Western government, a perfect job for our doctor-rebel. His plan was simple – have a group of 100 Cubans 124
13 Judge, Jury, Executioner, and Doctor
set up camp in the lake-side mountains and start a grassroots revolution. This mission was an abject failure. Che himself admitted that his 7-month stay in the Fizi-Barak Mountains was an “unmitigated disaster”. He returned to Cuba, never to see the African continent again. Undiscouraged he decided to try his luck again, this time in Bolivia. He hoped he could repeat his success in Cuba by mobilizing the poor Bolivian tin-miners to form a revolutionary army. Unfortunately for Che, in trying to obtain manpower and resources for his intended army he oppressed and terrorized the local peasants and Indians, the very people he had hoped to recruit.
Apparently, Guevara forgot his own teachings that a rebel guerilla army cannot survive without a supporting local population into which it can smoothly blend. The locals had no sympathy for Che and had no qualms in assisting Bolivian government agents and the CIA in tracking and capturing Dr. Guevara. In 1967 he was executed without a trial and his body was burned on site.
Following his death Guevara became an icon of the extreme left and of the young and empowered. He has been immortalized not as a physician but as a romantic rebel, motorcyclist and revolutionary who showed no hesitation to die for his ideals and beliefs. His many critics, however, see him as a communist soldier of fortune and quasi-mercenary globetrotter who believed that the proper lubricant for the wheels of social progress was the blood of his enemies and the tears of widows and children. Maybe he should have stayed in medicine.