On Jan. 13, 1948, a mutilated body was found in a street in USSR's Minsk (now Belorussia) – a 57-year-old Jewish man. It was Solomon Mikhoels, the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater, well-known far beyond the USSR for his work as a head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), a non-governmental organization founded in 1942. And his death was not accidental.
Several weeks before, in December 1947, Joseph Stalin had ordered Viktor Abakumov, the Minister of State Security, to plan and carry out the secret assassination of Mikhoels. Abakumov's agents caught the man during his trip to Minsk and murdered – ran him over with a truck – leaving the body in the street, faking an accident.
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