Fifty years ago, on March 5, 1953, Josef Vissarionovich Stalin died. One of the world's great genocidists, comparable to Adolf Hitler not only as a mass killer but also as an anti-Semite, Stalin was preparing a large-scale pogrom, the outgrowth of what is today known as the “doctor's plot.” How he died, when he died, and whether he was done in by his comrades, fearful of another purge, all remain a mystery to this day.
With all that was known about Lenin's monstrous successor, there is another mystery that is even older than the anniversary of Stalin's death: How could so many otherwise intelligent people, who were not Communist Party members so far as we know, have spoken admiringly of Stalin?
How could they have believed, as did U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies, a wealthy corporate lawyer, that the Moscow trials of Stalin's fellow Bolsheviks in 1937–38 were genuine and not frame-ups? So persuaded was Mr. Davies that the Moscow trials, which he had personally attended, were genuine that he tried to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to accept his opinions. His pro-Stalin reports to the White House can be found in the FDR presidential library in Hyde Park, New York.
George Bernard Shaw, the British playwright, told his audiences: “Even in the opinion of the bitterest enemies of the Soviet Union and of her government, the [purge] trials have clearly demonstrated the existence of active conspiracies against the regime. . . . I am convinced that this is the truth, and I am convinced that it will carry the ring of truth even in Western Europe, even for hostile readers.”
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