1953, March 5 - Stalin, "the father of all peoples" and general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, died. Despite the fact that more than a dozen years have passed since that day, the death of the Generalissimo is still shrouded in mystery. There are so many oddities associated with it that do not allow us to fully accept the statement that Joseph Stalin died a natural death, from a massive cerebral hemorrhage. But was it caused by natural causes, poison, or Stalin died in general from something else …
Stalin was killed by Beria?
The fact that Beria could have had a hand in Stalin's death is said in the memoirs of participants in those events and in many historical studies. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter, was indignant at why the doctors were not called as soon as her father had a stroke, on March 1.
Lavrenty Pavlovich answered his daughter that everything was in order, he was just asleep. In the afternoon she tried to call her father, but could not do it. All three (!) Phones were busy, which in itself is already nonsense. The heads of state liked to keep everything under control and no one, except himself, used these lines. One person could not speak on three phones at the same time. Many documents contain information that all the offices of the head of state were completely under the control of Beria.
• The BBC prepared for the fiftieth anniversary of Stalin's death a film entitled "Stalin's Last Secret", which tells that the leader of the Soviet Union was killed. And not by someone, but by his loyal and devoted colleague Lavrentiy Beria.
It is known that shortly before his death, Stalin spoke very harshly about the activities of the MGB: they say, the state security "cannot provide control" over the work of the Chekists. Informed contemporaries believed that the leader wanted to eliminate Beria. Once, in a conversation with MGB Colonel N. Konyakhin, Stalin dropped: “I don’t like Beria - he doesn’t know how to select personnel, he tries to put his people everywhere.” The leader's dissatisfaction with the work of the Chekists was also confirmed by the chief of his guard, Lieutenant General N. Vlasik. According to him, Stalin "expressed great indignation against Beria …"
Whatever it was, the unsinkable Beria continued to attend every meeting in the Kremlin's Stalinist cabinet. The denouement of Stalin's secret confrontation with his entourage came unexpectedly.
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A few days before death
The night from February 28 to March 1, 1953 at first did not differ much from hundreds of other nights for Stalin and his closest associates - Khrushchev, Malenkov, Beria and Bulganin. After watching a film in the Kremlin, they went to a dacha near Moscow to feast. But unlike the usual revels, this one ended in a few hours. In the early morning, the guests went home.
The head of state, having released his comrades-in-arms, went to rest. For a man who is obsessed with security, he behaved very strange that night. As a rule, Stalin demanded that his guards stay awake. "Well, do you want to sleep?" - he often asked the bodyguards, squinting threateningly. Of course, no one had the courage to admit that they wanted to sleep. Unsurprisingly, the guards were very pleased when the owner let everyone go to bed and, as usual, told him not to be disturbed in the morning.
Pyotr Lozgachev, one of the guards on duty that night, remembered that the order to go to rest the guards received not from Stalin himself, but from their immediate superior Khrustalev. In the morning the guard got up late, but the owner was still asleep. For twelve hours, one, two, silence reigned in Stalin's room as before. The guards began to worry, but no one could dare peep into the room. Everyone knew that it was strictly forbidden to disturb the leader; it was impossible to enter his room without an invitation.
The security calmed down a bit when at 18.30 the owner's light came on. But by 10 o'clock in the evening, everyone was in a panic, because he still had not left the room. In the end, the guards decided to go and check if everything was in order with the leader. The choice fell on Lozgachev.
Pyotr Lozgachev carefully entered the room and quietly asked: "Comrade Stalin, what's the matter with you?" In response, he heard only inarticulate sounds. Stalin was lying on the floor in the dining room, near the table with telephones. On the floor next to the bed lay the Pravda newspaper and a pocket watch. Their arrows stopped at 18.30.
Could Stalin have been saved?
The bodyguards immediately rushed to call the closest Stalinist associates. Those, however, were clearly in no hurry to go to the dacha. Khrushchev, Beria, Malenkov, Bulganin behaved like people for whom a sudden illness of the leader was not a surprise. Stalin was transferred to his bedroom, but doctors - eminent Moscow professors - were called only the next day. When asked why with such a delay, the staff unambiguously answered, they say, they thought that the owner was asleep. This is the first oddity associated with the death of Joseph Vissarionovich. When transferring the body, it was impossible not to distinguish a sleeping person from an unconscious person who had a stroke, or a cerebral hemorrhage. This was the diagnosis made on March 2 by the doctors who examined the leader. The right half of the body was paralyzed as a result of changes in the brain. For another four days, the leader of the USSR was in this state. In the late evening of March 5, without regaining consciousness, Stalin died.
According to the doctors, Joseph Vissarionovich did not have a single chance to survive. This was announced on the day of the inspection, March 2. If the cause of Stalin's death was an apoplectic stroke, as indicated in official documents, and he had even the slightest chance of salvation, Stalin most likely cut off his own path to salvation.
The reason for this is the paranoid behavior of the leader, which became more noticeable every year. Seeing around only traitors, enemies of the people and enemy agents, "the father of all nations" almost completely destroyed his closest entourage - people who, at least out of a sense of duty, could help him.
The arrested people, who had previously been impeccably loyal to Joseph Vissarionovich, were replaced with new employees. It is curious that the latter were in one way or another connected with the NKVD, which was completely subordinate to Lavrentiy Beria. And of course, the latter was well aware of everything that happened in the owner's residence.
Stroke or poisoning?
Filmmakers from Britain believe that the injection of poison to Joseph Vissarionovich was given by the order of his boss Lavrenty Beria by the main guard Khrustalev. Why did they decide that? Primarily because, as it became known, in Stalin's medical record, in addition to information about the cardiovascular nature of the leader's illness, other symptoms were also noted. So, on March 2 and 3, the patient had: bloating, bloody vomiting, the liver came out from under the ribs by 3 cm. All this suggests that Stalin was poisoned, possibly by order of Beria, who was at the funeral of the “leader of all peoples "As if he said:" I removed it … I saved everyone"
Despite all the misfortunes that Stalin brought to the state and people, people mourned his death, not ashamed of tears. And only the prisoners of thousands of concentration camps scattered throughout the Soviet Union secretly rejoiced at the death of the tyrant …