Cardiologists’ disagreement
Andrei Zhdanov was a true “old Bolshevik” who survived the October Revolution. In 1915, at the age of 19, he joined the RSDLP(b) and thus held lower positions during the revolutionary events of 1917. However, in the 1930s, Zhdanov became a member of the Central Committee, one of the main ideologues of Stalinism, and, among other things, personally approved execution lists during the Great Terror. During the Great Patriotic War, Zhdanov was one of the organizers of the defense of besieged Leningrad, essentially making Zhdanov the second person in the country after Stalin.
In this capacity, the former Bolshevik managed to gain a reputation as a fighter against Russian culture, instilling the ideas of socialist realism. This is in your report seen The famous portrayal of Anna Akhmatova as “an angry woman running between the bedroom and the chapel”, whose inner world consisted of “dying despair, mystical experiences mixed with eroticism”. In the same report, writer Mikhail Zoshchenko was called “literary scum”, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Fyodor Sologub and others also received criticism.
By the age of 50, Zhdanov began to experience serious heart problems, and in the summer of 1948 he once again found himself receiving treatment at the Valdai sanatorium of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. Top Soviet medical professors, including Pyotr Egorov, Vladimir Vinogradov and Vladimir Vasilenko, tried to cope with his pain and shortness of breath.
Lydia Timashuk (born 1898) was president at that time. Department of functional diagnostics of the Kremlin clinic. He was summoned to Valdai, where he took Zhdanov’s cardiogram at the next examination on August 28. After analyzing it, he concluded that the Bolshevik had a myocardial infarction – in this case, the patient needed strict bed rest. However, Vinogradov and Vasilenko, immeasurably more experienced doctors, disagreed with his diagnosis. They believed that Zhdanov was suffering from exacerbation of ischemia, forced Timashuk to exclude a heart attack from the result and advised the patient to walk further in the sanatorium. On August 31, Zhdanov died of heart stroke.
The Trial of the Doctors
Cardiology professors could not convince Timashuk that they were right, so Timashuk began complaining to his superiors. First, he wrote a note to the USSR Ministry of State Security, to which Lechsanupr (Kremlin Hospital) was then attached, reporting that Comrade Zhdanov was being treated incorrectly. But the security guards did not understand anything about cardiology and forwarded Timashuk’s complaint to the head of Lechsanupra Egorov, that is, to the person to whom he complained. He remained out of debt, and on September 6, the cardiogrammer was “demoted”: he was removed from the leadership position and appointed as an ordinary doctor in a branch of the clinic.
This story was forgotten for four years until the famous “Conspiracy of Doctors” began. It is important to note that the MGB personally informed Stalin about Timashuk’s complaints immediately after Zhdanov’s death. He examined the note and personally took it to the archive without taking any action. But in August 1952, the cardiologist was summoned to the MGB and asked to describe in detail the circumstances of Comrade Zhdanov’s death.
At that time, security officials were investigating the biggest anti-Soviet conspiracy of killer doctors that they had invented from scratch. The history of forgery began on June 2, 1951, when Dmitry Ryumin, an investigator of particularly important cases, reported to Stalin that the recently interrogated Jewish nationalist and cardiologist Yakov Etinger allegedly killed a member of the Politburo. Alexander Shcherbakov uses sabotage treatment methods. It is interesting that these data are not even included in the protocol – there the doctor admits only anti-Soviet agitation. However, Stalin gave personal instructions to “reveal American terrorist agents among doctors.” This is where Timashuk’s old notes came to court.
Soon Egorov, Vinogradov, Vasilenko and many other doctors were arrested, and at the end of autumn 1952 Stalin was informed that they had confessed to deliberately shortening the lives of their party leaders. There is nothing surprising in such confessions, given that Stalin himself ordered the doctors to be tortured (“beat to death”) and requested“Every nationalist Jew is an American intelligence agent.”
In January 1953, TASS reported the arrest of 9 terrorist doctors. Soon their numbers tripled and, according to many contemporaries and historians, the affair would escalate into a new Great Terror. Timashuk became a hero, although it did not last long. “He helped unmask American mercenaries, monsters who used the doctor’s white coat to kill Soviet people. News about LF’s award. Timashuk received the Order of Lenin, the highest award, for his help in uncovering the thrice-cursed killer doctors all over our country.” — Wrote Newspaper “Pravda” in February 1953.
But in March Stalin died, the “Doctor Conspiracy” and other repressions ended, and the vigilant cardiologist was stripped of his Order of Lenin. In 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev mentioned Timashuk as one of the initiators of the repressive campaign, and soon his name became a curse, like the name Pavlik Morozov. He was especially hated and despised by his former colleagues, who (allegedly) found themselves in the dungeons through his own fault.
Victim, not informant
First, it is worth understanding whether Zhdanov was actually treated wrongly (at the instigation of American intelligence or by mistake). With idea modern cardiologists Timashuk was wrong – the cardiogram stored in the archive corresponds to the picture of acute ischemia and does not allow diagnosing a heart attack. The final decision can only be made taking into account the entire medical history. At the same time, a scientific discussion between doctors about the health of a seriously ill person is the norm in medicine, even if he has gained an incorrect but logical opinion. But even taking into account Timashuk’s wrongdoing, he cannot be considered an informer in the classical sense of the word – that is, a person who hands over his friends and colleagues to state security agencies without danger, forced or fictitious. blame on society.
Despite intense hatred, the cardiologist was not fired from the Kremlin clinic where he worked until his retirement in 1964. During the reign of Khrushchev, he did not try to fight for his good name (because he blamed it), but after Brezhnev came to power, he began to write letters “to the top”, as many years ago. Therefore, in a letter to the Congress of the CPSU in 1966, he insisted that he never accused his colleagues of sabotage and that he himself was the victim of the “doctors’ case.” He demanded that Soviet authorities restore the reputation of a man who “dedicated his whole life for the benefit of the sick.” Moreover, his participation in the campaign against “harmful doctors” took place without his participation.
“4.5 years later [после смерти Жданова]In the summer of 1952, I was suddenly called by phone to investigator Novikov, and after a while I was called to investigator Eliseev in the case of the deceased Zhdanov and once again confirmed what I knew. After another six months, on 20/I-1953, I was invited to the Kremlin to see GM Malenkov, who informed me that I had been awarded the Order of Lenin. I did not consider the doctors who treated AA Zhdanov to be “harmful” and objected to GM Malenkov, saying that I did not deserve such a high reward, because as a doctor I did not do anything special. Wrote he. This is consistent with the memoirs of Timashuk’s relatives, who claim that he was not at all happy with the sudden popularity.
His letter was sent to the KGB, and in response the security guards wrote a secret. certificateHe noted that Timashuk cannot actually be considered the initiator of the “doctors’ case”. The certificate was issued only in 2023. It is stated that the doctor was a recruited agent of the NKVD-MGB from 1943 to 1953. “In his reports, he reported shortcomings in the work of the Kremlin hospital, individual cases of incorrect diagnosis and dishonest attitude of some employees of the Kremlin Medical Center to official duties.” – KGB officers wrote. If you believe this document, we can conclude that Timashuk did not write about “slandering Comrade Stalin” or “espionage in favor of the hat.” countries”, even about his colleagues’ classic denunciatory anti-Soviet jokes.
According to the memoirs of his colleagues, Timashuk had great respect for her medical knowledge and in private conversations about Zhdanova’s diagnosis, he often insisted that she was right. The complaints to the State Security authorities were probably due to his zealous attitude towards work, in which he stated only the facts and his professional opinion. These were his notes on Zhdanov’s treatment.
As security officials wrote in a 1966 certificate, their letters were used by the MGB only as good material for a new wave of terror: “From the materials kept in the KGB under the USSR Council of Ministers, it is clear that Timashuk’s statements and intelligence reports were not the reason for the emergence of the so-called ‘doctor case’.
Some may blame Timaşuk for not opposing the sabotage theses, but then, according to the practice of those years, he could suddenly find himself accused of trying to cover up the incident.
The Soviet leadership of the 1960s probably considered it inappropriate to publicly refute Timashuk’s guilt, so as not to again raise the issue of Stalin’s repressions in society.