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The Pointing Finger. The accusations plainly involved more than antiSemitism. For one thing, the top three purged doctors are not Jewish: P. I. Yegorov, chief of the Kremlin doctors, V. E. Vinogradov, one of the leaders of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, and G. I. Mayorov. These doctors, said the Kremlin, "proved to be agents of long standing of the British Intelligence."
For another, the purge was not going to stop at the doctors. Official newspapers pointed the accusing finger at "the organs of state security" and the bosses of the Ministry of Health for "gullibility and carelessness," for failing to detect the "plot" in time. Many Western observers leaped to the conclusion that the criticism hinted at trouble for Politburocrat Lavrenty Beria, longtime boss of the secret police system; but this is premature. On the very night the "plot" was disclosed, Stalin appeared at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater. With him, in we-hang-to-gether fashion, were Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev—and Beria.
The outside world could safely surmise that an important, perhaps historic contortion was under way at the seat of the power which rules one half the world and threatens the other half. For the first time in 15 years, the Kremlin deliberately announced to the world the existence of a plot within the high Communist circle. "As far as the inspirers of these hireling killers are concerned," vowed Pravda, "they can be assured that Nemesis will not forget them."
Sifting the Ashes. When Alexander Sergeevich Shcherbakov died in 1945, officially of a "heart attack," he held at least seven important posts, and had presumably a great future. As they sifted Shcherbakov's political ashes last week, however, Russian specialists in the outside world noted one striking fact: he was involved during the war with a clique of Communists which included Rumania's Ana Pauker, Czechoslovakia's Rudolf Slansky, France's Charles Tillon, two of them recently cast into disfavor and one of them—Slansky—executed.
Andrei Zhdanov, burly and bullnecked, presided over Leningrad during its grim wartime siege, emerged from the war as the engineer of the Kremlin's ideological and cultural "purges," and chief proponent of the policy of all-out hostility towards non-Communist Europe. His tough policy was an important element in provoking Tito's defection, and may be largely responsible for the great decline in Communist voting strength in Western Europe. Zhdanov's funeral, at which Premier Stalin played a tear-stained role as pallbearer, was one of the most elaborate since Lenin's in 1924. His death certificate was signed by three of the doctors caught up in last week's purge.