Was Stalin’s Death a Result of Beria’s Poisoning?

Summary of Evidence
∙Stalin’s Condition Before 1953
Stalin was going through deterioration in his health since his minor strokes before 1953. From 1951 to 1952, however, he refused to take any medication and yet his high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis and rheumatism were all developing.
∙The Final Stroke that Led Stalin to His Death
On the night of February 28th, Stalin watched a film at the Kremlin, and returned to his dacha where he was joined by Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Bulganin, who stayed until and left at 4:00 A.M, Khruschev and Bulganin separately, while Beria and Malenkov together in a car. Then the guards received an order from Stalin through Khrustalev, which was to go off duty. Up to the evening on the next day, there was a complete silence, which led to a suspicion within the guards, who were yet afraid to counter Stalin’s order and go into his suite. Eventually, Pyotr Lozgachev, one of Stalin’s bodyguards, went into his suite at 22:00 and found the crippled Stalin lying on the floor. Next to him was his broken pocket watch showing 6:30 and there was an open bottle of mineral water on the table. The guards were called in by Lozgachev and they helped him move the Boss to the sofa. The guards called Ignatiev, the Minister of State Security, who referred to Malenkov and Beria.
∙The Response of the Politburo Members
Malenkov called Beria, Bulganin and Khrushchev to inform about the guards’ report of Stalin’s physical state. It was thirty minutes after Starostin called when a call came from Malenkov, saying that he could not find Beria. Another thirty minutes later, Beria rang the guards to tell them not to inform anybody about Stalin’s illness.
At 3:00 A.M., Beria came into Stalin’s dacha with Malenkov, glanced at Stalin and swore at the guards, telling them that Stalin was asleep and therefore they should not panic or disturb him. He prohibited any use of the telephone and left the place. Around 8 in the morning Khrushchev came into the dacha, telling the guards that he summoned doctors, who arrived between 8:30 and 9:00 A.M. with artificial ventilation which, unknown for what reason, was not used.
∙The Doctors’ Examination
Stalin’s symptoms were due to brain hemorrhage caused by his hypertension and atherosclerosis but the doctors also concluded that Stalin was poisoned and they tried to treat him for poisoning while at the same time did not expose this fact to other people, including the four Politburo members. Stalin’s condition got worse as the time went by. On March 4th, besides the symptoms involving the skin on his face, legs and arms turning blue and his liver being enlarged, his blood and urine examination results proved that he was poisoned. In the morning of March 5th, Stalin vomited blood which led to a decrease in his blood pressure and several times of collapse on the same day.
∙Stalin’s Death
Stalin eventually died at 9:50 P.M., after going through a severe hardship with breathing.
∙After Stalin’s Death
Beria ran out to the corridor, calling Khrustalev to get his car to go to the Kremlin. After a while, the other Politburo members went to the Kremlin as well, to acquire power. Then the car with stretcher arrived to carry Stalin to the hospital for embalming and Khrustalev went to the hospital as well.
The guards who served Stalin were to be eliminated from their jobs, so Starostin, Orlov and Tukov went to see Beria and resist but Beria’s threat of killing them made them to depart immediately. Other jobs were given to the guards except Khrustalev who fell ill and died soon.

Evaluation of Sources
Source 1
CHUEV: Beria himself was said to have killed him.
MOLOTOV: …‘Sometimes he seemed about to come to. At those moments Beria would stay close to Stalin. Oh! He was always ready...
One cannot exclude the possibility that he had a hand in Stalin's death... he did drop hints…"I did him in!...I saved all of you!" ’

This source could be valuable in supporting the conviction of Beria as Stalin’s assassinate, referring to its origin, which is the interview of Molotov, to whom whom the suspect, Beria, talked to in person. The exact quotation from Beria, together with Molotov’s witnesses of his mysterious behavior which made Molotov believe that “he was always ready” to harm the Boss, elevates the convincing aspect of the argument. The main value of this source could be that the statement was from Molotov, the contemporary Politburo member, not a historian.
However, it should be in consideration that the book was published in 1993, which is far after Stalin’s death, and the source’s origin, to be more precise, is Chuev, who interviewed Molotov. His interview question seems to be a guiding one, as Molotov says “Oh!” indicating his realization right at that time. It arises the possibility of Chuev trying to use Molotov’s words to support his opinion and the publish date which makes this source too modern also undermines the reliability of the source because it was after when the theory of Beria’s planned murder of Stalin had been introduced. Molotov says that Beria dropped “hints” through his words but one cannot absolutely ensure if Beria really meant that he poisoned Stalin tactfully or simply contributed to Stalin’s death with some delay in summoning doctors. He seems to be creating a distorted characterization of Beria with some words that would have been not as intricate or Machiavellian to support his argument.

Source 2
“Arteriosclerosis, which developed during the night of March 1-2 on the basis of hypertonia and cerebral hemorrhage in his left brain hemisphere, has resulted, apart from the right-side paralysis of limbs and loss of consciousness, in impaired stem section of the brain, accompanied by disturbances of the vital functions of breathing and blood circulation.”

Unlike Source 1, this source originates in the contemporary newspaper articles from Pravda and contains medical reports with specific diagnoses of Stalin’s health conditions, not human judgment from a particular political member. The source could be appreciated for containing factual descriptions of Stalin’s health and as it involves nothing about Stalin being poisoned or symptoms related to it, it strongly denies the idea that Stalin was poisoned by Beria before his death.
On the other hand, this is not an official medical report from the doctors but an announcement from the Soviet government. Pravda, as a national paper published by the Soviet government, was famous to the public for being biased and inaccurate. The possibility of the manipulation made in the Politburo members’ favor cannot be excluded. Therefore the source, in spite of medical facts, lacks accuracy and the strong negative impression that Pravda gave to the contemporary society prevents one from judging Stalin’s condition totally based on such report.

Analysis
To figure out if Stalin died because Beria poisoned him, it is important to start considering the possibility firstly by exploring the events around Stalin’s death. After the four Politburo members left Stalin’s dacha at 4, it was Khrustalev, not Stalin himself who talked to the guards about going off duty. Beria, among the four guests, being the closest with Khrustalev suggests that he ordered Khrustalev to let the guards vacate. In addition, the fact that other guards got substitute jobs but Khrustalev, the only guard who was allowed to see Stalin being embalmed, fell ill and died raises a question if this was one of Beria’s efforts to expunge evidence that could prove him guilty.
When Lozgachev went in, he saw a bottle of water next to Stalin. Why was this bottle not sent to the Stalin Museum from the Kremlin sanitary department when it had to send medicaments and empty mineral bottles in November 1953? Was it because it contained the poison that killed Stalin? The very possible scenario in Stalin’s suite on March 1st during the hours between 4 A.M. and 10 P.M. is that Khrustalev put poison in Stalin’s water bottle while all the guards were back at home by Beria’s command.
Beria had been delaying in his response to the guards and when he came to Stalin’s dacha with Malenkov at 3 o’ clock, he swore at the guards and left the place immediately but forbade their use of communication line. According to Khrushchev, Malenkov called him right after the guards called and he thought the visit from all four Politburo members around 8 o’clock was the first visit from all of them but it was the second one made by Beria, which Khrushchev did not know. He was trying to hide Stalin’s condition and his awareness of it from others.
After Stalin’s death, Beria went out immediately to Kremlin, where he assumed authority and this, together with all his suspicious behavior before Stalin’s death, conveys the idea that Beria, with his strong motive of gaining power, took advantage of Stalin’s health to kill him with poison and achieve what he wanted.
On the other hand, there are counter-arguments that defend Beria. As Medvedev argues, for years, Stalin denied taking medication so his death could have been nothing more than a corollary of his long-term diseases. But this argument now seems to be nominal as all the symptoms due to poison written in the official medical records were exposed. The doctors knew Stalin was poisoned and that was why they did not use the artificial ventilation, which was not useful. The absence of such facts in articles from Pravda, controlled by the Soviet government, does not argue against conviction of Beria but supports it by explaining why the reports in Pravda were falsified: Beria killed Stalin and he had enough power to manipulate the facts about Stalin’s symptoms.
Yet blaming Beria with asperity for power, seen after Stalin’s death, is quite unreasonable because he did not try to appoint himself as the President but Vice-President. If Beria is to be blamed for such motive, then why not other people like Vasili Stalin, who despised his father and suffered humiliation after Stalin forfeiting his authority or Khrushchev, who was the successor of Stalin after all?
Shortly, the argument stating Stalin died because Beria poisoned him gets supports from Beria’s suspicious behaviour, his relation with Khrustalev, and the recently-discovered official medical reports. The opposite argument arises from that Stalin’s death was the result of neglected delayed treatment and that there are other possible suspects.

Conclusion
Certainly, there are a variety of supporters of the argument that convicts Beria as the assassin using poison to kill Stalin. On the other hand, their argument is depreciated by the facts that Stalin’s health was already on a rapid wane and that there are other possible suspects including his family members and the Politburo members. However, with recently discovered official medical reports corroborating Stalin being poisoned and Beria’s possession of the closest contact with the guards including Khrustalev, this argument seems to have a sizeable amount of evidentiary support. To conclude, Stalin died because he was poisoned by Beria.

Bibliography

Books
Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

Brent, Jonathan. Naumov, Vlamidir. Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993.

Committee on Slavic Studies. The Current Digest of the Soviet Press. Cambridge: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1953.

Conquest, Robert. Stalin: Breaker of Nations. London:Penguin, 1992.

Deriabin, Peter. Inside Stalin's Kremlin: An Eyewitness Account of Brutality, Duplicity, and Intrigue. Washington [D.C.]: Brassey's, 1998.

Deriabin, Peter. Watchdogs of Terror: Russian Bodyguards from the Tsars to the Commissars. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1984.

Eaton, Katherine. Daily Life in the Soviet Union. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004.

Radzinsky, Edvard. STALIN: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.

Richardson, Rosamond. Stalin’s Shadow. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Medvedev, Zhores. Dahrendorf, Ellen. The Unknown Stalin. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006.

Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: Norton, 2004.

Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.

DVD

Who Killed Stalin, DVD. Directed by Tim Robinson. UK: BBC Timewatch, 2005.

Internet
Pravda.Ru, “Secret documents reveal Stalin was poisoned.” Pravda.Ru (December 29, 2005), http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/16693_Stalin.html.