#Summer Life Punch Season#On that day, Stalin had a stroke, he was wearing shorts and an undershirt, lying on the carpet, and wet his pants after incontinence. He felt unusually cold, awake but helpless, unable to speak, and no one around. On February 28, 1953, Stalin and his small inner circle, including Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Molotov and others, gathered for a pleasant evening of drinking. After the guests dispersed around 4:00 a.m. on March 1, Stalin ordered that he not be disturbed to rest unless he heard the call ringing. On March 1, Stalin did not move according to his usual mode of action, and until the evening, there was still no "movement", and the guards became more and more anxious, and no one dared to take the initiative to find Stalin. Stalin was very strict with the guards, and if he made a mistake, he risked being fired or even taken into custody. It caused panic, everyone feared for their position and life, and no one dared to take risks easily.
Stalin
Eventually, the butler Lozgachev made up his mind, and around 11 p.m., he cautiously entered Stalin's room and found Stalin lying on the floor. The steward and two other guards, after carrying Stalin to the couch, called the head of the Ministry of State Security, Ignatiev, and asked to summon a doctor. But Ignatiev did not forget that Stalin only recently declared his doctor a "killer", who dared to help Stalin call a doctor, does this not mean that he will attract a "killer"? Calling medical staff was obviously a simple task, but in the situation at that time, it became a complex task that could not be completed in one step.
So, Ignatiev asked the butler to call Stalin's most trusted four: Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev and Bulganin. Beria and Malenkov soon arrived at the scene, and the butler told Beria that "Stalin was still wearing wet and dirty clothes, he was sick and needed medical attention." However, Beria looked at the situation and quickly left, and before leaving, he angrily refuted the butler, "Do not cause panic, do not disturb Comrade Stalin to rest, and do not call anyone again to tell that Comrade Stalin is sick,!" ”
Khrushchev claimed that when he and Bulganin arrived at the guardhouse, they "agreed" not to go in, but left the sensitive matter to the guards. Because the guards said Stalin was sleeping now and did not want to be seen, "in such an unseemly state." So they went home. However, the guards did not remember the visit.
Why did these four refuse to call a doctor for Stalin? Beria's motives were the most complex, he was the only one of the four who feared for his life at that time, and there were indications that Stalin was planning to deal with him, and some believed that he deliberately did not provide medical assistance in order to achieve Stalin's murder.
From someone else's point of view, the situation at the time required careful consideration before making a decision. According to the regulations laid down by Stalin, in the absence of an official order from above, all decision-making (no matter how necessary or obvious) must be postponed. Moreover, Stalin had a pathological fear of medical personnel. His daughter Svetlanno recalled that apparently, Stalin felt his blood pressure was too high, but he did not trust others and did not let others approach him. He took his own medicine, filled a cup with water, and dripped a few drops of iodine wine into it! He didn't know where he learned these suspicious recipes.
Stalin's personal doctor was tortured simply for advising him to rest. The foursome feared that if Stalin woke up, he would think that calling a doctor without his orders was an attempt to take power.
We can never know whether the delay in calling a doctor was the real cause of Stalin's death. Doctors believe that surgery must be performed within hours of a stroke to remove the blood clot, but who dares to authorize it? In the fifties, the chances of such an operation succeeding were small: more likely to kill the patient. So, most likely, the delay in calling the doctor did not affect the final result. But Beria apparently thought it had an impact: "I killed him!" He later boasted to Molotov and Kaganovich, "I protected all of you!" ”
Folklore has it that Beria may have added blood-thinning drugs such as warfarin to Stalin's wine, which could have caused a stroke within a few days. Perhaps Khrushchev and others were accomplices, so it was in their interest to cover up - but there is no obvious evidence to support this statement.
Anyway, now the four go home to sleep and tell their families nothing.
Stalin's stewards were very worried that if Stalin died, he would be accused of negligence. To avoid proach, he called four more people to stress that Stalin was not quite right. The "foursome" finally decided to send a doctor. However, to be on the safe side and to avoid the catastrophe of the Standing Committee, they also summoned other members of the Standing Bureau. In this way, calling medical staff becomes a high-level collective decision. Once Stalin recovered and was going to get angry, the tongue of fire would sweep all the deputies, so that even if he was burned, it would not be so terrible.
On the morning of March 2, the doctors came to Stalin's bedside, and the room was filled with the stench of overnight urine. When they examined the once-powerful patient, a series of jokes emerged. "The doctors were shaking," the butler recalled, and first, a dentist came to remove Stalin's dentures, but "he was so scared that his teeth slipped to the ground." Then another tried to take off Stalin's shirt to measure his blood pressure, but "their hands were shaking so much" that "they couldn't even take off his shirt." They were "afraid to touch Stalin" and could not even sense his pulse. "Hold his hand tight!" Beria barked at the doctor.
Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria, immediately after Stalin's stroke, showed "obvious hatred for Stalin and mocked him." While Stalin showed signs of sobriety, Beria knelt down and kissed his hand. When Stalin was unconscious again, Beria immediately stood up and spat.
Other party bigwigs silently observed Beria, but they wept for Stalin, their old friends, long-time leaders, giants of history, and the supreme pope of their faith; Even if they breathe a sigh of relief at his death. It is estimated that 20 million people may have suffered the tragic fate of being killed, and another 28 million were exiled, 18 million of whom were forced to work in the Gulag labor camps. However, after so many lives have disappeared, they remain followers of Stalin.
The doctor finally announced that Stalin had a bleeding in the left cerebral artery and was extremely serious and could no longer work. The Standing Bureau approved the doctor's diagnosis and scheduled a shift to guard Stalin day and night. It is worth mentioning that Molotov and Mikoyan, who were expelled from the Standing Bureau by Stalin, were invited to attend. The actions of the comrades were clearly contrary to Stalin's wishes and showed their intention to re-establish "collective leadership". These Soviet leaders were convinced that Stalin's illness would not get better, so while Stalin still had a breath, a collective leadership circle was taking shape, and a new system of power composed of multiple checks and balances was designed to avoid the emergence of new autocratic tyrants, which was the way for the various "oligarchs" to protect themselves.
The new leadership leadership gracefully and skillfully succeeded in reducing the influence of the "Stalin factor." They first dismissed Stalin from the highest leadership positions in the party and the main government organs, and then nominally included him in the presidium of the new Central Committee. Since then, Stalin's righteous fate has no possibility of being reversed, and his "comrades-in-arms" have completely escaped the control of tyrants, even if his condition suddenly improves, he will not be able to return to heaven.
Although Stalin was deprived of power, he lost power for only an hour. On the same day, at 9:50 p.m. on March 5, 1953, Stalin died. He died a painful death, and his daughter Svetlana was by Stalin's side for the last days of his life. She recalled: The painful death throes were terrifying. Everyone saw how he was tortured to the point of breathlessness. At the last minute, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked around at everyone standing beside him. The look was terrifying, crazy or angry, full of fear of death, fear of the strange doctor who approached him from above. In that minute, everyone was swept by such eyes. Suddenly, he raised his left hand (which was moving at the time) facing upward, looking both like he was pointing at something and intimidating us. The meaning of the gesture is not clear, but it seems threatening. We cannot be sure that this gesture is aimed at whom or at what. The next moment, his soul broke free from his body after making a last-ditch effort.