Editing Doctors' plot (section)

==Stalin's death and the consequences==
After Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, the new leadership quickly dismissed all charges related to the plot; the doctors were exonerated in a 31 March decree by the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, [[Lavrentiy Beria]], and on 6 April, this was communicated to the public in ''[[Pravda]]''.<ref>[[#refBrentNaumov2003|Brent & Naumov 2003]], pp. 324–325.</ref> Chief [[Ministry for State Security (USSR)|MGB]] investigator and Deputy Minister of State Security [[Mikhail Ryumin]] was accused of fabricating the plot, arrested and later executed.<ref>[[#Sebag2005|Sebag-Montefiore 2004]], p. 644n.</ref> A [[Komsomol]] official, Nikolai Mesyatsev, was assigned by [[Malenkov]] to review the doctors' plot case and quickly found that it was fabricated.

There is a tale in the Hasidic [[Chabad]] movement that Stalin became sick as a consequence of some metaphysical intervention of the seventh Chabad leader, Rabbi [[Menachem Mendel Schneerson]], during the recitation of a public discourse at a [[Purim]] gathering in 1953, which supposedly caused Stalin's death and averted massive deportations of Soviet Jews to Siberia that were to take place as a result of the anti-intellectual campaign surrounding the doctor's plot affair.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday9.htm |title=Purim |last=Rich |first=Tracey R. |year=2010 |publisher=Judaism 101 |access-date=18 March 2011 |url-status=live |archive-url=http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20090709023100/http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday9.htm |archive-date=9 July 2009 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Pinkus, Benjamin |editor=Frankel, Jonathan |title=The Soviet government and the Jews, 1948–1967: a documented study |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge, UK |year=1984 |pages=107–08 |isbn=978-0-521-24713-9}}</ref>{{sfn|Brackman|2001|p=390}}