The scenario of the "Doctors' plot" was reminiscent of the previous Stalin purges. Also the plan to deport the whole population according to ethnicity criteria resembled previous deportations: Poles in 1934, Germans in 1941, Chechens in 1943 or Crimean Tatars in 1945. Those similarities must have rang alarm bells in the minds of all potential victims, including the members of the Politburo.
On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin collapsed. He died four days later, on March 5, 1953, at the age of 73. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage.
After Stalin's death, the new leadership admitted that the charges had been entirely invented by Stalin and his followers. Plans to deport the Jewish population were discovered. One million copies of a pamphlet titled "Why Jews Must Be Resettled from the Industrial Regions of the Country" were found. The political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed Beria had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin. However, there is no proof that anybody had helped Stalin to die in attempt to avoid the purge.
The Doctor's plot was the only Stalin purge or ethnic persecution plan that was never completed. Moreover, following Beria's assassination, members of the Soviet government silently agreed, that political changes would never again result in purges of the losing politician. This was the background of the Khrushchev speech at 20th Party Congress that ended Stalin era in Soviet Union.
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