Tag #154642 - Interview #103568 (Yuriy Paskevich)

I remember the “Kremlin doctors’ case”15 in 1953. I still cannot understand. I was just a boy, but I understood the absurdity of charges against them, so how could adults take them seriously? But this was the reality. I remember a middle age man in the polyclinic. He had a swollen cheek and evidently was suffering from toothache, but he was asking the receptionist what the nationality of the dentist was. But there were other consequences, resulting from the doctors’ case. There were talks among Jewish people (and they must have had grounds) that all Jews would be forced to move to Birobijan16, the Jewish autonomous region. I remembered deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people. I had a vision of an empty village. That’s why I think there were grounds for such talks. Stalin’s death in 1953 put an end to this. Stalin’s death stirred no emotions in me. I guess it was the influence of my father. His attitude towards Stalin was critical, but my mother took his death as her personal grief.