Volume 50, Number 12 · July 17, 2003
The Worst of the Terror
By Anne Applebaum
Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953
by Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov
HarperCollins, 399 pp., $26.95
On August 7, 1948, Yuri Zhdanov wrote a letter to Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper. Yuri Zhdanov was not only the son of A.A. Zhdanov, a Politburo member and one of Stalin's 'favorites,' he was also Stalin's son-in-law, and a Central Committee member in his own right. Nevertheless, the letter was an admission of grave error. Yuri had criticized T.D. Lysenko, the quack botanist who believed that acquired traits can be inherited. At the time, Lysenko was Stalin's favorite scientist, and Yuri's apology was abject. 'I unquestionably made a whole series of serious errors in my presentation at a seminar of lecturers on the controversial questions of contemporary Darwinism,' his letter began. But the confession that followed is not easy to interpret. Here is an excerpt:
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