Doctors' Plot

Date: January 13, 1953 • Location: Moscow, Russia

Nine Moscow doctors were accused of a plot to poison members of the Soviet political and military leadership.

The "doctors' plot" was a Soviet state-sponsored anti-intellectual and antisemitic campaign based on a conspiracy theory that alleged an anti-Soviet cabal of prominent medical specialists, many of whom were ethnically Jewish, intended to murder leading government and Communist Party officials. It was also known as the case of saboteur doctors, doctor-poisoners or killer doctors.