The doctors' plot

YAKOV RAPOPORT, The doctors'plot, transl. Natina Perova and Raissa Bobrova, London, Fourth Estate, 1991, pp. xii, 280, illus., £17.95 (1-872180-13-2). On 13 January 1953, the astounded citizens of the USSR heard a massive "criminal conspiracy" denounced. Prominent Soviet physicians had conspired to kill the leaders of the country by medical means. A round of arrests followed involving high-ranking physicians and scientists. This was the so-called "Doctors' Plot". The administration forced Yakov Rapoport out of his major professional position as chief pathologist at the First Gradskaya Hospital on 14 January. He assumed that his removal was merely routine antisemitism. Later events showed that it was a prelude to his arrest. On 2 February 1953, Rapoport was still a distinguished pathologist on the staff of the Tarasevich Institute of Control of Medicinal Preparations in Moscow. On 3 February he was in Lubyanka Prison having his first lesson in MGB interrogation. A few days later, he began advanced studies in Lefortovo Prison. The doctors'plot records Rapport's recollections of his incarceration fortuitously, for only two months. He wrote it some years later and it was finally published in the USSR in 1988. Though based entirely on memory, Rapoport's account is full of detail. But it is much more than a memoir from prison. The doctors' plot chronicles the pernicious, stultifying, and often terrifying effects of Stalinism from the 1930s until 1953. One muted theme which presents an important message for modern readers is moral courage and our need to cultivate it. Not the adrenalin-boosted courage of jumping into a river to rescue a drowning child, but the more testing courage that exists-or does not-unaided by drama. Will an individual defy a corrupt regime by refusing to inform on a neighbour or a colleague? Can he or she adhere to ethical standards in the face of unrelenting pressure to abandon them? The consequences of failure by individuals to rise to ethical challenges invests The doctors' plot. Rapoport cites several instances of unethical behaviour. One was the use of Soviet medical commissions to certify the health of physicians who later became prisoners. For example, Eliazar Gelstein was a physician incapacitated by cardiac disease. A commission of doctors proclaimed him fit for military service. Rapoport, himself a victim of severe hypertension, also was supposedly fit (pp. 86-7). Later, he realized that this charade provided a patina of legality. If he and Gelstein were physically fit for military service, they also were fit for prison. What of the ethical values of the Soviet physicians who made up these commissions? Rapoport is scornful of two younger colleagues who, under direct orders, wrote a scathing denunciation of Rapoport's pathology textbook. This was more than two years after its publication. The negative book review was only a minor issue in Rapoport's life. Nevertheless, its publication is another example of the cynical construction of spurious legality by the Soviet regime. If the Soviet medical literature denounces Rapoport's scientific work this is one additional sign that the state has a duty to act against him. He was physically fit for prison, and as a bad scientist he ought to be in prison. The young men excused themselves, later, on the grounds that though they were unhappy writing such a review, they acted under orders. Here is the leitmotiv of the 1945-48 war crimes trials. Befehl ist Befehl was the constant refrain in Europe, the Japanese equivalent in the Far East. Orders are orders. One must obey. But superior orders had limited merit as a defence in these trials, and received some weight as mitigating factors in the trials of those of low rank only. "Superior orders"should be equally unacceptable now, even though disobeying may carry major economic and political penalties. And there's the rub. Rapoport's appeal is for honesty and courage in the face of demands by the state to behave otherwise. That is his definition of courage. But many of us lack these