“Stalin dropped on the floor...”

This version was told to Polish and French journalists in 1957 by Panteleimon Ponomarenko, a Stalin protégé and then Soviet ambassador to Warsaw.

A more detailed (possibly forged) reproduction of Ponomarenko 's statements is found in Victor Alexandrov's "The Kremlin: Nerve-Centre of Russian History” {p. 326}:

”In February 1953, Stalin called together the twenty-five members of the Praesidium — at that time, an exceptional procedure. The ’white-coat plot’ had just been exposed. The most eminent Soviet doctors, most of them Jewish, had been arrested for attempted medical assassination of the military and civilian leaders. Pravda made a great to-do about the Zionist plot against the USSR. Stalin therefore submitted to the Praesidium a decree providing for the deportation of large numbers of the Jewish population to Central Asia. This measure was, in fact, in process of being carried out. When Kaganovich and Molotov mentioned that such a deportation would make a disastrous impression abroad, Stalin flew into a rage. Then Kaganovich threw his Party-membership card down on the table and said that Stalin was disgracing the country. Confusion ran riot through the Assembly. Suddenly the dictator, who was suffering from a weak heart, collapsed. Immediately, Beria cried, 'We are free at last ! The tyrant is dead ! ' But, alas, Stalin opened his eyes. Then Beria, on his knees and wringing his hands, begged forgiveness of the master he had betrayed. Stalin died without regaining consciousness.”

Had Stalin been allowed to die, or had there been, as widespread rumour had it, joint action against him by his successors?

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