Figes, Orlando (2009). Stalin's ghost: the legacies of Soviet history and the future of Russia(en inglés). La Haya: European Liberal Forum. p. 12. ISBN978-9-07-389643-7. «[...] The Doctors' plot was the most insane of all the waves of terror. It came up at the height of a general wave of anti-Semitism in late Stalin’s Russia, and was connected to Stalin’s campaign against elements of the political police. Stalin basically persecuted phantom Jewish doctors accused of trying to poison the leadership. The problem was that there were no Jewish doctors in the Kremlin. So they had to invent a few who under torture confessed they had tried to poison Stalin. The point is that on the eve of Stalin’s death it created a mass hysterical wave of fear. People would refuse to go to doctors, just in case they were Jewish. Then suddenly Stalin died. Within a few days the political police who had taken over the collective leadership exposed the Doctors' plot for what it was: a complete fabrication».
