After World War II ended, Stalin had achieved what seemed to be unquestionable victory. The Soviet Union had defeated Nazi Germany. Soviet power had expanded to Eastern Europe. The state had endured the most devastating invasion in history and emerged victorious. By any rational assessment, the regime was secure.
But Radzinsky documents how, in this moment of apparent security, Stalin launched a new campaign of terror — specifically targeting Jews within the Soviet Union. This was not rational response to threat. It was the manifestation of Stalin's deformed consciousness, now unmoored from any requirement to address actual problems, turning entirely to fantasy enemies and paranoid obsessions.
The post-war anti-Semitic campaign reveals the endpoint of Stalin's psychology: a mind that had been isolated so completely from reality that it could pursue destructive policies in a moment of strength, convinced that hidden enemies were sabotaging the victorious state. It shows what happens when paranoia is given complete freedom to operate, unchecked by any need to address reality.1
The Initial Phase: "Cosmopolitanism"
The campaign began with attacks on "cosmopolitanism" — presented as an enemy ideology but understood as code for Jews and Jewish culture. Radzinsky documents how Soviet officials began attacking artists, intellectuals, and cultural figures who were Jewish or who were accused of being insufficiently nationalist.2
The rhetoric was that cosmopolitanism — the belief that culture and values transcend national boundaries — was an enemy ideology that weakened Soviet patriotism. It was associated with Western influence and betrayal of Soviet interests. In reality, the campaign was targeting Jews specifically, though the explicit language used "cosmopolitanism" as the ideological cover.
This was in-depth language at its finest: a campaign that was fundamentally anti-Semitic could be discussed using the language of defending Soviet patriotism against cosmopolitan corruption. The actual target (Jews) was obscured by ideological terminology that sounded reasonable.
The Expansion to the "Doctors' Plot"
By the end of his life, Stalin's paranoia had crystallized into an elaborate fantasy. He became convinced of a conspiracy by physicians — many of them Jewish — to assassinate him and undermine Soviet leadership. This became known as the "Doctors' Plot."
Radzinsky documents how there was no actual conspiracy. The supposed plot existed entirely in Stalin's mind. But this fantasy drove policy. Physicians were arrested. Investigations were launched. Confessions were extracted under torture. All for a conspiracy that never existed.3
The Doctors' Plot demonstrates how late-stage paranoia operates: it no longer requires evidence. It doesn't even require plausibility. Stalin believed in the plot with complete conviction despite its patent impossibility. And because he believed it, the state machinery moved to prosecute it.
The Planned Expulsion
Radzinsky documents that Stalin was planning an even larger anti-Semitic campaign: he intended to expel the entire Jewish population of the Soviet Union to camps in Central Asia. The ostensible reason: they were a fifth column, a group fundamentally disloyal to the Soviet state, a threat to Soviet security.
In reality, Soviet Jews had no special connection to Western powers. They had no reason for disloyalty. The threat was entirely in Stalin's mind. But Stalin had the power to enact this fantasy. He was preparing the machinery of mass deportation when he died.4
This planned expulsion reveals what paranoia does when it reaches the endpoint: it transforms into genocidal policy. If a group can be defined as inherently disloyal and threatening, then eliminating or expelling them becomes justified. The paranoid mind that sees enemies everywhere becomes the mind that commits atrocities against whatever group can be designated as enemy.
The Fantasy as Reality
By the time of the post-war campaign, Stalin's consciousness was operating almost entirely in fantasy. The Doctors' Plot was not believed in the sense that a person believes something based on evidence. It was inhabited — Stalin lived inside the fantasy as if it were reality.
Radzinsky documents how Stalin discussed the plot as if it were an established fact. He assigned investigators to work on the case. He demanded confessions. He executed decisions based on the fictional conspiracy. The fantasy had become more real to him than reality itself.
This is the endpoint of psychological deformation: not that a person has a false belief alongside true beliefs, but that their consciousness has reorganized entirely around the fantasy. The person inhabits the fantasy world and experiences it as reality.
The Ethnic Specificity
Interestingly, the post-war campaign focused on a new ethnic scapegoat: Jews. Throughout the Great Purges, Stalin had targeted Old Bolsheviks, party members, military officers. The ethnic dimension wasn't primary. But in the post-war period, he turned to ethnicity.
Radzinsky documents that this reflected both Stalin's own pre-existing anti-Semitism (evident in his personal writings and statements) and a political calculation: by targeting an ethnic minority, the campaign could be presented as defending Soviet interests against a foreign-aligned fifth column. The ethnic dimension provided a cover narrative.5
But it also revealed something about the endpoint of paranoid ideology: once you've eliminated all the obvious enemies (the party members, the military officers, the supposed class enemies), you need new enemies. Ethnic minorities make convenient targets because they can be portrayed as inherently disloyal, as forever foreign, as never truly part of the nation.
Psychology and Scapegoating — How Paranoid Systems Create Enemies: Psychological research on scapegoating documents how groups with internal tensions often displace internal conflict onto an external target — a designated enemy that serves to unify the group against a common threat.6 Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign operated identically: the Soviet system had internal problems (economic strains, ideological contradictions, the exhaustion from war), but rather than address these internally, the system designated an external enemy (Jews) to focus hostility against. The parallel reveals that scapegoating is not unique to paranoid individuals; it's a group psychological mechanism. But paranoid individuals are particularly skilled at activating it because their conviction in the enemy's threat is genuine (from their perspective) rather than merely rhetorical.
History and Ethnic Persecution — The Fungibility of Scapegoat Targets: Historical analysis of ethnic persecution reveals a pattern: when states employ scapegoating as a governance mechanism, the specific ethnic target is often fungible — any group marked as different or foreign will serve.7 In Nazi Germany, the target was Jews. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, the target shifted among kulaks, Trotskyists, cosmopolitans, Jews, and others. The consistency is not the target but the mechanism: designate an enemy, claim they are sabotaging the state, eliminate them, move to the next enemy. The specific identity of the enemy matters less than the capacity to designate and eliminate. This reveals that ethnic persecution in paranoid states is not primarily about the ethnic group itself but about the paranoid state's need for enemies.
Theology and Messianism — The Belief in a Pure State Yet to Be Achieved: Messianic theology imagines a future state of perfection once enemies are eliminated and the world is purified. Stalin's vision operated identically: if only the enemies (kulaks, Trotskyists, cosmopolitans, Jews) could be eliminated, the Soviet Union would achieve its potential as a pure communist state. This futuristic vision of purity justifies present violence. The parallel reveals that genocidal thinking often operates through messianic narrative: the imagined future perfect state justifies the elimination of enemies in the present. Removing this messianic dimension — convincing people that no perfect future is achievable, that impurity and opposition are permanent features of human society — is perhaps the most effective defense against genocidal ideology.
Radzinsky presents the post-war anti-Semitic campaign as emerging from Stalin's genuine paranoia and pre-existing anti-Semitism.8 This interpretation emphasizes that the campaign was not primarily a strategic political move but an expression of Stalin's deformed consciousness and personal prejudices.
But an alternative reading can be constructed: that Stalin, observing Soviet Jews' historical connections to Western thought and international movements, and observing the emergence of Israel as a state in 1948, could see genuine reasons for suspicion of Jewish loyalty. From this reading, the campaign was not pure paranoia but also contained a strategic dimension: if Jews were seen as potentially foreign-aligned, controlling them would serve state security.9
This tension reveals that paranoid ideology often incorporates just enough plausibility to gain purchase. Stalin's suspicion of Jews wasn't entirely baseless — there were some historical connections and international dimensions. But paranoia takes these small kernels of fact and elaborates them into total conspiracy theories that bear little resemblance to reality. The campaign was not based on evidence but on the fantasies built on tiny grains of fact.
The Sharpest Implication
If a paranoid leader can pursue genocidal policy in a moment of apparent security (when there is no actual external threat), then the most dangerous moment for any group designated as enemy is not when the state is weak and threatened but when it is strong and secure. Paradoxically, state strength combined with paranoid leadership produces the conditions for genocide. When the state feels weak, it might hesitate to antagonize potential allies. But when the state feels invulnerable, it can pursue fantasies. The implication: protection against genocide requires not just democratic institutions but active monitoring of paranoid rhetoric and rapid intervention when paranoid ideology begins to designate ethnic enemies — before state power can be mobilized against them.
Generative Questions