The Doctors’ Plot and public trials of Jews in Moscow and
Czechoslovakia in 1952 were initiated by Stalin to create public
support for a new series of purges. Stalin, always suspicious of
Jews, had received the initial denunciation of the doctors as early as
1948 but chose to act four years later. His target was the senior
members of the party leadership. In late 1952 Stalin hinted in pub-
lic speeches that Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov
and Minister of Foreign Trade Anastas Mikoyan were enemy
agents. In February 1953 all Jews were dismissed from the security
services. Only the supreme leader’s death prevented a new round of
political violence that would have rivaled the Yezhovshchinaof the
late 1930s in terror. See also ANTI-FASCIST COMMITTEE;
SLANSKY TRIAL.DODD, MARTHA (1908–1990). Certainly the richest American to spy
for the Soviet Union, Martha Dodd was literally seduced into espi-
onage in 1934 in Berlin, where her father was serving as American
ambassador. Dodd became the lover of Boris Vinogradov, an NKVD
officer who was recalled to Moscow, arrested, and shot in 1937.
Dodd, undeterred by her lover’s death, returned to New York, where
she married Alfred Stern, a multimillionaire and a communist, and re-
sumed her intelligence career. She recruited Stern into the NKVD, in-
sisting that he be accepted as an agent.
Dodd, whose code name was “Lisa,” had social entrée to the White
House of Franklin D. Roosevelt but was less than successful as an
agent. She did spot agents for the NKVD and provided a considerable
amount of gossip about Democratic Party politics. However, she was
difficult to control. When the Sterns were identified as Soviet agents
by several Federal Bureau of Investigation sources in the late 1940s,
they fled the United States. They were found guilty in absentia of es-
pionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. They lived in exilefirst in
Mexico, then applied for political asylum in the Soviet Union. They
lived in Moscow, then Prague, and finally Havana. They were never
happy in exile but were afraid to return to the United States.DOUBLE AGENT. For the Soviet services, a double agent was a con-
trolled asset who was allowed to be recruited by a hostile service.
(Kim Philbywas, therefore, not a double agent; he was a Soviet pen-72 •DODD, MARTHA (1908–1990)06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 72