Lydia Feodosievna Timashuk (21 November 1898-6 September 1983) was a Soviet Russian cardiologist who presided over the fabrication of the anti-Semitic "Doctors' Plot" in 1951-1953.
Biography[]
Lydia Feodosievna Timashuk was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire in 1898, and she became a medic in 1920. After the Russian Civil War, she settled in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and then in Moscow, where she worked in the medical and sanitary department of the Kremlin. Her 1952 letter about the fatally improper treatment of Andrei Zhdanov in 1948 led to the fabrication of the "Doctors' Plot", and she helped to "expose" Jewish medics who were labeled "killer doctors" and executed or imprisoned. On 20 January 1953, Timashuk was awarded the Order of Lenin for her role in identifying doctors as traitors. She retired in 1964 and died in 1983.