Page "Lavrentiy Beria" Paragraph 29

After Stalin's stroke, Beria claimed to have killed him.

This aborted a final purge of Old Bolsheviks Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov for which Stalin had been laying the groundwork in the year prior to his death.

Shortly after Stalin's death, he announced triumphantly to the Politburo that he had " done in " and " saved all ", according to Molotov's memoirs.

Notably, Beria never explicitly stated whether he had initiated Stalin's stroke or had merely delayed his treatment in the hope he would die ( as argued by Sebag-Montefiore and consistent with evidence ).

Support for the assertion that Stalin was poisoned by Beria's associates has been presented from several sources, including Edvard Radzinsky in his biography Stalin and a recent study by Miguel A. Faria in the journal Surgical Neurology International.

Warfarin ( 4-Hydroxycoumarins ) is cited as the likely agent ; it would have produced the symptoms reported, and administering it into Stalin's food or drink was well within the operational abilities of Beria's NKVD.

Sebag-Montefiore does not dispute the possibility of an assassination by poison masterminded by Beria, whose hatred for Stalin was palpable by this point, but also notes that Beria never made mention of poison or confessed to using it, even during his later interrogations, and was never alone with Stalin during the period prior to his stroke ( he always went with Malenkov to defer suspicion ).