Were there any attempts to assassinate Joseph Stalin?

Question

Were there any attempts to assassinate Stalin? I haven't learned of any attempt to kill him, was he so brutal that no one tried to kill him?

Answer 1

There were in fact several domestic attempts to assassinate Stalin.

Source

1. November 16, 1931. Ogaryov met Stalin on the Ilyinka str. near house 5/2 and tried to pull out his gun, but was stopped by a member of pre-KGB.

2. In early 1930-s, there was a society of people who called themselves "Klubok" (something like "a roll, a ball" if translated into English). Among the members there were military people, Enukidze, Peterson. There are mentions that there was an assassination attempt in the Kremlin library in January of 1935 done by Orlova-Pavlova, but Stalin was not hurt. Most of the people found connected to this, were executed.

3. May 1, 1937. An unconfirmed version of an assassination attempt based solely on the fact that that day, Voroshilov (the Defense Secretary) actually had a gun in his gun holster, which he never had neither before nor after the day.

4. French intelligence has some documents that Leutenant Danilov entered the Kremlin on March 11, 1938 using false documents and dressed as a pre-KGB type officer. He wanted to kill Stalin, and when he was being questioned after, he said that he was a member of a secret organization that had a goal to get the revenge for Tukhachevskiy's execution.

5. Operation "Bear." Far Eastern's KGB chief, G.S.Lyushkov, desserted to Japan in 1938. The plan was to kill Stalin while he was bathing in Matsesta (in hot springs). The attempt failed because the terrorist group was shot at while they were crossing the border, three out of six people died. Another attempt by Japanese secret service was to put a bomb into the Lenin's Mausoleum such that it would explode on May 1, 1938 during the parade. The failure of both of these attempts is attributed to the information provided by a Soviet agent named Leo who was working in Manchuria.

6. November 6, 1942. Dmitriev, a desserter, started firing a weapon at the government vehicle leaving the Kremlin. After making several shots, he was disarmed, no one was hurt. It is believed that he wanted to kill Mikoyan. According to the theories, he was either looking for a revenge, or was mentally ill.

7. German intelligence wanted to kill Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill during the Tegeran conference in 1943, but their plans failed because of the leaked information.

Besides all mentioned above, there were also accidents that seemed like assassination attempts.

To sum up, why there were not so many attempts to kill or overthrow Stalin? In my opinion, there are two reasons. The first reason is propaganda. Most of the USSR loved Stalin but it was mostly because people were brainwashed about how good he was and he provided this and that and so on. The second reason is that people were being afraid so much to even tell limericks about him because if someone else told on them, they would be executed or sent into Siberia to chop wood.

Answer 2

Yes, in 1944 there was operation Zeppelin, a German plot to assassinate Stalin. Also, Beria supposedly claimed to have killed Stalin, although it's more likely that this is a reference to him delaying treatment after Stalin had a stroke.

While Stalin was responsible for the imprisonment and executions of many Russians, it is also worth remembering that Stalin was also widely revered by the people of the Soviet Union for modernizing the country and fighting off the German invasion (as hard as it is to understand, there are some Russians who still love Stalin to this day). The relative lack of attempts to kill Stalin are also due to his relative popularity in comparison to Hitler. While Hitler was also widely popular among Germans (duh), his rule was during a period of national crisis whereas the Soviet Union in the 1930's was rapidly ascending in terms of economic and military power.