Potato: Production, Processing and Marketing - Problems and Solutions

PRODUCTION

Potato known as “hidden treasure’’ ranks fourth after Rice, Wheat, and Maize is a staple crop in many countries of the world. It is cheap and plentiful crop that grow in a wide varieties of climates and locales. Native of Peru and Bolvia and known by mankind before 8000BC spread all over the world by European traders and colonisers. At present World is producing nearly 400 million tonnes of potato every year and 75% of it is consumed by human. Remaining 25% is being used in food for domestic animals, commercial use in textile industries, paper making, potato starch, adhesive, Biodegradable packing, food industries, beverage, polylactic acid and in plant research.

India stand second largest grower of potato after China. At present nearly 33%of total production of worlds are shared by China and India only. Due to perishibility only 5% of worlds potato is traded internationally. Export share of India s potato is only 0.5% annually which comes only one tenth of global trading. India produce nearly 50 million tones of potatoes annually and it is per capita higher [19.9 tonnes per hectare] than worlds average [17.4 tonnes per hectare].

Potato production in West Bengal is nearly 110 lakh tones this year which is 10% higher than previous financial year . In India west Bengal is the second largest potatoes producer after Uttar Pradesh. Nearly 4.5 lakh hectare has been used for potato production this year which is 10% more field used for production than last year.

PROBLEMS

Potato cultivation has yearly boom and bust cycle. One year there is bumper crop and prices fall to levels which are not remunerable for the farmers and cultivators. This lead to very severe problem for farmers who have to throw away a large portion of their produce as the cold storage get full and it becomes un remunerable to even store them. Next year the farmer’s plant potato in less area and the volume decrease and the price escalates rapidly. This cycle goes on regularly. There is no mechanism to stabilise the volume or price.

Family members mourn the death of potato farmer
Nritya Gopal Burman, in Jalpaigur, March 2015.

Potato glut and plunging prices have triggered suicides in Bengal’s Hooghly, Burdwan and Bankura district [the major districts producing potatoes] prices have crashed one kg of potato selling for Rs2-3 while cost of production of one kg tuber comes nearly Rs 5. Last year [2013-14] farmers reaped a good harvest and earned hand some profit. But prices across the country were volatile because the crop failed in Uttar Pradesh largest producer of potatoes. Bengal the second largest could have stepped in eased matters out.

Encouraged by that experience and dreaming of making good money Bengal farmer’s sowed potato over more than 4lakh hectares of land which was 10% more area than previous year. Production was bountiful an impressive 1crore plus tones. The state’s 435 cold storages capable of storing maximum 62 lakh tones over flowed. Nearly half of the total production lay out in the open exposed to the forces of nature [heat, wind and rain]. Farmers tried to store some portion at home but damage by rottening became uncontrolable.

The neighbouring states wary after the bitter experience of 2013 with Bengal who banned the exporting of potatoes to other state, tried to improve home production, so the demand of Bengal potatoes slumped. The next work of potato marketing was disturbed in 2013 by the government intervention resulting adverse effect on exporting to other states. The traders from Jharkhand, Assam, Andhra Pradesh are not willing to purchase and Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, also have bumper crop this year. Saddled with large stocks of unsold potatoes farmer are in big trouble.

Most of the farmers of West Bengal are small and marginal farmers [below one hectare]. With a myth of getting more production by using heavy dose of chemical fertilisers and pesticides have escalated the cost of production very high nearly Rs 21000 per bigha [1/3 acre] and this over doses of chemicals are the main cause for rottening of potatoes and lowering quality of the produce and thus non-exportable. Farmers are compelled to sell potato at Rs 140 per 50kg bag while cost of production comes to Rs 250 per 50kg bag, thus Rs 110 loss per 50kg bag, which is the main cause for suicide of the Bengal farmers. Refusal of export due to poor quality worsened the situation.

Local consumption is nearly 7 lakh tones per month, nearly 5-6 lakh tones is used for nursery & seed purpose and 63 lakh tone are stored in cold storage. Rest nearly 30 lakh tones are left for distress sell and making all sorts of the problems to the farmers .The tragedy of the whole story is that the consumer in the cities are paying Rs 8-10 per kg of potato while farmers are selling it at through away prices [Rs 2-3per kg], Only 30% of the consumer price are being availed by farmers and the maximum share i.e. 70% is being looted by middle-men.

High-level of wastage and value loss is largely due to the lack of basic infrastructure, like cold storage and handling facilities at the farm level. And there are large numbers of intermediaries in the chain who place large cost in the system. There is further loss as the produce is transported from the farm to the market. Transportation under poor road conditions and very high temperature variations increases the loss of the produce form farm to market place.

SOLUTIONS

An integrated action plan is highly needed from farmers’ field to consumer plate, addressing all the problems at production, post-harvest management, value addition, transportation and marketing level of operations.

PRODUCTION LEVEL MEASURES

Inconsistency in potato cultivation is one of the major problems of the day. Boom & bust have become a yearly phenomenon. So there must be system for cultivation and control for production according to the need of the market and consumers on a regular basis. This is why NDA government is planning to introduce Daily Data for Agricultural Produce, which will record the produce and the quantity consumed thus will depict the real requirement of the produce.

To improve the quality of the production best seed and planting materials must be used recommended for specific climate and locales. Use of heavy doses of chemical fertilisers and pesticides must be stopped, as they are main cause for poor quality of potatoes and make it non-exportable.

Natural soil amendments and natural pesticides must be encouraged giving incentives to natural farming and farm inputs. This will improve the quality of the produce and will insure the poison free food for consumers and export. Farmer will get better price of their produce growing it naturally. Bengal farmers are using highest dose of chemicals to produce potatoes which have become the main cause of quality degradation and making the Bengals potatoes unfit for export. Natural farming of potato cultivation will improve the quality and better results can be obtained while storing them at home. NDA government is advocating for Soil Card - a health card for agricultural soil, since it took over in May 2014, which will guide the farmers regarding requirement of exact quantity of fertilizer and pesticides for the produce.

POST HARVEST MANAGEMENTS MEASURES

Digging, grading, storing at farm level are very inefficient, storage capacities in cold storage is also insufficient. Nearly 50% of the produce remain unsorted because less capability of cold storage. So there is dire need to build more cold storage and pre-cooling facilities nearby production areas. And capacities of existing cold storage must be increased. So that further losses and distress sell could be stopped.

VALUE ADDITION MEASURES

Only 0.5% of the total potatoes is being processed by processing industries which is very less amount and have nearly no impact on the problem solving. Processing of potatoes must be increased giving incentives to micro, small and medium food processing units so that percentage of processing of potatoes could be improved at a sufficient level. Other commercial usages of potatoes in textile, paper making, biodegradable packing and adhesive industries must be encouraged also.

MARKETING MEASURES

Marketing of potatoes in India is very problematic as here are numbers of intermediaries adding greatly to the final cost of production. Farmers get only 25-30% of the consumers price becuse nearly seven hands operate in the system from farmers’ field to retail chain or outlets. If we integrate the chain from farmers field to consumer plates nearly 70-75% of the consumer price could be transferred to the farmers.

Consumer forums can be involved and may encourage developing a Forward and Backward linkage for quick procurement and disposal of the produce. An early demand can be passed to farmers level which will help to control the production according the demand of the consumers. They may be encouraged to grow other cash crops to avoid the glut as there is demand at consumer side.

CONCLUSION

It nutshell we can conclude it that with a philosophy of cluster and consortium approach for production, post-harvest management, transportation, processing and marketing of potatoes must be integrated from farmers’ field to consumer’s plate. And this will be a Silent Revolution to solve all the problems of potato cultivators. Naturally grown poison free potato availability to the consumers on a reasonable price could be ensured while farmers could also be ensured to get a remunerable price of their produce for whole of the year.

An R&D is highly needed at all the steps of potato cultivation, post-harvest management, value addition and marketing and a long term policy & strategy to combat the potato disaster must be prepared at state and national level.

West Bengal Politics: Blood Stained Names – II

This is in continuation to our earlier article West Bengal Politics: Blood Stained Names – I and our endeavour through this series is to aware the youth about few events which happened in West Bengal. We hear these names but many of us are still unaware what exactly happened. In our previous article we have mentioned about Sain-Bari, Marich Jhanpi, Ananda Marg and Keshpur. In this article we will briefly recount few such names.

Nanoor Massacre

Soon after the Left Front (LF) came to power in 1977, the poor people of this locality became virtual slaves of the money lenders, land lords, promoters, contractors and tax extracting goons, all belonging to the CPM. Any protest meant either torture by the Harmads or arrest by the police branding the protester as a Naxalite activist. After the success of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the Panskura election the oppressed people saw a ray of hope in the new party and the influence of the party went on increasing rapidly in the area dominated by poor people especially scheduled castes and Muslims.

Then the Harmad force took control of the entire area and declared that anybody showing allegiance to the TMC would be punished mercilessly. They identified some middle farmers who were spreading propagating for the TMC and threatened the landless labours of the locality that anyone working with these farmers would be punished. They in fact wanted to punish these farmers not by any violent means but by spoiling their agricultural production, the means of their livelihood. While none of the local labours could be mobilized, one such farmer hired 11 landless labours from outside. It was in the early morning on 27th July 2000. As soon as these labours, unaware of the Harmad threat, started working on the land of the farmer, armed Harmads attacked them and brutally killed all of them.

Victims of Nanoor massacre were Seikh Nizam, Rasul Bax, Sabur Seikh, Seikh Salamat, Harai Seikh, Saran Mete, Safikul Seikh, Seikh Safiq, Asraf Seikh, Saifur Seikh, Seikh Ali Hossain. CPM claim themselves secular, is this a proof of secularism? CPM appeased Muslims for Votes only, never looked into their well-being or development.

After any such heinous act, CPM use to cover it up with concocted stories to confuse people and deviate people’s attention. They did same in this incident, once again concocted a story that they were dacoits and killed by the local people when they attempted dacoity at a house in that locality. Mr. Somnath Chatterjee, M.P. from Bolpur (that contains Nanoor), described the victims as notorious anti-socials. However, when the stories did not work, the local CPM leaders admitted that the 11 victims were innocent landless labours. To save face, top CPM leaders like Jyoti Basu, Biman Basu and Anil Biswas condemned the massacre without forgetting to mention that this was a reaction of torture on the CPM supporters by Trinamul Congress and other parties opposed to the CPM.

Chhota Angaria Annihilation

After the combined Harmad-Maoist onslaught to evict the TMC supporters from the Keshpur area, the Harmads could drive out the TMC supporters from the entire west Midnapore district. Defection from the CPM was stopped by threats and most of the TMC supporters rejoined the LF simply to save their lives.

Abdul Bakhtar Mandal and some of his followers at Chhota Angaria village in west Midnapore, ignored the Harmad threats and continued campaigning for the TMC in the assembly elections. So, action was necessary. The deadly duo – Tapan Ghosh and Sukur Ali, along with the killer team, surrounded the house of Mandal where TMC supporters had assembled and set it ablaze on 4th January, 2001. Mandal himself could escape, but most of the inmates were either burnt alive or shot dead by the Harmads. Because of the tight-lips of the eye witnesses to the incident it was very difficult to get the exact information about the number of persons killed in the incident. Later on it was found, 11 died in that incident.

In fact, later on when the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) took up the case, all the witnesses including the chief witness Bakhtar Mandal declined to co-operate as they were all warned by CPM that any cooperation with the CBI would mean torturous death of the witness and his family members. For this reason, the CBI was compelled to release the arrested persons, which included the two chief Tapan Ghosh and Sukur Ali, unconditionally and withdraw the charges against them. As soon as these two pathological murderers were released from CBI custody, not only the West Midnapore leaders, but also the top state-level leaders and ministers celebrated the occasion by garlanding Tapan Ghosh and Sukur Ali and describing them as the 'most precious assets' of party.

Rape and Murder of Tapasi Malik

Tapasi Malik, the teen-age daughter of a poor peasant became a staunch supporter of the 'Save Farm' movement of the evicted Singur peasants since their land had been grabbed. She had the courage to openly protest against the intimidation of the Harmads.

Tapasi Malik's mother with her photo.

On 18th December, 2006, at 5 A.M. she went out of her house to answer nature's call; she was dragged by hair by the Harmads inside the area barbed wired for the Nano factory. She was  gang raped by the Harmads. Then dragged her in a pit which was done beforehand for the purpose, where she was burnt alive. Her abdominal area was totally burnt off. The villagers discovered her burnt body at 6 A.M. The police immediately rushed to the spot and dispersed the villagers. Then they dragged her father, Sri Manoranjan Malik and compelled him to write that it was a case of suicide because of a family problem. The mass, now magnified, could snatch away the papers from the police tear off the papers containing false report of Tapasi's father. The leader of the opposition (TMC) in the legislative assembly soon came to the spot and made the police to write the FIR of murder.

It was a well-planned case and CPM had already prepared their story that it was a case of suicide because of a family quarrel. CPM always tried the famous saying of Promod Dasgupta (actually said by Paul Joseph Goebbles - Adolf Hitler's Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany), 'a lie told hundred times becomes a truth', but his theory was disproved again.

Nandigram Genocide

The LF government of West Bengal decided to acquire 14,000 acres of multi-cropping rich agricultural land from the area Nandigram in the East Midnapore district and hand it over for setting up a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to the Salem group of Indonesia. To acquire land in a high handed way, Lakshman Seth declared on 28th December, 2006, on behalf of the Haldia Development Authority that about 14,000 acres of land would be acquired from the cultivators of Nandigram. The villagers, disregarding the threats, protested against the decision before the panchayat office on 3rd January 2007. Immediately police arrived and dispersed the protesters by lathi charge.

Soon the villagers organized themselves into the Bhumi Uchhed Protirodh Committee (BUPC) (Committee against Eviction from Land) and started putting up barricades on the road by felling trees, digging roads and placing massive stones on the roads at regular gaps so as to prevent the entry of police jeeps.

1^st Round – The Harmads soon arrived from various parts of the state and created an armed camp at Khejuri, right outside Nandigram. On 7th January, 2006, a large number of Harmads, armed with sophisticated weapons, attacked the villagers and three villagers were killed in the encounter. The villagers could, however, repulse the attack and a Harmad was killed in the encounter. A parallel administration was set up by the cultivators and a resistance group was formed to combat the attacks by the police and the Harmads.

Realizing the impossibility of subjugating the reluctant cultivators by sheer threat, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya sought time to chalk out some effective plan for the cultivators, announced on 9th February, 2007 that no land would be acquired without the consent of the affected cultivators.

2^nd Round – took the Nandigram people completely unawares. They had taken Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's assurances in face value and living in fool's paradise that soon the government would sit with the protesters to decide about the land issue. The onslaught came on 14th March, 2007. Hundreds of armed Harmads wearing police uniforms (wearing Hawaii Chappals) mixed with the accompanying police force attacked the villagers and took possession of the area after indiscriminate killing and raping. More than 14 villagers were killed and hundreds wounded, many females, age ranging from five to sixty five were gang raped. But ultimately the valiant people of Nandigram, both women and men with simple weapons like sticks, iron rods and domestic choppers could chase away the criminals, the spineless cowards looking for girls to rape.

Under such pressure Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya once again played his trick and declared on 3rd September, 2007 that the site for the SEZ would be shifted from Nandigram to the sparsely populated island of Nayachar, 30 kilometres from Haldia.

3^rd Round – hundreds of Harmads armed with long range Kalashnikov rifles, mortars, Molotov cocktails, hand grenades and naphtha bombs encircled Nandigram from all sides and entry of the outsiders including the journalists was completely blocked. The invaders, from six different directions, went on invading village after village by killing people and setting fire on houses indiscriminately. The killers used 500 captured BUPC members, mostly women, as shields while advancing through the villages and this gave the villagers little opportunity to resist the attack which started on 6th November 2007 and ended after all the villages were under the control of the Harmads on 8th November. Red flags were raised at the top of all the houses. Thousands of villagers had fled from the villages and taken shelter in the houses of relatives or refugee camps outside the Nandigram war-zone. The male supporters of the BUPC who had failed to escape were hunted out by the Harmads and killed after exemplary torture, then started indiscriminate looting of properties and raping of women of all ages.

On 13th November, the trigger happy Buddha made the comment before the hilarious celebrators of the victory, “They have been paid back in the same coin.”

CBI was entrusted with enquiry of Nandigram Genocide. It revealed Maoists connection. Maoists were given shelter by villagers and they helped villagers cut off the villages from police and administration.

Now the readers should notice that CPM went for land acquisition during their regime is now opposing Land Bill tabled by NDA!!

Mangalkot Murders

Mangalkot, in the district of Burdwan, was gradually shifting side being inspired by the new wind of justice and fearlessness. This panicked the Harmads and local people were threatened by the local dons. In an encounter with the unarmed masses a notorious Harmad was killed on 15th June 2009 and the incident was followed by wanton murder, raping, looting and burning of houses of people who were shifting allegiance. For this purpose Harmads from other parts of the Burdwan district rushed to the area.

On 15th July, 2009, a team of Congress MPs (members of parliament) attempted to visit the place and restore peace in the area, they were attacked and chased by the Harmads before the eyes of the inactive police. This was aired in electronic media within few minutes; many of us seen the telecast of Mr. Manas Bhuiya running through paddy field fleeing the spot. Most of the MPs were wounded.

Netai Firing

A Harmad armed camp was formed in the Netai area of the Lalgarh of West Midnapur during December 2010. CPM claimed that these camps sheltered CPM supporters who were evicted from their villages. According to the villagers the camp consisting of about 25 armed Harmads from outside was formed at the house of the local CPM leader Rathin Dandapat. After establishment of the camp at the village, the CRPF left the village leaving the helpless villagers at the hands of notorious criminals.

The torture on the villagers started soon. They were forced to cook for and wash clothes of the Harmads. One man was forced to make 40 to 50 chapattis in a day. The members of the camp shouted at villagers for any mistakes in cooking, like more salt or better taste. The unarmed villagers were compelled to guard the armed men of the camp. One day they forced, at gun point, the villagers to participate in the rally of CPM. Unwillingly they were obeying all orders from the camp. Villagers were not spared and there were repeated orders from the camp to send young girls for the service of the Harmads. But people of this area, unlike those around the other camps, showed courage by not sending their females to the camps. Huge arms and ammunitions were also stockpiled in the camp.

On the first week of January, 2011, the Harmads issued an order that all villagers in the age group 18-35 should undergo arms training in the camp with a view to annihilating supporters or members of non-CPM parties. After that, on 6th January, the villagers unanimously decided that it was not possible to take arms training.

On 7th January around 2 thousand villagers out of four thousand populations gathered before the camp at 8 AM. The villagers and the camp members held discussions at the Bat-tala Chak which is 20 to 25 meter away from the camp or the house of Rathin Dandapat. They told the leaders of the camp that villagers were not willing to take arms training. After discussion of 15 to 20 minutes the leaders said that they required the consent of the higher party committee in this matter. In the name of consent of higher committee they called the armed Harmads from the other camps close to Netai. After few minutes, from south of the village some armed men entered the village. Then firing on the people started simultaneously from the camp and the incoming Harmads.

At least nine persons including four women were killed at the spot and hundreds were injures. The police force from the nearby Lalgarh police station came to the village after 6 hours of the incident allowing the Harmads to fire at the villagers for a long time and the police did not take any initiative to resist the incident from nearby police station. On the contrary, the police gave the murderers to get away from the place of the incident. The police also did not co-operate with the villagers to hospitalise the injured.

In March 2015, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya admitted that Netai was their fault!!

Well so far we tried to bring in front of our young readers about various names or incidents of West Bengal politics which happened during Left Front regime. In our next article we will bring in front of our readers such names from TMC regime.

West Bengal Politics: Blood Stained Names – I

In recent times we found that the young generation of India are taking lot of interest in national as well as state politics which buck the global trend of declining in interest in politics. The youth not only show a high level of interest in politics.  There is no decline in this interest across generations. There is a reasonably high level of participation by youth in all forms of politics — direct, indirect, formal, non-formal and in social media. To increase awareness amongst youth we will try to recount few incidents which happened in past and heard those names ‘n’ number of times in West Bengal. But exactly what happened many of the youth are unaware till date!

Terror, exploitation, crime, corruption and slavery of the masses were characteristic of the 34 year Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM or CPM) rule in West Bengal which is unprecedented in the human history in recent times.  Way long before they came to power CPM had established their character of criminal and horrible activities through murder, rape, extortion of money from common people, terrorizing the voters and all opponents. It is because of CPM few names will remain in the history books of West Bengal for next few hundred years viz. Sain-Bari, Marich Jhanpi, Keshpur etc. Let us go through briefly.

Sain-Bari

President's rule was imposed on the state of West Bengal on 16th March 1970 which ended the Anti-Congress United Front Government. The Harmads went on rampage right after the day of declaration of President's rule. From the early morning on 17th March, the Harmads, armed, organized marches in different areas. The most aggressive was the armed rally in Pratapeswar-Shibtola area in the district of Burdwan. On their way the The Harmad procession started extorting money from people, forced them to express loyalty to CPI-M and humiliated women of the houses that fell on their way. The Harmads were armed with sophisticated weapons and menacing, and already stories were in abundance about their brutality. So nobody dared protest or complain to the police.

As soon as the procession advanced near the house of the Sains, flaming arrows were hurled at their house as the Sain brothers showed the bravery to disregard the diktat of Benoy Konar to change their loyalty from National Congress to CPIM and join the procession. The miscreants entered their house in flames, brutally beheaded Pranab Sain and Malay Sain along with the private tutor Jiten Roy who attempted to save the lives of the Sain brothers. The face of the old mother of the Sains was smeared with the blood of her sons. The air reverberated with the inhuman roar of happiness of the Harmad squad after the terrible act. The Harmads played 'holi' with the blood of the victims.

The Harmad dons organizing the crime were declared as great heroes and assets of the party. Benoy Konar was elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from the Memari (Vidhan Sabha constituency) in 1969, 1971 and 1977. His wife, Maharani Konar, was elected from the same constituency in 1982, 1987 and 1991.

Marich Jhanpi

After partition of India in 1947, there was a rapid inflow of Hindu refugees into West Bengal from East Pakistan (presently Bangladesh). Well to do refugees managed to settle in the cities in West Bengal, but the majority – the lower castes and poor people, were sent to Dandakaranya forest in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh). There they were forced to live in concentration camps named Permanent Liability Camps in extremely miserable and inhuman conditions. During the 1960s, the CPM was the lone party which protested against the inhuman treatment of the Bengali refugees in Dandakaranya and promised that they would get them rehabilitated in West Bengal as soon as they assume power.

After the LF govt. came to power in 1977, CPM invited the Dandakaranya refugees to West Bengal. CPM thought that all the refugees would not be able to travel to West Bengal, only a few hundreds would do so. Refugees started coming into West Bengal in thousands and expressed their willingness to get settled in Marich Jhanpi and adjacent islands. CPM got panicked realizing that accommodation of lakhs of refugees would destroy the ecology of the mangrove zone. So, strong administrative measures were adopted to resist the massive inflow of refugees. They were detained at railway stations without food and water and the Harmads had the free hand in looting whatever little money they had and raping and looting the females. Ultimately most of the refugees could be sent back to Dandakaranya. Only about 15, 000 of them were permitted to reach the islands.

All of a sudden the govt. announced that the refugees who had already settled would have to return back to Dandakaranya. But the refugees were unable to return. Even within the restricted conditions they felt they were better here than the horrible camps. So they did not pay heed to the warnings of the govt.

The LF went all out to evict the refugees from the mangrove islands. Accordingly on January 26, 1979, thirty police launches created blockade of the relevant islands. Then their fisheries, tube wells and all sources of water and food supply were destroyed by the police. Finally, the police attacked them with tear gas shells. Still the desperate refugees with their backs on the wall did not surrender. 




Then the horrible Harmad attack commenced with police coverage. The huts of the refugees were raged and there were cruel killing of the men. The females were gang raped before being killed; even children and elderly women were not spared. Many of those who jumped into the sea were either devoured by the crocodiles or drowned. Those who surrendered to the police were however saved and sent back to Dandakaranya. About forty five percent of the settlers were killed by the Harmads.

The L.F. govt. however, could hush up the matter as the police and the Harmads could successfully block the entry of the media men at the time of the carnage. But in 2002, the matter surfaced when one eye witness and survivor of the incident Jagadish Chandra Mandal published a book titled "Marich Jhanpi: Naishwabder Antarale."

Ananda Marg

The incident had connection with the education policy of the Left Front (LF) Government. Within a few years after the LF assumed power, the education system of West Bengal completely collapsed. The exceptions were the Institutions run by the Ramakrishna Mission, the Jesuit Churches and institution run by the Anand Marg. The attempts to attack the Ramakrishna Mission and the Jesuit institutions were foiled by the timely intervention by Jyoti Basu. So the target was Anand Marg.

The Anand Marg sanyasis appealed to both the common people and the state govt. to restore discipline and academic atmosphere in the educational institutions. In certain areas of the Purulia district and Kasba in Kolkata their preaching had remarkable influence on the ordinary CPM supporters and members of the SFI – the student wing of the CPM.

The horrific and planned attack came right before an educational seminar organised by Ananda Marg. In the morning of 30th April 1982, the sanyasis and the nun hired taxis to reach the venue of the seminar. As soon as the taxis carrying them had entered the over-bridge called Bijan Setu, the armed Harmads blocked the two entries to the bridge and posted armed guards at various points of the bridge so that the masses cannot intervene. Then they dragged out the sanyasis and the nun from the taxis thrashed them to death and then the bodies were burnt with petrol. Thousands of people watched the horrible killings but nobody could intervene because of the armed Harmads guarding the entire bridge with threatening announcements that anybody trying to intervene would be shot dead.

Keshpur

Keshpur is a part of the Panskura parliamentary constituency in West Midnapore district. There was a sharp inner party struggle in the CPM. On one hand, the leaders were ruthless Harmad dons and on the other, the lower rank, the majority were dedicated communists. These young men were against the exploitation of the poor people by the money lenders, landlords, contractors and promoters holding important positions in the CPM. As the CPM leadership took side with the Harmad dons, the cadres deserted the party and joined the newly formed Trinamool Congress (TMC). The dons were cornered as a consequence in the 2000 bye-election of the Panskura parliamentary constituency, the LF candidate was defeated by the TMC candidate.

Now the dons invited the Maoists from the adjacent state of Jharkhand to help them cope with the situation. The Maoists accepted it as they found an opportunity to establish their stronghold in West Bengal. They were aware of the exploitation of the tribal people of the southern districts of West Bengal and expected to establish a foothold among these oppressed people.

The Maoists joined the Harmads to evict the TMC supporters (erstwhile CPM cadres) and thereafter Maoists left the place to create their base among the tribals in the jungle areas of the districts of Bankura, Midnapore and Birbhum. The Harmad dons could now mobilize Harmad forces from other districts and in all the subsequent elections the CPM won overwhelmingly. In fact, in each election seventy percent of the votes were cast by the Harmads and only thirty percent of the voters were permitted to cast their votes. In course of these operations two most ruthless enforcers Tapan Ghosh and Sukur Ali, the most ruthless murderers country has ever seen, emerged in the scene.

We will continue this series and try to bring such blood stained names of West Bengal politics in front of our young readers. Those names will be from 34 years of Left Front regime and 4 years of Power Packed New Improved Left Front Regime – The Didi’s Era.

আঁচড়

মাননীয়া মুখ্যমন্ত্রী
সমীপেষু
খবর পেলাম ছবি আঁকায় আপনার পারদর্শিতা সম্পর্কে । তিনটি আঁচড়ে ১০লাখ সম্বন্ধে জানলাম।
এমতাবস্থায় আপনার শ্রীচরণে বিনীত নিবেদন একটা গোটা দিন সব কাজ ছেড়ে শুধু আঁচড় দিন। রাজ্যের আর্থিক দৈন্য দশা ঘোচাতে ১ দিন ছুটি নেওয়াই যায়।
বিঃদ্রঃ কর্মচারীদের ৪৮ %"ডি এ বকেয়া মিটিয়ে ওদের ছোঁচা মুখ ভোঁতা করে দিনতো !

আর পে কমিশন বসানো
তখনতো কয়েকটা আঁচড়ের খেল।

বিনীত 

জয়দীপ 

বিঃদ্রঃ কলকাতাতাতেই থাকি কিন্তু বাড়ির ঠিকানা দিলাম না, যদি ওনাদের মত অবস্থা হয়; আপনার ছেলেরাও আঁচরে দেয়  কি না 

Fall of Icons – II

In our previous article Fall of Icons we tried to bring in front of our readers about the world known figures like Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, who were at the helm of affairs, what they went through at the end of their life. This article is continuation to our earlier article where we will look into three such world known leaders. They are as following:

Nicolae Ceaușescu

Muammar Gaddafi

Saddam Hussein.

Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife with
Emperor Hirohito during a visit in Tokyo in 1975

Nicolae Ceaușescu (26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from 1967 to 1989.

After a brief period of relatively moderate rule, Ceaușescu's regime became increasingly brutal and repressive. By some accounts, his rule was the most rigidly Stalinist in the Soviet bloc. He maintained controls over speech and the media that were very strict even by Soviet-bloc standards, and internal dissent was not tolerated. Ceaușescu's regime was marked by an extensive and omnipresent cult of personality, nationalism, a continuing deterioration in foreign relations even with the Soviet Union, and nepotism. In November 1989, the XIVth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) saw Ceaușescu, then aged 71, re-elected for another five years as leader of the PCR. During the Congress, Ceaușescu made a speech denouncing the anti-Communist revolutions happening throughout the rest of Eastern Europe.

The following month, Ceaușescu's regime itself collapsed after a series of violent events in Timișoara and Bucharest in December 1989. Demonstrations in the city of Timișoara were triggered by the government-sponsored attempt to evict László Tőkés, an ethnic Hungarian priest, accused by the government of inciting ethnic hatred. Members of his ethnic Hungarian congregation surrounded his apartment in a show of support. Romanian students spontaneously joined the demonstration, which soon lost nearly all connection to its initial cause and became a more general anti-government demonstration. Regular military forces, police and Security fired on demonstrators on 17 December 1989, killing and injuring men, women and children.

On 18 December 1989, Ceaușescu departed for a state visit to Iran, leaving the duty of crushing the Timișoara revolt to his subordinates and his wife. Upon his return to Romania on the evening of 20 December, the situation became even more tense, and he gave a televised speech from the TV studio inside Central Committee Building (CC Building), in which he spoke about the events at Timișoara in terms of an "interference of foreign forces in Romania's internal affairs" and an "external aggression on Romania's sovereignty".

On the next day, 21 December, Ceaușescu staged a mass meeting in Bucharest. Official media presented it as a "spontaneous movement of support for Ceaușescu", emulating the 1968 meeting in which Ceaușescu had spoken against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces. However, Ceaușescu had misjudged the crowd's mood. Roughly eight minutes into his speech, several people began jeering, booing and whistling at him. As the speech continued, more and more people did the same. Others began chanting "Timișoara!" Failing to control the crowds, the Ceaușescus finally took cover inside the building that housed the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, where they remained until the next day.

By the morning of 22 December, the rebellion had already spread to all major cities across the country. The suspicious death of Vasile Milea, the defense minister, was announced by the media. Believing that Milea had been murdered, rank-and-file soldiers switched sides to the revolution almost en masse. The commanders wrote off Ceaușescu as a lost cause and made no effort to keep their men loyal to the regime. Ceaușescu made a last desperate attempt to address the crowd gathered in front of the Central Committee building, but the people in the square began throwing stones and other projectiles at him, forcing him to take refuge in the building once more.

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital and headed, by helicopter, for Ceaușescu's Snagov residence; from there they fled again, this time for Târgoviște. Near Târgoviște they abandoned the helicopter, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's airspace. The Ceaușescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually turned over to the army.

On Christmas Day, 25 December, in a small room the Ceaușescus were tried before a drumhead court-martial convened on orders of the National Salvation Front, Romania's provisional government. They faced charges including illegal gathering of wealth and genocide. At the end of the quick show trial the Ceaușescus were found guilty and sentenced to death. A soldier standing guard in the proceedings was ordered to take the Ceaușescus out back one by one and shoot them, but the Ceaușescus demanded to die together. The soldiers agreed to this and began to tie their hands behind their back which the Ceaușescus protested again but were powerless to prevent.

The Ceaușescus were executed by a gathering of soldiers and reportedly hundreds of others also volunteered. The firing squad began shooting as soon as the two were in position against a wall. Ceaușescus laid on the ground shrouded by dust kicked up by the bullets striking the wall and ground.

Gaddafi at the 12th Summit of
the African Union, February 2009

Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi, was a Libyan revolutionary and politician who governed Libya as its primary leader from 1969 to 2011. Taking power in a coup, he ruled as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the "Brotherly Leader" of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011, when he was ousted in the Libyan civil war.

Following the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, Gaddafi spoke out in favour of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was threatened by the Tunisian revolution. He suggested that Tunisia's people would be satisfied if Ben Ali introduced a Jamahiriyah system there. Fearing domestic protest, Libya's government implemented preventative measures, reducing food prices, purging the army leadership of potential defectors and releasing several Islamist prisoners. They proved ineffective, and on 17 February 2011, major protests broke out against Gaddafi's government. Unlike Tunisia or Egypt, Libya was largely religiously homogenous and had no strong Islamist movement, but there was widespread dissatisfaction with the corruption and entrenched systems of patronage, while unemployment had reached around 30%. Accusing the rebels of being "drugged" and linked to al-Qaeda, Gaddafi proclaimed that he would die a martyr rather than leave Libya. As he announced that the rebels would be "hunted down street by street, house by house and wardrobe by wardrobe", the army opened fire on protests in Benghazi, killing hundreds. Shocked at the government's response, a number of senior politicians resigned or defected to the protesters' side. The uprising spread quickly through Libya's less economically developed eastern half. By February's end, eastern cities like Benghazi, Misrata, al-Bayda and Tobruk were controlled by rebels, and the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC) had been founded to represent them.

Only a few towns in western Libya—such as Bani Walid, Sebha and Sirte—remained Gaddafist strongholds. Retreating to Sirte after Tripoli's fall, Gaddafi announced his willingness to negotiate for a handover to a transitional government, a suggestion rejected by the NTC. Surrounding himself with bodyguards, he continually moved residences to escape NTC shelling, devoting his days to prayer and reading the Qur'an. On 20 October, Gaddafi broke out of Sirte's District 2 in a joint civilian-military convoy, hoping to take refuge in the Jarref Valley. At around 8.30am, NATO bombers attacked, destroying at least 14 vehicles and killing at least 53. The convoy scattered, and Gaddafi and those closest to him fled to a nearby villa, which was shelled by rebel militia from Misrata. Fleeing to a construction site, Gaddafi and his inner consort hid inside drainage pipes while his bodyguards battled the rebels; in the conflict, Gaddafi suffered head injuries from a grenade blast while defence minister Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr was killed.

A Misratan militia took Gaddafi prisoner, beating him, causing serious injuries; the events were filmed on a mobile phone. Pulled onto the front of a pick-up truck, he fell off as it drove away. His semi-naked, lifeless body was then placed into an ambulance and taken to Misrata; upon arrival, he was found to be dead. Official NTC accounts claimed that Gaddafi was caught in a cross-fire and died from his bullet wounds. Other eye-witness accounts claimed that rebels had fatally shot Gaddafi in the stomach; a rebel identifying himself as Senad el-Sadik el-Ureybi later claimed responsibility. Gaddafi's son Mutassim, who had also been among the convoy, was also captured, and found dead several hours later, most probably from an extrajudicial execution. Around 140 Gaddafi loyalists were rounded up from the convoy; tied up and abused, the corpses of 66 were found at the nearby Mahari Hotel, victims of extrajudicial execution. Libya's chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Othman al-Zintani, carried out the autopsies of Gaddafi, his son and Jabr in the days following their deaths; although the pathologist initially told the press that Gaddafi had died from a gunshot wound to the head, the autopsy report was not made public.

Saddam Hussein during Iran–Iraq War

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region—which adopted ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism—Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup (later referred to as the 17 July Revolution) that brought the party to power in Iraq.

Saddam formally rose to power in 1979, although he had been the de facto head of Iraq for several years prior. He suppressed several movements, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements, seeking to overthrow the government or gain independence, and maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War. Whereas some venerated Saddam for his opposition to Israel—which included the use of military force – he was widely condemned in the west for the brutality of his dictatorship.

In 2003, a coalition led by the U.S. and U.K. invaded Iraq to depose Saddam, in which U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused him of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to al-Qaeda. Saddam's Ba'ath party was disbanded and elections were held. In April 2003, Saddam's whereabouts remained in question during the weeks following the fall of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting of the war. Various sightings of Saddam were reported in the weeks following the war, but none was authenticated. At various times Saddam released audio tapes promoting popular resistance to his ousting. Saddam was placed at the top of the "U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis". In July 2003, his sons Uday and Qusay and 14-year-old grandson Mustapha were killed in a three-hour gunfight with U.S. forces.

On 13 December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by American forces at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit in a hole in Operation Red Dawn. Following his capture on 13 December Saddam was transported to a U.S. base near Tikrit, and later taken to the American base near Baghdad. The day after his capture he was reportedly visited by longtime opponents such as Ahmed Chalabi. On 14 December 2003, U.S. administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer confirmed that Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit. Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody.

Following his capture on 13 December 2003, the trial of Saddam took place under the Iraqi interim government. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was convicted of charges related to the 1982 killing of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites and was sentenced to death by hanging. His execution was carried out on 30 December 2006.

There were many such world leaders who marked an era in their name in the books of history with their ruthless behaviour towards mankind. If you go through the records how their life came to an end you will find most of them either committed suicide or executed or assassinated!!

Fall of Icons

Once at the helm of affairs, but their fall was relatively unlikely. In this article we would like to look into few world known figures and how things went for them as they came to the end of their life. They were selected randomly. They are as following:

Vladimir Lenin

Adolf Hitler

Joseph Stalin

Vladimir Lenin

Joseph Stalin was a regular visitor to
Vladimir Lenin while recuperating

On 30 August 1918, Vladimir Lenin survived an assassination attempt. Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist Revolutionary, shot at him three times, hitting Lenin twice – in the jaw and the neck. While interrogation Kaplan said, ‘Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details.’ She was executed on 3 September. Lenin survived but was weakened by his injuries which, less than six years later, contributed to his early death. One of the bullets fired into Lenin by Kaplan was only removed in April 1922. The effect of his wounds, together with the strains of revolution, civil war, uprisings and forging a new country, took its toll on Lenin. His workload as head of state was enormous but in later years he suffered increasingly from fatigue and headaches. He suffered his first stroke in May 1922 which deprived him of speech and impeded his movement. Six months later he returned to work. A second stroke followed in December 1922, obliging Lenin to retire from politics to his dacha in the village of Gorki, six miles south of Moscow, and where Stalin became a frequent visitor (pictured). Recovering, Lenin had to learn to speak again and write with his left hand. A third stroke in March 1923 left him bedridden and took away his ability to speak. Such was the pain experienced by Lenin during his final months, that he begged Stalin to obtain a dose of potassium cyanide to put him out of his misery. He specifically asked Stalin, probably because he knew only Stalin, a man so devoid of any humanity, would be strong enough to do it. But even Stalin baulked at the thought of it and couldn’t bring himself to administer the fatal dose: ‘I do not have the strength to carry out Ilyich’s (Lenin) request and I have to decline this mission, however humane and necessary it might be.’

But, despite his apparent sickness, it was not beyond Stalin’s reach to have poisoned his former mentor, especially as his own position was at risk following Lenin’s negative accusation of him. Poisoning was one of Stalin’s favourite methods of dealing with his opponents and the suspicion has always remained. As Bukharin once described Stalin, ‘Koba (Stalin’s revolutionary nickname) is capable of anything.’ Vladimir Lenin died on 21 January 1924.

In an article published by The Telegraph, UK on 22 Oct 2009, Helen Rappaport, an acclaimed historian and author, said that books, papers and journals charting Lenin’s last years show that he contracted the sexually transmitted disease and that it ultimately claimed his life. She said Lenin showed many symptoms of syphilis and that many among the Soviet hierarchy believed he had it. But they were banned from speaking in public and threatened with death because of the embarrassment it would cause. A report written by the celebrated scientist Ivan Pavlov – famous for his Pavlov’s Dog’s theory – which claimed that the "revolution was made by a madman with syphilis of the brain." While public criticism of Lenin was banned and anyone found guilty of doing so would be often be killed, Pavlov was free to be so sarcastic because Lenin had granted him immunity in order to trade on his pre-eminence in the world’s scientific community. Blaming the strokes for his death, the Soviets made huge attempts to cover up whatever lay behind Lenin's erratic, manic behaviour, his bouts of rage and his untimely death. Miss Rappaport, an expert on Russian history, said evidence showed Lenin probably caught syphilis from a prostitute in Paris in about 1902. She said: "It was the unspoken belief of many top Kremlin doctors and scientists that Lenin died of syphilis, but a decades-long conspiracy of silence was forced on them by the authorities.”

“But through it all, none was more vocal in his assertion than Prof Pavlov.”

"Pavlov knew the eminent scientists who had been called in to examine Lenin's brain after his death in 1924 and they all concurred in this diagnosis. It was an open secret among them, but of course none stated it publicly and there are no official Soviet records documenting it.”

Adolf Hitler

Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler (June 1942)

The Red Army had advanced to the Potsdamerplatz, and all indications were that they were preparing to storm the Chancellery, this report, combined with Himmler's treachery prompted Hitler to make the last decisions of his life. After midnight on 29 April 1945, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in a map room within the Führerbunker. Afterwards Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife. Hitler then took secretary, Traudl Junge to another room and dictated his last will and testament. He signed these documents at 04:00 and then retired to bed (some sources say Hitler dictated the last will and testament immediately before the wedding, but all sources agree on the timing of the signing).

During the course of 29 April, Hitler learned of the death of his ally, Benito Mussolini, who had been executed by Italian partisans. Mussolini's body and that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, had been strung up by their heels. The bodies were later cut down and thrown in the gutter. It is probable that these events strengthened Hitler's resolve not to allow himself or his wife to be made "a spectacle of", as he had earlier recorded in his Testament.

Hitler and Braun lived together as husband and wife in the bunker for fewer than 40 hours. By 01:00 on 30 April General Wilhelm Keitel reported that all forces which Hitler had been depending on to come to the rescue of Berlin had either been encircled or forced onto the defensive. Late in the morning of 30 April, with the Soviets less than 500 metres from the bunker, Hitler had a meeting with General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, who told him that the garrison would probably run out of ammunition that night and that the fighting in Berlin would inevitably come to an end within the next 24 hours. Hitler, two secretaries, and his personal cook then had lunch, after which Hitler and Braun said farewell to members of the Führerbunker staff and fellow occupants, including Hitler’s influential secretary Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels and his family, the secretaries, and several military officers. At around 14:30 Adolf and Eva Hitler went into Hitler's personal study.

Hiller's valet - Heinz Linge

Several witnesses later reported hearing a loud gunshot at around 15:30. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, with Bormann at his side, opened the study door. Linge later stated he immediately noted a scent of burnt almonds, a common observation made in the presence of prussic acid, the aqueous form of hydrogen cyanide. Hitler's adjutant, SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Günsche, entered the study and found the lifeless bodies on the sofa. Eva, with her legs drawn up, was to Hitler's left and slumped away from him. Günsche stated that Hitler "... sat ... sunken over, with blood dripping out of his right temple. He had shot himself with his own pistol, a Walther PPK 7.65". According to Linge, Eva's body had no visible physical wounds, and her face showed how she had died—cyanide poisoning.

Accounts differ as to the cause of death; one states that he died by poison only and another that he died by a self-inflicted gunshot while biting down on a cyanide capsule. Contemporary historians have rejected these accounts as being either Soviet propaganda or an attempted compromise in order to reconcile the different conclusions. One eye-witness recorded that the body showed signs of having been shot through the mouth, but this has been proven unlikely. There is also controversy regarding the authenticity of skull and jaw fragments which were recovered. In 2009, American researchers performed DNA tests on a skull Soviet officials had long believed to be Hitler's. The tests revealed that the skull was actually that of a woman less than 40 years old. The jaw fragments which had been recovered were not tested.

Joseph Stalin

Stalin at the Tehran Conference in 1943

The myth of Stalin’s death is often given by people wishing to point out how Stalin seemed to escape all legal and moral punishment for his many crimes: where fellow dictator Mussolini was shot by partisans and Hitler was forced to kill himself, Stalin lived out his natural life. There’s little doubt that Stalin’s rule – his forced industrialisation, his famine causing collectivisation, his paranoid purges – killed, according to many estimates, between ten and twenty million people, and he did most probably die of natural causes, so the basic point still stands, but it isn’t strictly true to say he died peacefully, or that his death was unaffected by the brutality of his policies.

Stalin had suffered a series of minor strokes before 1953 and was generally in declining health. On the night of February 28th he watched a film at the Kremlin, then returned to his dacha, where he met with several prominent subordinates including Beria, head of the NKVD (secret police) and Khrushchev, who would eventually succeed Stalin. They left at 4:00 am, with no suggestion that Stalin was in poor health. Stalin then went to bed, but only after saying the guards could go off duty and that they weren’t to wake him. Stalin would usually alert his guards before 10:00 am and ask for tea, but no communication came. The guards grew worried, but were forbidden from waking Stalin and could only wait: there was no one in the Dacha who could counter Stalin’s orders. A light came on in the room around 18:30, but still no call. Eventually, plucking up the courage to go in and using the arrived post as an excuse, a guard entered the room at 22:00 and found Stalin lying on the floor in a pool of urine. He was helpless and unable to speak, and his broken watch showed he had fallen at 18:30.

The guards felt they didn’t have the right authority to call for a doctor – indeed many of Stalin’s doctors were the target of a new purge – so instead they called the Minister of State Security. He also felt he didn’t have the right powers and called Beria. Exactly what happened next is still not fully understood, but Beria and other leading Russians delayed acting, possibly because they wanted Stalin to die and not include them in the forthcoming purge, possibly because they were scared of seeming to infringe on Stalin’s powers should he recover. They only called for doctors sometime between 7:00 and 10:00 the next day after first travelling to the Dacha themselves.

The doctors found Stalin partially paralysed, breathing with difficulty and vomiting blood. They feared the worst but were unsure. The best doctors in Russia, those which had been treating Stalin, had recently been arrested as part of the forthcoming purge and were in prison. Representatives of the doctors who were free and had seen Stalin went to the prisons to ask for the old doctors’ opinions, who confirmed the initial, negative, diagnoses. Stalin struggled on for several days, eventually dying at 21:50 on March 5th.

Was Stalin Murdered? It is unclear whether Stalin would have been saved if medical help had arrived shortly after his stroke, partly because the autopsy report has never been found (although it is believed he suffered a brain haemorrhage which spread). This missing report, and the actions of Beria during Stalin’s fatal illness, have led some to raise the possibility that Stalin was deliberately killed by those afraid he was about to purge them (indeed, there is a report saying Beria claimed responsibility for the death). There is no concrete evidence for this theory, but enough plausibility for historians to mention it in their texts.

In our next blog we will look into 3 others – Necolae Ceausescu, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.