The "doctors' plot" was a Soviet state-sponsored antisemitic campaign and conspiracy theory that alleged a cabal of prominent medical specialists, predominantly of Jewish ethnicity, intended to murder leading government and party officials. It was also known as the case of saboteur doctors or killer doctors. In 1951–1953, a group of mostly Jewish doctors from Moscow were accused of a conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders. This was later accompanied by publications of antisemitic character in the media which talked about the threats of Zionism and condemned people with Jewish surnames. Following this, many doctors, both Jews and non-Jews, were dismissed from their jobs, arrested, and tortured to produce admissions. A few weeks after Stalin's death in 1953, the new Soviet leadership said there was a lack of evidence regarding the doctors' plot and the case was dropped. Soon after, the case was declared to have been a fabrication.

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, abbreviated as JAC, was an organization that was created in the Soviet Union during World War II to influence international public opinion and organize political and material support for the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany, particularly from the West. It was organized by the Jewish Bund leaders Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, upon an initiative of Soviet authorities, in fall 1941; both were released from prison in connection with their participation. Following their re-arrest, in December 1941, the Committee was reformed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities. In 1952, as part of the persecution of Jews in the last year part of Stalin's rule, most prominent members of the JAC were arrested on trumped-up spying charges, tortured, tried in secret proceedings, and executed in the basement of Lubyanka Prison. Stalin and elements of the KGB were worried about their influence and connections with the West. They were officially rehabilitated in 1988.