The return of Stalin’s remains to the mausoleum will unravel the mystery: what the leader’s grave hides

The proposal of the party “Communists of Russia” could put an end to rumors and speculation

The topic “about Stalin” even almost 70 years after the death of the “leader of the peoples” does not lose its relevance. Another proof of this is the current proposal of the Communists of Russia party to return the remains of Joseph Vissarionovich to the mausoleum on Red Square. This project will certainly be perceived in the country very ambiguously. However, it can be firmly stated: the implementation of such an idea by the communists would help to finally unravel perhaps the most intriguing mystery of the twentieth century.

The shadow of the Generalissimo does not give us rest. And now, on the eve of the next anniversary of the birth of the “father of peoples”, the chairman of the Communists of Russia party, Sergei Malinkovich, made a statement about the “wrong” burial of Joseph Vissarionovich.

The party leader recalled that in 1961 Stalin’s body was secretly removed from the mausoleum and buried near the Kremlin wall. He further emphasized: “It was a deeply unfair and illegitimate action, no one asked the people.”

And if so, it is necessary to “restore justice” and return the remains of the leader back to the mausoleum. The relevance of this proposal adds, according to Malinkovich, the fact that now very many in our country highly appreciate the merits of Stalin.

Well, the merits of the Secretary General on a national scale are, indeed, considerable. But they are both with a plus sign and with a minus sign. And to draw a general balance – which more, it does not work, the disputes have not subsided so far. Therefore, the return of the ashes of Stalin to the original place of his “registration” in the mausoleum – that is, such a kind of rehabilitation of Joseph Vissarionovich, will certainly cause a storm of emotions and a real social “storm”. Is it time for us in today’s Russia such “extreme weather events”?

At the same time, an important side effect of the project proposed by the “Communists of Russia” should be mentioned. The procedure initiated by them now to exhume Stalin’s remains from the grave near the Kremlin wall for transfer back to the mausoleum would help to finally figure out what is the fate of the mummy of the “leader of peoples” after her eviction from the “main tomb of the USSR” on the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961 of the year.

The fact is that over the decades that have passed since then, some researchers have adhered to the version that in November 1961, shortly after the reburial, the coffin with Stalin’s embalmed body was allegedly secretly removed and taken away. Thus, the grave, located behind the mausoleum and marked with a bust of Joseph Vissarionovich, is in fact a cenotaph or, in other words, a symbolic burial.

One of those who expressed such an opinion was a Moscow old-timer, historian, doctor of art history Alfred Mirek. In a conversation with an MK correspondent, at one time he even referred to an eyewitness account of a covert operation carried out 61 years ago, a former employee of the Kremlin guard. They say that Red Square was prudently cordoned off, the Stalinist burial was unearthed with the help of an excavator fitted to the “Kremlin churchyard”, the coffin was loaded into the back of a ZIS and taken somewhere, and the empty pit was filled with concrete dumped from a dump truck, and then the former grave mound with a stone slab was restored over it.

Of course, if we assume that such events really took place, all this happened on command from the very “top”. Only N. Khrushchev, who headed the country, could then decide on the fate of Stalin’s remains.

As Alfred Martinovich explained, it is not easy to check how true the story of the Kremlin guard was. The fact is that when, in the last days of October 1961, the grave behind the mausoleum was being prepared for transferring Stalin’s mummy into it, by someone’s order, the walls and bottom of the dug large pit were laid out with thick concrete blocks, and after reburial, they covered it with a concrete slab.

So the domina with the body of the leader ended up in a capital “sarcophagus” made of concrete. It is unlikely that it will be possible to “ring out” it with the help of special equipment – the thickness of the concrete layer is too large. It will only be possible to finally understand this mysterious story and find out what the Stalinist grave really hides – a concrete “box” with a coffin inside it or a concrete monolith – only when this burial place is opened. But to carry out such a radical intervention in the “world of the dead” in the “Kremlin graveyard” is possible only after a decision has been made to transfer Stalin’s ashes to some other place. Back to the mausoleum? Or to one of the cemeteries (for example, in Novodevichy, where the leader’s wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, rests)?

Both options now seem incredible to the author of these lines.