The Party of Communists of Russia yesterday appealed to the Russian intelligence service FSB and the prosecutor’s office to investigate whether Western intelligence played a role in the 1953 death of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
“The testimony of many people who lived under Stalin suggests that the Soviet leader may have been poisoned by agents under Western influence,” party chairman Sergei Malinkovich said.
“The party has applied to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation and the FSB to investigate the involvement of Western intelligence services in the death of Josef Stalin,” Malinkovich said.
Malinkovic also said that party officials would organize a commemoration today by laying flowers at the bust of Stalin on the Kremlin Wall.
The Communist Party of Russia, led by Malinkovic, was founded in 2012 and emerged as a rival to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which claims to be the continuation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
It is not yet known whether the FSB or the attorney general’s office has responded to the party’s request for an investigation.
Josef Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953, died 71 years ago today.
Soviet authorities announced that Stalin had died of a hemorrhagic stroke. Stalin had suffered a stroke and a heart attack in 1945 and his health deteriorated thereafter.
One of the architects of Russia’s rapid industrialization, Stalin is also at the center of controversy over the hundreds of thousands of people who died in famines and concentration camps in the country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously described Stalin’s domestic policies as “totalitarian” but praised the Soviet leader’s wartime leadership.
