Exhumation of Stalin’s Body from Kremlin Wall Will Solve Four Problems, His Great-Grandson Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 27 – Selim Bensaad, the only legally confirmed descendant of Joseph Stalin, has asked Moscow Patriarch Kirill to weigh in on the issue of the exhumation and reburial of his grandfather in order to solve four issues which continue to agitate many in Russian society.

            First, it will help give a final answer to the question as to whether Stalin was murdered by his associates. Second, it will allow for DNA tests so that the many who falsely claim to be his descendants can be exposed (bloknot.ru/obshhestvo/pravnuk-stalina-poprosil-patriarha-kirilla-stat-sud-ej-v-voprose-e-ksgumatsii-i-perezahoroneniya-vozhdya-narodov-844776.html).

            Third, it will allow society to find out if Khrushchev really reburied Stalin from the mausoleum to the Kremlin wall as he claimed. After all, who can believe him, Bensaad says. And fourth, it will permit the reburial of the real Stalin next to his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, as he always indicated he wanted to be. 

            In his letter to Kirill, Stalin’s great grandson says that Stalin was responsible for the official restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church and thus merits protection from the current leader of that denomination. Bensaad says that exhuming Stalin will answer many questions, but his appeal is unlikely to gain support given how many problems such a move would create.

            Not only would it make the issue of Stalin for Russian society and its leaders even more “concrete” than it is now, but it would likely reopen discussions about the possible removal of Lenin’s remains from the mausoleum and the reburial of other communist leaders now at rest along the Kremlin wall.