Maybe China and Albania were right in accusing the Khrushchev leadership of replacing Stalin's ashes after his removal?
The first hints of what was done were contained in the comments of the Voice of America, BBC and Radio Liberty back in March-April 1953, and with references to Vasily Stalin, the son of the leader. In 1959, the future Nobel laureate, reporter Gabriel Garcia Márquez, who visited the Mausoleum on Red Square in 1957, hinted at the same in the Venezuelan magazine Cromos. It is interesting that in the USSR this opinion of Marquez, already recognized by everyone as a great writer, was first decided to be published only in 1988, in the era of perestroika and glasnost.
The impressions of Garcia Márquez, then still a young man, after all, he was not even 30 years old, from visiting the Mausoleum in August 1957 are very characteristic: “Stalin is sleeping his last sleep. … The expression on the face is lively, conveying the feeling. Slightly curly hair, mustache, not at all like Stalin's. But nothing had an effect on me more than the grace of his hands with long, transparent nails. These are female hands "(" Latin America ". M., Institute of Latin America, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1988, No. 3).
It is hardly worth saying that on the part of G. G. Marquez was out of the question of idealizing Stalin and the Stalinist period. The author of the famous "Hundred Years of Solitude" himself was a staunch supporter of democracy and an opponent of dictatorship of any kind. And this despite the fact that all his life he was friends with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom the so-called democratic community did not call anything other than a dictator. The image of the late Stalin influenced the writer so strongly that he made full use of it when writing another cult novel, Autumn of the Patriarch, where a brilliant collective portrait of the Latin American dictator was created.
Soon, Khrushchev himself emotionally blurted out about the murder of Stalin, speaking on July 19, 1964 at a reception in the Kremlin in honor of the Hungarian leader Janos Kadar: “You cannot wash a black dog white. There have been many tyrants in the history of mankind, but all of them perished the same way from an ax, as they themselves supported their power with an ax. " Radio Liberty in its program in Russian did not hesitate with a ruthless, scathing comment entitled: "What did Khrushchev admit to?", July 19, 1964, 14:30 Moscow time). However, in the Soviet and Eastern European media, except for the Albanian, Romanian and Yugoslavian, this fragment, for obvious reasons, chose not to publish.
Already these quoted quotations (of the Soviet party boss and the great writer), in combination with each other, lead to the question: what happened to Stalin's ashes? The posthumous fate suggests a monstrous blasphemy against Stalin's body soon after his death, or rather, murder. It was this version of Stalin's death that the author chose by no means by chance, precisely because of the very reservation of Khrushchev.
A decade and a half later, on November 18, 1978, Albania's representative to the UN, Ali Veta, conveyed to his Romanian UN colleague Alton Faryan the answer of Enver Hoxha, head of the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labor, to the Soviet side's proposal to restore diplomatic relations that had been interrupted during Khrushchev's time. 1962 year. At the same time, the Soviet side proposed to end the mutual ideological polemics. But the short answer from Tirana read: “Tell the truth about the last days of Stalin, about the fate of his ashes, cancel the decisions of the XX and XXII Congresses of the CPSU, falsifying the activities of Comrade. Stalin. Then negotiations are possible."
But in Moscow, for obvious reasons, they did not dare to take such steps. Let us recall that Albania adhered to its orthodox position regarding Stalin and the Stalinist period in the history of the USSR and the CPSU up to the 1990 coup. At the same time, despite the change of regime, the Museum of Lenin and Stalin is still preserved in Tirana (opened on May 1, 1952, during the life of the "leader of the peoples." from the end of the 19th century to the 70s of the 20th century. There is also an incomparable collection of archival materials about Stalin's illness and death, about the posthumous fate of his ashes, about his son Vasily Stalin, etc.
No less remarkable is the telephone conversation between Lieutenant General of the Air Force Vasily Stalin and his driver, Alexander Fevralev, recorded by the MGB on the evening of March 9, 1953, i.e. shortly after the funeral of I. V. Stalin.
Vasily Stalin says: “How many people were suppressed, it's scary! Was it specially arranged ?! shouts to them: "Killed, you bastards, rejoice! Damn you!" What happened to her then?"
There are many experts who argue that it was Operation Mozart, developed by the US CIA, which envisaged either the elimination of Stalin by his “comrades-in-arms”, or the explosion of a dacha in Nemchinovka, where Stalin had been almost constantly since February 1953 (for more details, see, for example, Enver Hoxha, "The Khrushchevites and Their Heirs", Tirana, in Russian, 1977). Vasily Stalin constantly spoke and even shouted that "the father is being killed", "they have already been killed." The latter, with sobs, he repeated in the Column Hall of the House of Unions on March 6-8, as well as on the day of the funeral and after. According to a number of data, some foreign delegations heard this when they paid last respects to Stalin in those days. Vasily also argued that the Mausoleum contains not the body of his father, but an artificial double. Stalin himself was cremated shortly after his death, because because of the poison, the face of Joseph Vissarionovich changed very much. The famous historian Anatoly Utkin notes: "I think that with the elimination of Vasily in 1962, they could cover up the traces of what he had done to Stalin himself."
In early March 1953, Stalin's son sent the first letter to the CPC Central Committee, claiming that his father had been killed. As you know, Mao Zedong, as well as Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Enver Hoxha did not come to Stalin's funeral, probably having confirming information. According to reports, similar two letters, but also with allegations of the quick cremation of his father shortly after his death, as well as a request for political asylum or at least for treatment, Vasily sent to Beijing in 1960. And the authorities of the PRC have already put before the party leadership of the USSR the question of his departure there or to Albania for treatment. But in vain.
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And on March 19, 1962, Vasily Stalin died suddenly in Kazan. According to the official version, from the consequences of chronic alcoholism. But hardly, because the KGB officers searched for almost a week in his apartment, according to the testimony of his neighbors and wife, Kapitolina Vasilyeva (1918-2006), copies or drafts of those letters remain in the PRC. And in Tirana and Pyongyang, Khrushchev's emissaries found out whether Enver Hoxha and Kim Il Sung had received the same letters. But also in vain. Moreover, this whole situation was reflected in the media of China and Albania in the mid-60s, when, we recall, Moscow was almost a step away from the war with China and Albania.
There is evidence that Vasily Stalin managed to transfer the manuscript of his memoirs, including the aforementioned letters, to the Chinese embassy. During his lifetime, they were not published, for there was still hope that he would be able to be taken to China. The publication of such frank memoirs during the life of V. Stalin would only hasten his death.
The memoirs were published in Chinese by the Renmin Chubanpe (People's Publishing House) Publishing House under the CPC Central Committee as early as December 1962 under the title: "Honestly: the story of Vasily Stalin."And the foreword to them was written by Marshal Ye Jianying, Deputy Chairman of the National Defense Council and President of the Academy of Military Sciences of the PRC. The preface said that Vasily Stalin, “the son of his great father, was personally acquainted with Chairman Mao (they met at the end of 1949 during Mao’s visit to the USSR. - Author's note) and enjoyed his boundless trust and deep respect ". The marshal called the death of Vasily "a result of malicious intent." And "the contradictions between the PRC and the USSR are a consequence of the policy of Khrushchev's renegades."
When in 1962 a public polemic began between the CPSU and the CPC, one of the letters to the Chinese Central Committee (in 1963) noted: "The Soviet leadership carried Stalin's body out of the Mausoleum and burnt it." At first, this verbal skirmish, including the aforementioned letter, was published without cuts in Pravda and People's Daily (in 1963-64). But Soviet journalists, dictated by Khrushchev, calmly ignored such a direct accusation of monstrous forgery in their polemical articles.
In this context, another testimony is also noteworthy - Chin Pena (1924-2013), the leader of the Malay Communist Party from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s. As you know, this party broke off relations with the CPSU in connection with the removal of the Stalinist sarcophagus from the Mausoleum on October 31, 1961. And the documentary "The Last Communist" by Malay director Amir Muhamad about Chin Pen (2006) is still banned in Malaysia.
From Chin Pena's greeting to the VII Congress of the Albanian Party of Labor (Tirana, November 3, 1976):
According to a number of data, Beijing and Tirana at the beginning of the 60s twice offered Khrushchev to send them a sarcophagus with Stalin, which would mean a complete ideological and political break of Tirana and Beijing from the USSR, which actually began shortly after 1956. In addition, in the USSR in 1960 -61 biennium leaflets were distributed that an Albanian-Chinese mausoleum for Stalin would soon be built in Beijing. There is no official confirmation of this, but taking into account the aforementioned requests to Khrushchev, one can assume the reality of such a project.
One way or another, but, according to the testimony of Kang Sheng (head of the PRC Ministry of Security) and Enver Hoxha, angry Khrushchev provocatively insulted Stalin's ashes in negotiations with the Chinese delegation on the eve of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU: “Do you and the Albanians really need this dead nag ?! Take it if you need it. " But this "transfer" would have confirmed the substitution in the Moscow Mausoleum, which, apparently, was also part of the Sino-Albanian plans. However, this did not happen: Khrushchev's comrades-in-arms, citing Nikita Sergeevich's fervor, refused such an event. Say, the fate of Stalin's ashes is an exclusively internal affair of the USSR and the CPSU.
But the Chinese delegation at the XXII Congress of the CPSU (end of October 1961), headed by Premier Zhou, with the help of Mao Zedong, obtained permission not only to visit Stalin's new resting place, but also to lay a wreath of fresh flowers there with an inscription on his ribbons (in two languages): “To the great Marxist Comrade I. Stalin. As a sign that the CPC did not share the position of N. Khrushchev directed against I. Stalin”(Xinhua, Beijing, 16.10.2009, 03.11.1961).
The PRC adheres to the same position today. As the Washington Post noted on 2017-17-10, “Xi Jinping reaffirms China's loyalty to the revolutionary philosophy of a man whom Mao has more than once called his“great teacher and elder brother”: Joseph Stalin. When the 18th CPC Congress first confirmed him in office five years ago, Comrade Xi announced: “To neglect the history of the USSR and the CPSU, to neglect Lenin and Stalin is tantamount to pernicious historical nihilism. It confuses our thoughts and undermines the party at all levels."
On the eve of the 65th anniversary (2018) of the "official" death of Stalin, the head of the CPC Central Committee spoke out more harshly: “I believe that for real communists I. V. Stalin is no less important than V. I. Lenin. And in terms of the percentage of correct decisions, he has no equal in world history. "It is no coincidence that Stalin's avenues and streets remain in the PRC to this day: in Harbin and Dalian (Dalny), Lushun (Port Arthur) and Urumqi, Jilin and Gulja. And also, for example, there is Stalin Park in Harbin (about 400 hectares), a huge portrait-monument is installed and carefully preserved in the village of Nanjie, the last commune in China, where the traditional way of the first years of building socialism and communism is still preserved.
At the end of this review, one cannot but recall Winston Churchill's remark, made shortly after Khrushchev's resignation (October 1964): “… this is the only politician in the history of mankind who has declared total war on the dead. But not only that: he managed to lose it."
And the memory of the Soviet leader is preserved today not only in China, North Korea or Albania.
Memorial plaque in Vienna (Austria) on the house where Stalin in 1913 worked on the article "Marxism and the National Question"
Stalin street in Framery commune (Belgium)
Stalin Road, Colchester (England)
