The Russian communist party has called for an investigation into the possible involvement of Western spies in the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, suggesting he could have been “poisoned.”
“The party appealed to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation and the FSB with a request to check the possible involvement of Western intelligence services in the death of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin,” Sergey Malinkovich, chairman of the Communists of Russia party, said Tuesday, according to state-run news agency RIA.
“Many testimonies from Stalin’s contemporaries speak of the possible poisoning of the leader of the Soviet nations by agents of Western influence,” Malinkovich added.
The request was made on the 71st anniversary of Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953. An autopsy found he died from a haemorrhagic stroke following years of health issues, including an earlier stroke and heart attack in 1945, but conspiracy theories have long circulated about potential foul play.
Stalin’s reputation has undergone a rehabilitation in recent years of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reign, with Stalinists expressing admiration for a man responsible for mass executions, a network of labor camps and forced starvation.
In 2018, Russia refused to screen a British black comedy film, “The Death of Stalin,” about the dictator’s final hours, with an official from the country’s culture ministry saying it “insults our historic symbols.”