What happened to Stalin’s double?
Archive photo
When everyone thought they were seeing the elderly “leader of the peoples”, they were actually seeing a 24-year-old Degaestani!
By the time young Feliks Dadaev, who hailed from a Dagestani village, had become Joseph Salin’s identical stand-in, there were already three others. The idea for doubles first came to Nikolay Vlasik earlier in the 1920s, when he became chief of security at the Kremlin. Stalin had too many political enemies and it wasn’t safe for him to appear in front of the people at public meetings.
And his security’s fears were confirmed. The first person to become his double, a Caucasian by the name of Rashidov, was blown up by a road bomb when his cortege was passing the Red Square. Dadaev’s fate was markedly different, however. Not only did he keep his silence for 55 years, concealing the truth even from his family, but the man is alive to this day! He’s 100 years old.