There’s a story about a picture of Joseph Stalin that people in the former Soviet Union used to tell each other. The tale, recounted in Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s book Second-hand Time, describes the brutal dictator giving a lesson in despotism to his son. ‘You think I’m Stalin?’ he asks. ‘You’re wrong! That’s Stalin.’ And he would point to a portrait of himself that was hanging on the wall – the same picture that also hung on the wall of almost every household across the USSR. He understood the idea of his presence – and the fear of it – was more important than his actual presence. It may have been the same reasoning that led him to seek the services of a dancer and juggler named Felix Dadaev. Many important historical figures have made use of body doubles. General Bernard Montgomery famously confused the Germans during the Second World War by sending doppelganger M.E. Clifton James around the planet. Saddam Hussein is said to have sent lookalikes to TV interviews so he didn’t have to bother. The practice has returned to the headlines in recent years, with speculation that
Russian President
Vladimir Putin has a posse of doubles who make public appearances for him in an effort to hide apparent health issues. Some have even suggested one of them might take over when when his decades-long reign comes to an end, in order to keep his name going. Those rumours have never been substantiated. But we know something similar has been pulled off in
Russia before – and we can thank Putin for that fact. In 2008, his government gave permission for Felix Dadaev to tell his remarkable story. The 88-year-old subsequently released his autobiography, which revealed that he was one of at least four decoys used by Joseph Stalin at the height of his power. He was born around 1920 in Dagestan, a republic in the far south-west of the country bordering Georgia and Azerbaijan. When he was 16, the talented ballet dancer and magician looked set for a career in entertainment. He became a member of a concert brigade after the USSR joined the war in 1941, and kept alternating between performing and soldiering until the following year, when his life turned in an astonishing new direction. While fighting in the Chechen city of Grozny in 1942, Dadaev was seriously injured. His condition was so awful that he was taken to the hospital as a corpse and his family were told he had been killed. But when it turned out he had survived, it seems the Russian authorities realised they had an unbeatable opportunity on their hands. Ever since he was young, Dadaev had been told by his
Friends he bore a striking resemblance to Stalin. And now that ‘Felix Dadaev’ technically no longer existed, he would be able to take on the identity of the General Secretary full-time. One day in 1943, he was whisked off to a site near Moscow, where the NKVD – the predecessor to the KGB – informed him that this was precisely what was going to happen. Physically healthy 28-year-old woman will be euthanised next month Russia under state of emergency after mystery nuclear leak Girl, 12, 'under
police protection' after marrying 63-year-old priest Death row killer's flippant last three words before execution He told the Daily Mail in 2008: ‘I was flattered, of course – proud to look like the leader, proud to think what my friends who teased me about looking like him when I was young would say now.’ Despite the significant age gap – Dadaev was in his early twenties, while Stalin was 60 – some impressive hair and makeup work made the resemblance almost uncanny. The decoy’s ability to grow the familiar bushy moustache didn’t hurt either. But looks alone were not enough, and the younger man had to spend months perfecting the leader’s distinctive Georgian accent and intonation, as well as the way he moved his body. Dadaev later recalled his first meeting with Nikolai Vlasik, Stalin’s notorious head of personal security: ‘He was stunned, then, after a pause, nodded his head approvingly. Then he studied my jacket and gown, paid attention to my slightly bent left arm and glanced at my boots. ‘I was waiting with fear in case he noticed my fake grey temples. I had a make-up artist but he couldn’t be with me all the time. So I learned to do it myself. ‘But my ability to copy Stalin’s manners, voice and walk was far more important.’ The quality of his performance not only meant he kept his
Job – it likely also meant he kept his life. If he had not been convincing enough, it’s probable that he would have been shot so there was no chance of the secret plan leaking. Over the following years, his job was largely to act as a form of human bluff, being driven out of the
Kremlin in the dictator’s car just in case any would-be assassins were lying in wait. His most high-profile gig came in February 1945, at the famous Yalta conference where Winston Churchill, Stalin and Franklin D Roosevelt discussed what should be done with
Germany when the war came to an end. In another bid to fool potential killers, Dadaev left on a publicised flight from
Moscow a few hours after his boss had quietly flown out of the capital. ‘But it didn’t work,’ said Dadaev. ‘Two attempts were made in Yalta to kill the real Stalin. Our intelligence failed. I was back in Moscow by then. ‘Seven high-ranking intelligence officers lost their posts. They were lucky to lose just that.’ The war was long finished by the time the doppelganger finally met the dictator. It was the early 1950s, not long before Stalin’s death. Dadaev recalled: ‘He smiled and gave me an approving nod and that was it.’ On March 5 1953, Joseph Stalin died in office – a moment so memorably chaotic it was made into a film by Armando Iannucci in 2017. If Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hírlap is to be believed, Dadaev was even asked to be a stand-in for the leader’s corpse at his funeral. Authorities are said to have been concerned that not everyone in the vast crowd that turned out to see the body would be able to catch a glimpse. Dadaev was reportedly so opposed to this idea he shaved off his moustache, rendering it impossible to carry out. But stories like that attach themselves easily to a life as extraordinary as Felix Dadaev’s. It was more than five decades later before he was able to tell it from his own perspective. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk . For more stories like this, check our news page . MORE : How the horror of Russian atrocities still haunt the people of Bucha two years on from massacre MORE : How Ukraine’s undercover agents have infiltrated Putin’s invading forces MORE : Russia under state of emergency after mystery nuclear leak Privacy Policy