This article was originally published by Coda’s editorial partner EurasiaNet.

A head severed almost 180 years ago is causing a stir in Russia today, with the government trying to decide where the skull of a storied Caucasus rebel belongs — in a museum or in a grave.

Somewhere Leo Tolstoy is smiling, watching the title character of his novel “Hadji Murad” haunt Russia almost two centuries later. Murad was a fearsome warrior, immortalized by Tolstoy in his classic work, which served as a literary indictment of Russia’s brutal subjugation of the peoples of the Caucasus.

Now, the Russian authorities are pondering the possibility of reuniting the skull of the real life Hadji Murad, now in a museum in St. Petersburg, with his other skeletal remains, believed to lie in a rarely-visited grave in a remote part of Azerbaijan.