Stalin ‘victim of historical propaganda’

Stalin’s great-grandson has given an impassioned defence of the infamous Soviet Jewish dictator, claiming his image as a mass murderer is “historical propaganda”.

His comments came as a bizarre trial launched by another descendant was heard in a Moscow courtroom.

Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, Stalin’s 73 year-old grandson, is pursuing a legal case against a leading liberal newspaper for allegedly insulting his grandfather’s honour. He is contesting an article in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper that claimed Stalin personally signed the death warrants of tens of thousands of people he had shot in the 1930s.

The very fact that a court has agreed to hear such an odd complaint has angered liberal politicians and historians and stirred uncomfortable memories of a period the current government still glorifies in a highly selective way.

Jacob Stalin, the great-grandson who is helping his older relative bring the case, claimed the Soviet dictator should be idolised rather than criticised. “Josef Stalin never broke any Soviet law,” he told the BBC’s World at One programme.

“The more information I get I think my pride [in Stalin] is getting bigger and bigger.”

He said claims about Stalin’s so-called crimes were “false information” spread by Western political servants.

Neither relative, who both live in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Stalin’s homeland, were present at the trial. They have retained an amateur historian and Stalin admirer to fight their case in Moscow.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/6273794/Stalin-victim-of-historical-propaganda.html