Stalin’s grandson sues paper for smearing Soviet dictator; Moscow court hears paper’s defense

Newspaper in Moscow says it did not libel Stalin

MOSCOW — A Russian newspaper defended itself in a Moscow court on Tuesday against charges that it had libeled Josef Stalin by reporting that the Soviet dictator had sent thousands to their deaths.

Stalin’s grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, has sued the Novaya Gazeta newspaper for writing that Stalin personally signed execution orders for thousands of Soviet and foreign citizens. The April 22 article was based on recently declassified Soviet documents.

The grandson, who was not present at Tuesday’s hearing, has demanded compensation from the newspaper and the author of the article, Anatoly Yablokov.

The defense presented evidence in court of Stalin’s repressions, including Russian school textbooks, said Oleg Khlebnikov, a Novaya Gazeta deputy editor.

Dzhugashvili’s lawyer, Yury Mukhin, said the judge was wrong to allow such evidence.

“How can a textbook prove that Stalin was a tyrant?” Mukhin told journalists during a break. Few reporters were allowed inside the small courtroom.

Recent years have seen an escalation in efforts to rehabilitate the dictator who, according to the rights group Memorial, ordered the deaths of at least 724,000 citizens during a series of purges that peaked in the late 1930s.

Ten elderly Stalin supporters gathered outside the courtroom Tuesday holding photographs of the dictator.

“I’ve come here to defend Stalin, to defend him against these terrible accusations,” said Vera Atomanova, 77. “He was a great man. He united the country and created a great superpower.”

She and the others were reading the hardline communist newspaper Molniya, whose main headline said: “The myth of Stalinist repressions.”

Stalin is often revered in Russia for leading the Soviet Union to victory in World War II.

Earlier this year, he was voted the third-greatest Russian of all time in a television poll. A plaque bearing Stalin’s name that decades ago vanished from the vestibule of a Moscow metro station was recently restored. And former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last year denounced efforts to portray Stalin as a “brilliant manager” rather than a murderous autocrat.