Can you actually defame a dictator?
Somebody wants us to think so:
Stalin’s grandson sues newspaper
Joseph Stalin’s grandson has launched a court action claiming a liberal Russian newspaper has defamed the former Soviet dictator.
Yevgeny Dzhugashvili says an article claiming Stalin personally ordered the deaths of Soviet citizens is a lie.
A Moscow court has agreed to hear the case against the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
The paper published a piece referring to declassified death warrants which it says bore Stalin’s personal signature.
Mr Dzhugashvili – who was not at the court as the case was brought on Thursday – says that is a lie, and that Stalin never directly ordered the deaths of anyone.
It is the latest bizarre twist in what many see as a Kremlin-backed campaign to rehabilitate Stalin’s reputation, says the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow. </em>
