Posted on 08/31/2009 3:10:52 PM PDT by decimon
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Josef Stalin was in the dock on Monday when a Russian court held a preliminary hearing in a libel case brought by his grandson over a newspaper story which said the tyrant had ordered the killings of Soviet citizens.
Rights groups say the case shows a creeping attempt in modern Russia to paint a more benevolent picture of the Soviet Union's most feared leader, under whose rule millions perished.
Stalin's grandson, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, is seeking 9.5 million roubles ($299,000) from the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and 500,000 roubles from the author of an article published last April claiming Stalin personally signed politburo death orders.
>
"We want to rehabilitate Stalin," he told Reuters. "He turned populations into peoples, he presided over a golden era in literature and the arts, he was a real leader."
>
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What a moron! It would be like Hitler’s relative trying to clear Hitler over the killings.
Is this a Bella Pelosi quote?
He tried for fewer but better Russians comrade.
Ninotchka. Good movie.
Exactly
Yevgeny should find himself a Beria and clear more than his Father’s name.
This is one of the dangers in the Internet age. Everything is taken out of context. Youth do not have the breadth of experience to weigh truth vs lies.
They do not know the depths of human cruelty. The have not experienced it.
This is a very sad thing, when we try to remove the past cruelties from history, thinking it is no longer important.
How many hundreds of millions of people have to die for the illusion of ideology called Communism (Marxism/Fascism/Socialism/Progressivism).
They can only stay in power by repression and killing the human will.
Death to such Tryrants.
Wow what next: Satan suing to clear his name now??
Greta Garbo was great in that, I was wondering if anybody would get the reference.
We need not look beyond our shores to find sickening revisionist history.
its not like the Russians ever rewrote history.. remember the pics of the MayDay parades where the apparatchicks next to the leader kept being airbrushed away? He was standing alone by the end of the purges.
So the best way to modernize your country is to kill off the most productive farmers, purge the smartest people from the military, base much of the economy on slave labor, and ignore intelligence that the Germans are about to invade and devastate your country.
The treachery of Joseph Davies, the 2nd US Ambassador to the USSR, is downright nauseating. He should be dug up, and shot, just as many Americans were shot as a result of his inaction, his duplicity, and at times, his complicity with Stalin and the Chekists.
This is a must read for those who are interested in the shameful Roosevelt Administration and their buddies in the print media, especially that putrid pedophile, Walter Duranty, may he and Davies and others of their ilk rot in hell......
So Yevgeny is dedicating his life to a search for the real killer?
Treachery aside, we apparently wrote off all who went there voluntarily. Don't think any were abducted so that should be all of them.
We also didn't do much, if anything, to find the soldiers who went missing during our 1918-1920 incursion into Russia.
Not to let FDR or anyone off the hook but I don't know if anything could have been done.
Yes that was true for some of the diplomats stationed at Spasso House and the American Embassy. For them, the new American expats got what they deserved. Remember many of the political pilgrims went there because of the lies and half-truths that was perpetrated on an American public by the NY Times and other leftist media outlets. They were left-of-center to be sure, but they bought the leftist line that the USSR was the bold new world, and was insulated from the economic depression raging that was particularly intense because of the horrible economic and financial mismanagement from the NewDealers in the Franklin Roosevelt Administration.
However, many of the American emigres were coaxed into the USSR to work for the plant that Henry Ford built for Stalin. When they showed up in the USSR, many of them had their passports confiscated, and many of them were forced to become Soviet citizens. Then there were cases of others that had their passports stolen by the NKVD. These passports were then tampered with so as to be used by Soviet NKVD and Soviet military intelligence for Soviet spies to penetrate the USA.
According to the book, FDR, Truman, and Ike did very little to hold the USSR accountable for taking American’s hostage during WWII and it’s aftermath. The author’s point is that by remaining quiet in the face of the Soviet outrages against American citizens, we helped enable the Soviets to continue this despicable behavior against Americans. When we did try and shed light on individual cases and shed the light on Soviet abuses, the Soviets were more forthcoming about those Americans being held.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.