UPDATE: Stalin's Grandson Strikes Out in Court Again

Image via WikipediaThe Russian Information Agency (http://rapsinews.com) reports that Moscow's Tverskoy District Court has thrown out a libel suit against deputies of the lower house of parliament (State Duma) brought by Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, grandson of Josef Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for 25 years with an iron fist and a bushy mustache.

Dzhugashvili is expected to appeal the ruling, which sought a refutation of claims that his infamous grandpa presided over the execution of more than 20,000 Polish Officers and civilians imprisoned in Katyn, a blintz throw from Smolensk, Russia. The Soviet Union maintained for years that the Nazis were responsible for the mass murder in 1941, but former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 turned over classified documents to the Polish government, admitting the execution of the prisoners occurred in 1940 and was carried out by the NKVD--the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the secret police who engaged in political repression during the Stalin regime.

The Russian News Agency reported that Dzhugashvili  sued the Duma for 100,000,000 rubles ($3.3 million) after the lower house of parliament declared in November 2010, the Stalin regime was to blame for the Katyn slaughter, but that lawsuit was tossed by the court, which said he failed to provide evidence to support his damages claim. The litigious grandson previously stumbled in a libel suit against the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in 2009. which had called Grandpa Jo a "bloody cannibal." (See "TUOL" posts 10/14/09 & 9/9/09).

Apparently, the air of a dictator is more powerful and successful than the heir of a dictator.