Court rejects plea to defend Soviet dictator Stalin

A Moscow court has rejected a libel suit filed against a newspaper, by the grandson of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, to protect his grandfather's name.

In his plea, Stalin's grandson Evgeny Jugashvili had demanded that the liberal Novaya Gazeta, co-owned by last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, should retract parts of an article that said Stalin personally signed death warrants.

He had also demanded 10 million roubles (approximately $350,000) in compensation for damage to his grandfather's honour.

Novaya Gazeta spokesperson Nadezhda Prusenkova said the article was based on recently declassified documents, including death warrants bearing Stalin's personal signature.

The warrants were then forwarded to the powerful secret police NKVD's chief Lavrenty Beria for execution.

In the course of Stalin's purges in the early 1930s, several million people were executed or banished to the concentration camps.