Grandson of Josef Stalin filed a suit against the Russian parliament, demanding to admit that his grandfather was not guilty of the Katyn Massacre of 1936-1938.

75-year-old Evgeny Gzhugashvili demands a review of the acknowledgement stating that the “Katyn crime was committed at the direct order of Stalin and other Soviet leaders.”

This is not the first suit filed by Gzhugashvili Jr. Over the years, he has been actively suing newspapers and journals that call Stalin an executioner.

In April 2011, he called on the State Duma to consider its Katyn resolution, paying him 100 million rubles ($3 million) in compensation. The Supreme Court dismissed his claim, explaining that the Katyn events have no effect on Stalin’s reputation.

The Katyn case has long complicated the Russia–Poland relationship, in 2010 Russia began to release documents related to the Katyn mass execution to the Polish authorities.

Over 14,000 Polish officers were imprisoned and brought to the territory of the USSR in 1939. In 1943 reports emerged that the Soviet side executed the officers in the Katyn forest, located 14 kilometers west of the city of Smolensk.

For decades, the Soviet regime denied responsibility for killing the officers and Polish officials in Katyn and other areas of Russia, blaming it on “Nazi criminals”. However, in 1990, the Itar-Tass news agency published a release announcing the Katyn case as one of the worst crimes of the Stalin era. Declassified documents showed that 22,000 Polish prisoners were killed in a special operation by NKVD police on March 5, 1940. 

In November 2010, the State Duma adopted the statement acknowledging that it was Stalin who ordered the Katyn shooting.

In April 2011, all the declassified Katyn case documents were handed over to Poland.