Whitewashing Stalin

From the Telegraph:

Josef Stalin's grandson is pursuing a surreal libel case against a leading liberal newspaper in Russia for allegedly insulting his late grandfather's honour.

Historians and politicians have cast the lawsuit as a test case for modern Russia's attitude towards Stalin at a time when they say the Kremlin is deliberately playing up his achievements at the expense of his crimes in order to boost patriotism.

This excerpt is from the BBC's history of Josef Stalin:

One of the most powerful and murderous dictators in history, Stalin was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. His regime of terror caused the death and suffering of tens of millions, but he also oversaw the war machine that played a key role in the defeat of Nazism.