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Stalin's legacy lives in Georgia / Grandson defends notorious Soviet leader's actions

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 17, 2006
  • Portrait of Joseph Stalin with grandson holding framed portrait Photo: Yevgeny Dzhugashvili


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The resemblance, you have been told, is uncanny. Yet, even still, when the man himself finally steps out of the shadows, it causes a momentary hesitation, a faltering of your step. And indeed it is true -- even the photos don't accurately portray it.

Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is a compact, solidly built man. His neatly trimmed mustache is white, but at age 70, his gray hair is still thick. He has a fine, broad forehead, a strong nose, large ears and dark, watchful eyes. He speaks slowly and quietly. His home is a small, working-class apartment in Tbilisi, the capital of the mountainous Republic of Georgia, which 15 years ago was a privileged part of the once-mighty Soviet Union.

Yevgeny's family name is virtually unknown beyond Tbilisi. Yet Yevgeny carries an enormous psychological burden, for he is the grandson of one Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili -- better known to the world as Joseph Stalin, one of history's most infamous mass murderers.

According to the prominent Russian human-rights group Memorial, during the time that Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, from 1928 until his death in 1953, he was responsible for the deaths of probably 14 million people, including those starved to death by his purposely launched famines of 1932-33 and 1946-47. Stalin also imprisoned 25 million people in his network of brutal Siberian work camps known as the gulags.

What's more, in 1950 Stalin gave his personal approval to North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to attack South Korea; the resulting war killed 600,000 soldiers on both sides, more than a million South Koreans civilians, and more than a million North Korean civilians.

Stalin's savage lifelong paranoia was such that his own native country of Georgia endured the largest percentage of people executed or exiled to life in prison for imagined crimes.

The dictator's legendary viciousness even destroyed his own family. Stalin's first two wives died under mysterious circumstances. His son Yakov -- Yevgeny's father -- served as a Red Army officer during World II. When he was captured by the Germans, the Nazis proposed that he be exchanged for a German field marshal held by the Russians.

But a furious Stalin felt that his son was a coward and a traitor for allowing himself to be captured alive. He told the Germans: "I have no son." Yevgeny's father died in the German prison camp, though whether he was shot or committed suicide is unknown, leaving Yevgeny without either parent at age 7. Stalin's other son Vassili (Yevgeny's uncle) died an alcoholic in 1962, and his aunt, Svetlana, famously fled to the United States five years later.

Retiring as a colonel after 30 years of service in the Red Army, Yevgeny lives on a $300 monthly pension. I spent an hour talking to him through a translator, trying to get a measure of the man who never met his infamous grandfather, yet refuses to accept the undisputable record of his atrocities.

Although born in Russia, Yevgeny has lived much of his life in Georgia. He has a Georgian wife, two Georgian-born sons and several Georgian grandchildren, whom he dotes on. All of them speak Georgian to each other. Yet he long ago refused to learn the Georgian language. Of course, this has only served to isolate him more. When asked why he continues to live in Georgia, 15 years after the country broke free of Russian control, he says: "I live in Georgia because Stalin was born here, and I don't want to lose these roots."

"My life can be divided into two parts," he says to my translator, "when Stalin was alive, and after his passing." He was allowed to enter university, for example, without taking exams, simply because of his name. Later, when Stalin died of a stroke, and his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin for his brutality, Yevgeny was denounced, though he was barely 20. And "even now," he says, "I am often denounced."

Yet he steadfastly believes that his grandfather only did what was necessary to build the Soviet Union into a great power, an opinion often mirrored by others of his generation.

In 1999, Yevgeny tried for the first time to enter politics, by creating a new political party in Georgia called the Stalinist Bloc, which sought the return of the old Soviet Union. But the movement failed, and in any case the Georgian electoral commission barred him from taking part in the elections because he was not a Georgian citizen.

He has traveled abroad only once -- to Holland last year -- to mark the 60th anniversary of the historic 1945 meeting at Yalta between his grandfather, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. While at a history conference sponsored by a Dutch university, he met the grandsons of Churchill and FDR. Yevgeny says he enjoyed speaking to James Roosevelt, but found Winston Spencer-Churchill, arrogant.

In the end, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili seems a rather sad character, living his entire life in the shadow of someone else -- someone he never met. His apartment has an air of gloom, despite the late-afternoon sunshine streaming through the windows. There are several huge photos of Stalin staring down from the walls, an ornate clock and a faded world map that shows the world frozen in time, as it was when the Soviet Union was a major global power.

When pressed, he rants on about how the United States and Israel are "both out to destroy Russia." And he claims that the various peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe such as the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Ukraine's Orange Revolution -- which helped pull the USSR apart -- were instigated by the United States "so as to get at Russia itself."

When my translator and I were back out on the street and began to walk away from his apartment building -- which overlooks a place called Liberty Park -- I had a feeling of being watched. I turned around and glanced upward. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili was standing on his balcony. He started to wave. It was the only time I saw a slender smile cross his face.

In the end I was surprised to find myself feeling sorry for him. A foolish failing, perhaps, and one that his merciless grandfather would no doubt have despised me for having.