Nikolai svanidze stalin biography

Moscow, Russia – Nikolai Svanidze’s paternal grandfather and namesake was a Communist official in Soviet Georgia – and a distant relative of Josef Stalin’s first wife.

But the kinship meant nothing to the Soviet dictator and his henchmen.

Svanidze was arrested and beaten to death during an interrogation in , at the height of what Russians call the Great Purge, when some , people died at the hands of Stalin’s secret police in less than 18 months.

Millions were jailed, executed, deported and displaced, including entire ethnic groups or social classes, during Stalin’s rule, and millions more died of famines caused by his disastrous agriculture policies.

More than 60 years after Stalin’s own death, Svanidze’s grandson, a historian and television personality, witnesses the dictator’s return as an increasingly popular, and polarising, figure.

“I constantly see people who say ‘he purged my enti