Joseph Stalin's grandson has sued a newspaper for claiming the dictator ordered the killings of Soviet citizens.
Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is claiming damages of 9.5 million roubles (about £183,000) from the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and 500,000 roubles (about £9,600) from the author of an article that claims Stalin signed death warrants for members of his politburo.
Rights groups say the case demonstrates another worrying attempt to paint a more benevolent picture of Stalin, under whose rule millions perished.
Leonid Zhura, a convinced Stalinist who is representing Mr Dzhugashvili in court, said that the article - based on declassified Kremlin documents - damaged Stalin's reputation.
He said: "Half a century of lies have been poured over Stalin's reputation and he cannot defend himself from the grave so this case is essential to put the record straight.
"We want to rehabilitate Stalin. He turned populations into peoples, he presided over a golden era in literature and the arts, he was a real leader."
A phrase in the article saying Stalin and the secret police committed grave crimes against their own people caused particular offence, Mr Zhura said.
Stalin's reputation remains a source of controversy. His supporters point out that he defeated Nazism - after being double-crossed by Hitler with whom he had made a secret deal to carve up Poland - as well as making the Soviet Union a superpower.
Words of praise for the Georgian-born Bolshevik were unveiled last week on the marbled halls of a central Moscow metro station. Last year he was voted the third greatest Russian in a national TV poll.
And as the world marked the anniversary of the start of the Second World War, the Russian government condemned efforts to equate Nazism with Soviet Communism. In a newspaper article, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov railed against "lies" and the "rewriting of history".
However, Stalin's critics point out that an estimated 15 to 20 million people perished under his rule and that slave labor was integral to his economy.
"There is a change in society's view of Stalin," Anatoly Yablokov, who authored the Novaya Gazeta article, said after a preliminary court hearing into Mr Dzhugashvili's case.
"We hear much more now about how much of an effective manager Stalin was, much more than in the 1990s, and much less about the repression."
Nikita Petrov, a historian with the Memorial human rights group, said: "The authorities are trying to build a bridge to the Soviet Union over the Yeltsin years to idealize Stalin.
"They have decided it was too dangerous to delve into the horrors of our history. It is deeply sad. It is the football hooligan's view of history."
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