MOSCOW, April 27 - RAPSI, Diana Gutsul. The Supreme Court has refused to accept an application filed by Stalin's grandson Evgeny Dzhugashvili to cancel the State Duma's approval of its resolution on the Katyn tragedy, lawyer Sergei Starygin told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI/rapsinews.com) on Friday.

“The Supreme Court judge motivated its refusal by the extremely far-fetched allegation that the applicant's request is meant not to contest the Duma resolution, but rather to refute the information contained therein,” Starygin said.

Dzhugashvili's earlier statement of claim read that the “offensive legal act presents false information diminishing Stalin's merits to Russia's authorities and citizens, as well as the authorities and citizens of foreign countries."

The resolution reads in part that the crime was committed upon Stalin's direct order.

Dzhugashvili alleged that the criminal case on the mass murder of Polish POWs in Katyn was part of the indictment against Hermann Goering and Alfred Jodl at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. They were found guilty of committing the crime.

Dzhugashvili stated that he lodged a similar lawsuit with the Supreme Court, but it was returned without a hearing. Meanwhile, he was advised to appeal to a district court.

The Soviet authorities placed the blame for the Katyn massacre on the Nazis, saying the crime took place in 1941 when the territory was occupied by German troops. However, Mikhail Gorbachev formally admitted in 1990 that the executions were carried out by the Commissariat for Internal Affairs in 1940.

In the 1990s, Russia handed over to Poland copies of documents from top-secret File No. 1, which squarely placed the blame on the Soviet Union. Last November, the Duma approved a resolution recognizing the massacre as a crime committed by Stalin's regime.