MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Evgeny Dzhugashvili, grandson of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, died on Thursday in Moscow at the age of 80, a spokesperson of the local ambulance service said.
"He died," the spokesperson told RIA Novosti.
Dzhugashvili was born in 1936 in the family of Stalin's eldest son Yakov. After graduation from the Military Academy of the Air Force named after Zhukovsky, he had worked with famous Soviet engineer Sergei Korolev and participated in a number of space launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, including in the launch of the Vostok spacecraft with Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut in history.
Since 1991, Dzhugashvili had been involved in both Russian and Georgian politics. Stalin's descendant had also repeatedly filed lawsuits against different media in order to protect honor and dignity of his grandfather.
