Russian wants legal action against former Soviet leader Stalin

London: A Russian man, whose grandfather was executed after being falsely accused of spying, is taking posthumous action against former Russian leader Josef Stalin, a media report said.

Denis Karagodin holds Stalin and nearly 20 others responsible for his grandfather's death, The Dailymail reported.

The 34-year-old's grandfather, Stepan Ivanovich Karagodin, was shot in the Siberian city of Tomsk after being arrested in December 1937, the report said.

Stepan Ivanovich Karagodin was convicted on trumped up charges of being a Japanese spy. He was shot seven weeks later but it took half a century for his family to hear he had been falsely accused of spying against his motherland and shot.

His grandosn said he was finishing a job started by his ancestors in seeking to establish the truth about his great grandfather's fate, and it led to the discovery in usually secret archives that he was shot dead by NKVD executioner Nikolay Ivanovich Zyryanov.

He has since been in touch with the executioner's descendants and received an emotional letter from Zyryanov's granddaughter begging for forgiveness, the report said.

Karagodin has accepted her moving apology but intends to launch a posthumous legal claim against Stalin and 20-plus others who he holds as responsible for murdering his ancestor.