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Article: The unquiet graves of Yalta: forty-five years ago, seventy thousand Cossacks and Yugoslavs were "repatriated" to torture, slavery and death at the hands of Stalin and Tito. Was this a war crime?
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- February 5, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Unquiet Graves of Yalta
NINETEEN EIGHTY-NINE in London closed with the libel hearing of all time. Aldington v. Tolstoy (a lord and an emigre count, together with a second defendant, plain Mr. Nigel Watts) resulted in record damages of 1.5 million pounds sterling. Costs of an estimated further 1 million pounds sterling were awarded against the two defendants; none of which, they promptly declared, could they possibly pay. The allegation against which the plaintiff, Lord Aldington, was suing was that he was a "war criminal" who had sent back seventy thousand Cossacks and anti-Tito Yugoslavs to their deaths in 1945.
At times, the case, which ran for a ...