Business diary: Was Stalin a Rothschild?

Edited by Simon Goodley
Last Updated: 11:37pm BST 25/05/2007

It's well known that the former Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, was such
a good communist that he once worked for the Rothschilds, the banking
and wine family. But now I stumble on a more sensational theory, which
suggests the relationship was far more intimate.

In a lengthy piece on a personal website, one Clifford Shack argues that
Stalin was fathered not by Vissarion Dzhugashvili but by Baron Edmond de
Rothschild, who, he argues, could have met the tyrant's mother while
visiting Georgia on a wine trip.

It's all a bit sketchy and at times the argument seems a trifle far
fetched but it's easily settled via a DNA test (Stalin's daughter's
still alive). Could I possibly impose and pluck a strand of chairman
Baron David de Rothschild's hair, I ask an NM Rothschild spokesman?

"I'll get back to you," he sighs.

Mind you do.