Moscow, February 13 Roy Medvedev, a prominent critic of Stalin's policies and a Soviet-era political analyst and author, died on Friday at the age of 100, according to Russian state media.
Medvedev, who criticized the Marxism practiced by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, was expelled from the CPSU in 1969 after his book, "Let History Judge," was published in the West.
His father, Alexander, a Commissar in the Red Army, was arrested during Stalin's purges and died in a labor camp within the GULAG network, as described by Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn in "The Gulag Archipelago."
Medvedev died on Friday at the age of 100, according to Russian State TV, Rossiaya 24, quoting his wife.
The report did not provide any further details.
Medvedev's father named his son after M.N. Roy, a prominent leader of Comintern (the Communist International), the founder of the Communist Party of India.
"Let History Judge" reflected the dissident thinking that emerged among Soviet intellectuals in the 1960s, who sought a reformist version of socialism, similar to Medvedev's views.
Along with Andrei Sakharov and others, Medvedev announced his position in an open letter to the Soviet leadership in 1970.
In the book "A Question of Madness," co-authored with his twin brother, Zhores, a dissident biologist, Medvedev describes Zhores' involuntary confinement in the Kaluga Psychiatric Hospital.
Medvedev rejoined the Communist Party in 1989, after Mikhail Gorbachev launched his perestroika and glasnost programs of gradual political and economic reforms.
He was elected to the Soviet Union's Congress of People's Deputies and was appointed a member of the Supreme Soviet (Parliament).
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Medvedev and dozens of other former communist deputies of the Soviet and Russian parliaments founded the Socialist Party of Working People and became a co-chair of the party.
In 2008, Medvedev wrote a biography of Vladimir Putin, in which he gave a positive evaluation of Putin's activities as president. He supported Putin's policies regarding the annexation of Crimea and the Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
The Ria Novosti news agency said that in the early 21st century, Medvedev retired from politics, focusing on writing. He authored over 50 books on history and biographies of many political figures, including Vladimir Putin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Yuri Andropov. He also authored a literary study on the authorship of "Quiet Flows the Don," it added.
