SAINT PETERSBURG - A RUSSIAN publicist and author of a book defending Stalin's deportations of the Chechens in 1944 has been attacked by two assailants of Caucasian appearance, police said on Saturday.

'Igor Pykhalov was beaten on Thursday night near his house by two people aged about 30 and of Caucasian appearance,' a police representative from the southeastern Nevsky district of Russia's second largest city told AFP....