Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva[a] (née Stalina;[b] 28 February 1926 – 22 November 2011), later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967 she became an international sensation when she defected to the United States and, in 1978, became a naturalized American citizen. From 1984 to 1986 she briefly returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship reinstated.[1] She was Stalin's last surviving child.[2]

Early life

A young Svetlana Stalina being carried by her father in 1935

Svetlana Stalina was born on 28 February 1926.[3][4] As her mother was interested in pursuing a professional career, Alexandra Bychokova was hired as a nanny to look after Alliluyeva and her older brother Vasily (born 1921). Alliluyeva and Bychokova became quite close, and remained friends for 30 years, until Bychokova died in 1956.[5]

On 9 November 1932, Alliluyeva's mother shot herself.[6] To conceal the suicide, the children were told that she had died of peritonitis, a complication from appendicitis. It would be 10 years before they learnt the truth of their mother's death.[7]

In 1933 Alliluyeva and Vasily began attending Moscow School No. 25 [ru]; while Vasily was transferred to a new school in 1937, Alliluyeva would stay until 1943 when she graduated the 10th grade. At the school, Alliluyeva was given no special treatment, and was regarded simply as another student.[8]

Several other relatives of Alliluyeva were killed in the aftermath of the Great Purge, including her aunt Anna, and Anna's husband, Stanislav Redens, who was shot in January 1940.[9]

On 15 August 1942 Winston Churchill saw Alliluyeva in Stalin's private apartments at the Kremlin, describing her as "a handsome red-haired girl, who kissed her father dutifully". Churchill says Stalin "looked at me with a twinkle in his eye as if, so I thought, to convey 'You see, even we Bolsheviks have a family life.' "[10]

At the age of 16, Alliluyeva fell in love with Aleksei Kapler, a Jewish Soviet filmmaker who was 22 years her senior. Her father vehemently disapproved of the relationship and Kapler was sentenced to five years of exile in 1943 to Vorkuta and was then sentenced again in 1948 to five years in labour camps in Inta.[11]

Marriages

Alliluyeva was first married in 1944 to Grigory Morozov, a Jewish student at Moscow University's Institute of International Affairs.[12] Her father did not like Morozov, though he never met him. They had one child, a son named Iosif, who was born in 1945.[13] The couple divorced in 1947, but remained close friends for decades afterwards.[1][14]

Alliluyeva's second marriage was arranged for her to Yuri Zhdanov, the son of Stalin's right-hand man Andrei Zhdanov and himself one of Stalin's close associates. The couple married early in 1949. Alliluyeva lived with Zhdanov's family at this time, though felt herself dominated by his mother, Zinaida, which was something Stalin had warned her of.[15] Yuri was devoted to Zinaida, and busied himself with Party work, so did not spend a lot of time with Alliluyeva.[16] In 1950 Alliluyeva gave birth to a daughter, Yekaterina. The marriage was dissolved soon afterwards.[1]

In 1962 she married Ivan Svanidze, the nephew of Stalin's first wife, Kato Svanidze, soon after meeting him for the first time since his parents' arrest in 1937.[17] They went against Soviet policy by marrying in a church. Svanidze was not healthy, owing to difficulties of his internal exile in Kazakhstan, and the marriage ended within a year.[18]

From 1970 to 1973, she was married to the American architect William Wesley Peters (a son-in-law of Frank Lloyd Wright), with whom she had a daughter, Olga Peters (later known also as Chrese Evans).[19]

After Stalin's death

After her father's death in 1953, Alliluyeva worked as a lecturer and translator in Moscow. Her training was in History and Political Thought, a subject she was forced to study by her father, although her true passion was literature and writing.[1] In a 2010 interview, she stated that his refusal to let her study arts and his treatment of Kapler were the two times that Stalin "broke my life", and that Stalin loved her but was "a very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel."[20] When asked at a New York conference about whether she agreed with her father's rule, she said that she was disapproving of a lot of his decisions but also noted that the responsibility for them also lay with the Communist regime in general.[21]

Relationship with Brajesh Singh

In 1963, while in hospital for a tonsillectomy, Alliluyeva met Kunwar Brajesh Singh, an Indian Communist visiting Moscow. The two fell in love. Singh was mild-mannered and well-educated but gravely ill with bronchiectasis and emphysema. The romance grew deeper and stronger still while the couple were recuperating in Sochi near the Black Sea. Singh returned to Moscow in 1965 to work as a translator, but he and Alliluyeva were not allowed to marry. He died the following year, in 1966. For her first trip outside the Soviet Union, she was allowed to travel to India to take his ashes to his family to pour into the Ganges river.[22] In an interview on 26 April 1967, she referred to Singh as her husband, but also stated that they were never allowed to marry officially.[23]

Political asylum and later life

Alliluyeva in 1967

Alliluyeva asked to have official permission to stay in India through the Soviet ambassador, Ivan Benediktov.[24] However, her request was not accepted, and instead, she was ordered to return to the Soviet Union.[24] Then, on 9 March 1967, Alliluyeva approached the United States Embassy in New Delhi. After she stated her desire to defect in writing, the United States ambassador Chester Bowles offered her political asylum and a new life in the United States.

Religion

Alliluyeva was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church on 20 March 1963. During her years of exile, she experimented with various religions. She then turned to the Eastern Orthodox Church and is also reported to have thought of becoming a nun.[11]

In 1967, Alliluyeva found herself spending time with Catholics in Switzerland and encountered many denominations during her time in the United States. She received a letter from Father Garbolino, an Italian Catholic priest from Pennsylvania, inviting her to make a pilgrimage to Fátima, Portugal, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the famous apparitions there. In 1969, Garbolino was in New Jersey and went to visit Alliluyeva at Princeton. In California, she lived with a Catholic couple, Michael and Rose Ginciracusa, for two years (1976–78). She read books by authors such as Raissa Maritain. While living in Cambridge, on 13 December 1982, the feast of Saint Lucy of Syracuse, Alliluyeva converted to Catholicism.[41]

Works

In July 1962, Alliluyeva had met French journalist and first laureate of the International Lenin Peace Prize, Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie, and asked him if anyone would read her memoir. Alliluyeva wrote a memoir in Russian while still in the Soviet Union. The manuscript was carried safely out of the country by T. N. Kaul, Indian Ambassador to the Soviet Union, who returned it to her in New Delhi. Alliluyeva gave her memoir to a CIA agent, Robert Rayle, at the time of her defection. Rayle made a copy of it. It was the only thing other than a few items of clothing taken by Alliluyeva on a secret passenger flight out of India.[42] In 1967, the book was published as Twenty Letters to a Friend ("Dvadtsat' pisem k drugu"). Raymond Pearson, in Russia and Eastern Europe, described Alliluyeva's book as a naïve attempt to shift the blame for Stalinist crimes onto Lavrentiy Beria, and whitewash her father's life.[43][44]

Bibliography

  • Alliluyeva, Svetlana; Johnson, Priscilla (1967). Twenty Letters to a Friend. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-0-06-010099-5 (subscription required)
  • Alliluyeva, Svetlana; Chavchavadze, Paul (1969). Only One Year. Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-010102-4. (subscription required)
  • Alliluyeva, Svetlana (1984). Faraway Music. India: Lancer International. ISBN 978-0-8364-1359-5

Alliluyeva was portrayed by Joanna Roth in the HBO's 1992 television film Stalin[45] and Andrea Riseborough in the 2017 satirical film The Death of Stalin.[46]

Alliluyeva is the subject of the 2015 biography Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by the Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan.[47]

Alliluyeva is the subject of the 2019 novel The Red Daughter by the American writer John Burnham Schwartz.[48]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Russian: Светлана Иосифовна Аллилуева
    Georgian: სვეტლანა იოსების ასული ალილუევა, romanized: svet'lana iosebis asuli alilueva
  2. ↑ Russian: Сталина

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Martin 2011
  2. ↑ "Publishing: Land of Opportunity". TIME. 26 May 1967. Archived from the original on 21 October 2007. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  3. ↑ Sullivan 2015, p. 15
  4. 1 2 3 "Stalin's daughter Lana Peters dies in US of cancer". BBC News. 28 November 2011. Archived from the original on 29 November 2011. Retrieved 15 September 2019. At her birth, on Feb. 28, 1926, she was named Svetlana Stalina, the only daughter and last surviving child of the brutal Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin. After he died in 1953, she took her mother's last name, Alliluyeva. In 1970, after her defection and an American marriage, she became and remained Lana Peters.
  5. ↑ Sullivan 2015, pp. 23–24
  6. ↑ Kotkin 2017, pp. 110–111
  7. ↑ Sullivan 2015, p. 53
  8. ↑ Holmes 1999, p. 165
  9. ↑ Greensmith, James (6 April 2023). In the Mind of Stalin. Pen and Sword History. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-3990-6361-6.
  10. ↑ Churchill, Winston S. (1950). "XXVIII: Moscow: A Relationship Established – section: He invites me to an impromptu dinner". The Hinge of Fate. The Second World War. Vol. Book II: Africa redeemed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 404.
  11. 1 2 3 "Lana Peters". The Daily Telegraph. 29 November 2011. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  12. ↑ Alliluyeva 1967, p. 194
  13. ↑ Alliluyeva 1967, p. 195
  14. ↑ Alliluyeva 1967, p. 197
  15. ↑ Alliluyeva 1967, p. 205
  16. ↑ Alliluyeva 1967, p. 206
  17. ↑ Sullivan 2015, p. 230
  18. ↑ Sullivan 2015, p. 232
  19. ↑ Bauer, Scott (28 November 2011). "Stalin's daughter Lana Peters dies at 85". Yahoo! News. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 16 July 2012. Retrieved 29 November 2011.
  20. 1 2 3 "Lana about Svetlana: Stalin's daughter on her life in Wisconsin". TwinCities.com. 18 April 2010. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
  21. ↑ "Stalin's daughter on father's rule". BBC News. 29 November 2011. Retrieved 19 November 2019.
  22. 1 2 3 Eremenko, Polina (26 October 2016). "Дети Сталина. Ночные кошмары Крис Эванс" [Stalin's children. Nightmares Chris Evans]. «Сноб» (snob.ru) (in Russian). Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  23. ↑ Sullivan 2015, pp. 247–248
  24. 1 2 Paul M. McGarr (2020). "From Russia with Love: Dissidents, Defectors and the Politics of Asylum in Cold War India" (PDF). The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 48 (4): 752. doi:10.1080/03086534.2020.1741835. S2CID 216431839.
  25. 1 2 Bowles, Chester (February 2013). "The Day Stalin's Daughter Asked for Asylum in the U.S." The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training: Foreign Affairs Oral History Project. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  26. ↑ CIA Station Chief David Blee facilitated her exit.
  27. ↑ Blake, Patricia (8 January 1985). "Personalities: The Saga of Stalin's "Little Sparrow"". TIME. Archived from the original on 1 October 2008. Retrieved 10 September 2008.
  28. ↑ Tucker, Bev (2 August 2006). "Pennington Piano Teacher Remembers Stalin's Daughter and Granddaughter". Town Topics. Retrieved 10 September 2008.
  29. ↑ Thompson, Nicholas (2009). The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War. New York: Henry Holt and Co. p. 228. ISBN 978-0-8050-8142-8.
  30. ↑ "В Москве скончался Иосиф Аллилуев, сын Светланы Аллилуевой" [Joseph Alliluev, son of Svetlana Alliluyeva, died in Moscow]. Channel One (in Russian). 2 November 2008. Archived from the original on 18 May 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  31. ↑ "Не стало Светланы Аллилуевой" [Svetlana Alliluyeva died]. Vesti.ru. 29 November 2011. Archived from the original on 1 December 2011. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  32. ↑ "Дочь Сталина была под колпаком" [Stalin's daughter lived under surveillance]. Moskovskij Komsomolets (in Russian). 20 November 2012. Archived from the original on 23 March 2013. Retrieved 24 March 2013.
  33. 1 2 3 Thompson 2014
  34. 1 2 Couderc, Frédéric (8 January 2012). "La petite-fille de Staline est une femme libre" [Stalin's granddaughter is a free woman]. Paris Match (parismatch.com) (in French). Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  35. 1 2 Lederer, Edith M. (16 April 2016). "Olga Peters Back at Her English School". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  36. 1 2 3 Booth Conroy, Sarah (15 April 1986). "The Odyssey Of Stalin's Grandaughter [sic]". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  37. ↑ "'Over me my father's shadow hovers': an interview with Stalin's daughter Svetlana". Standpoint (originally published in The Observer, 1984). January 2012. Archived from the original on 3 December 2020.
  38. ↑ Woodruff, Judy (15 June 2015). "You think you know the story of Stalin until you read about the extraordinary life of his daughter Svetlana". PBS Newshour. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  39. ↑ Tomlinson, Stuart (29 November 2011). "Portland granddaughter of Josef Stalin remembers her mother as a talented writer and lecturer in her own right". OregonLive.com. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  40. ↑ Berezovsky, Boris, and Felshtinsky, Yuri, The Art of Impossible (Falmouth, MA: Terra-USA, 2006), 3 vols.
  41. ↑ "Ante la muerte de Svetlana, la hija de Stalin que se convirtió al catolicismo" [Before the death of Svetlana, the daughter of Stalin who converted to Catholicism]. HazteOír.org (in Spanish). 5 December 2011. Archived from the original on 16 July 2019. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  42. ↑ Sullivan 2015, pp. 11, 16
  43. ↑ Pearson 1989, p. 124
  44. ↑ Гругман, Рафаэль (2012). Светлана Аллилуева Пять жизней [Svetlana Alliluyeva Five Lives] (in Russian). (Author's name transliterated:Rafael Grugman). Ростов н/Д: ООО «Феникс». ISBN 978-5-222-19440-9. Archived from the original on 8 July 2025.
  45. ↑ "Stalin (1992 TV Movie) Full Cast & Crew". IMDb. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  46. ↑ "The Death of Stalin (2017) Full Cast & Crew". IMDb. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  47. ↑ Grushin, Olga (12 June 2015). "'Stalin's Daughter,' by Rosemary Sullivan". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
  48. ↑ Michaud, Jon (1 May 2019). "A writer reimagines the life of Joseph Stalin's daughter after she defected to the U.S." The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 June 2019.

Works cited

  • Alliluyeva, Svetlana (1967), Twenty Letters to a Friend, translated by Johnson, Priscilla, London: Hutchinson, ISBN 0-06-010099-0
  • Holmes, Larry E. (1999), Stalin's School: Moscow's Model School No. 25, 1931–1937, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, ISBN 0-8229-4101-5
  • Kotkin, Stephen (2017), Stalin, Volume 2: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941, New York City: Penguin Press, ISBN 978-1-59420-380-0
  • Martin, Douglas (28 November 2011), "Lana Peters, Stalin's Daughter, Dies at 85", The New York Times, New York City, retrieved 10 August 2019
  • Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2003), Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, London: Phoenix, ISBN 978-0-7538-1766-7
  • Pearson, Raymond (1989), Russia and Eastern Europe, 1789–1985: A Bibliographical Guide, Manchester: Manchester University Press, ISBN 0-7190-1734-3
  • Sullivan, Rosemary (2015), Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Toronto: HarperCollins, ISBN 978-1-44341-442-5
  • Thompson, Nicholas (24 March 2014), "My Friend, Stalin's Daughter", The New Yorker, retrieved 7 September 2017
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alliluyeva