Svetlana Alliluyeva
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Svetlana with father Stalin in 1935. |
Svetlana Alliluyeva (born
February 28,
1926,
Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina) (
Russian:
Светлана Иосифовна Сталина) is the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier
Joseph Stalin. A writer and
naturalized United States citizen, Alliluyeva caused an international furor by defecting to the
United States in
1967.
Like most children of high-ranking
Soviet officials, Svetlana was raised by a nanny and only occasionally saw her parents. Her mother,
Nadezhda Alliluyeva (Stalin's second wife), died on
9 November in
1932, when Svetlana was six. Nadezhda's death was officially ruled as
peritonitis resulting from a burst
appendix. While there were various other theories as to the cause of her death (murder on the orders of Stalin, or that she was killed by Stalin himself), it now appears the real cause of death was suicide.
Svetlana fell in love at the age of 16 with a
Jewish filmmaker,
Alexei Kapler (of age 40). Her father vehemently disapproved of the romance. Later Kapler was sentenced to ten years in exile in an industrial city of
Vorkuta near the polar circle, and it is speculated that the real reason was this romance.
At 17, she fell in love with a fellow student at
Moscow University,
Grigori Morozov, also Jewish. Her father grudgingly allowed the couple to marry, although he made a point of never meeting the bridegroom. After the birth of a son (Joseph) in
1945, the couple divorced in
1947.
Svetlana's second husband was a close associate of Stalin's,
Yuri Zhdanov (son of his right-hand-man,
Andrei Zhdanov). They were married in
1949, and had a daughter, Ekaterina, in
1950, but this marriage also dissolved soon afterward.
Svetlana was married a third time, to Mikhail Kaganovich in 1951. He was the son of
Lazar Kaganovich, another primary Stalin associate. It is unknown how or when this relationship ended.
After her father's death in
1953, Svetlana adopted her mother's maiden name and worked as a teacher and translator in
Moscow. Her education was in
United States history and she had studied English, however she had little opportunity to speak it at this point. Svetlana was a Party member and, based on her parentage, remained in contact with the highest levels of the Soviet government and enjoyed the privileges of the
nomenklatura. She had been granted a pension with which she supported herself after she quit working to care for her children.
In
1963, while in hospital for the removal of her tonsils, she met an
Indian communist visiting Moscow,
Brajesh Singh. Singh was mild-mannered and idealistic but gravely ill with
bronchiectasis and
emphesema. They continued and cemented their relationship while recuperating in
Sochi, on the Black Sea. Singh returned to Moscow in
1965, to work as a translator, but they were not allowed to marry. Singh died in
1966 and Svetlana was allowed to travel to India to take his ashes back, for his family to pour them into the
Ganges. She stayed in the family home in
Kalakankar on the banks of the Ganges for two months and became immersed in local customs.
On
March 6,
1967, after first having visited the Soviet embassy in
New Delhi, Alliluyeva went to the U.S. embassy and formally petitioned Ambassador
Chester Bowles for political asylum. This was granted; however, owing to concerns that the Indian government might suffer from possible ill feeling from the Soviet Union, it was arranged for her to leave
India immediately for
Switzerland, via
Rome. She stayed in Switzerland for 6 weeks before proceeding to the United States.
Upon her arrival in April 1967, Alliluyeva gave a press conference denouncing her father's regime and the Soviet government. Her intention to publish her autobiographical
Twenty Letters To A Friend on the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet revolution caused a uproar in the USSR, and the government there threatened to release an unauthorized version; the publication in the west was therefore moved to an earlier date, and that particular diplomatic problem defused.
Due to the high profile of Alliluyeva's defection, her outspokenness, her connections as daughter of Stalin, etc., the Soviet Union demanded and received from the United States, in December 1967, an assurance that any future Soviet defectors would be debriefed by Soviet officials before being granted asylum.
In 1970 Alliluyeva answered an invitation from
Frank Lloyd Wright's widow,
Olgivanna Wright, to visit
Taliesin West in
Scottsdale, Arizona. As she described in her autobiographical
Distant Music, Olgivanna believed in mysticism and had become convinced that Svetlana was a spiritual replacement for her own daughter Svetlana, who had married Wright's chief apprentice
William Wesley Peters, and who had died in a car crash years before. Amazingly, Alliluyeva came to Arizona, agreed to marry Peters within a matter of weeks, migrated with the Taliesin Fellowship back and forth between Scottsdale and
Spring Green, Wisconsin, and adopted the name
Lana Peters. The couple had a daughter, Olga. By her own account Alliluyeva retained respect and affection for Wes Peters, but their marriage dissolved under the pressure of Mrs. Wright's influence.
In
1982 she moved with her daughter to
Cambridge,
England, and in
1984 returned to the Soviet Union, where she and her daughter were granted citizenship, and settled in
Tbilisi,
Georgia. In 1986 Alliluyeva returned to the United States, and later returned to
Bristol, England in the 1990s. She now lives in a retirement home in
Wisconsin.
*
Twenty Letters To A Friend (autobiography, published 1967, London, written 1963)
* Translated by Paul Chavchavadze,
Only One Year, Harper & Row (1969), hardcover, 444 pages, ISBN 0060101024
*
Faraway Music (1984, India, 1992, Moscow)
