Svetlana Alliluyeva: Difference between revisions
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'''Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva''' ({{lang-ru|Светла́на Ио́сифовна Аллилу́ева}}; |
'''Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva''' ({{lang-ru|Светла́на Ио́сифовна Аллилу́ева}}; 28 February 1926 – 22 November 2011), later known as '''Lana Peters''', was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier [[Joseph Stalin]] and [[Nadezhda Alliluyeva]], Stalin's second wife. In 1967, she caused an international furor when she [[Defection|defected]] to, and later became a [[Naturalization|naturalized]] citizen of, the United States. In 1984, she returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship returned. She later went back to the United States and also spent time in France, before settling in the United Kingdom and becoming a British citizen in 1992. She was Stalin’s last surviving child.<ref name="time002">[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,843812,00.html "Land of Opportunity"], ''TIME'' 26 May 1967.</ref> |
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==Early life== |
==Early life== |
Revision as of 16:17, 28 February 2019
Svetlana Alliluyeva | |
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![]() Alliluyeva in 1970 | |
Born | Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina 28 February 1926 Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
Died | 22 November 2011 | (aged 85)
Nationality | Soviet (1926–1967, 1984–1991) American (naturalized 1978–1984) British (1992–2011) |
Other names | Lana Peters |
Occupation(s) | Writer and Lecturer |
Spouse(s) | Grigory Morozov (1944–1947) Yuri Zhdanov (1949–1952) Ivan Svanidze (1962–1963) William Wesley Peters (1970–1973) |
Children | Iosif (1945–2008) Yekaterina/Katya (1950– ) Olga/Chrese Evans (1971– ) |
Parent(s) | Joseph Stalin Nadezhda Alliluyeva |
Relatives | Vasily Dzhugashvili (brother) Yakov Dzhugashvili (half-brother) Konstantin Kuzakov (half-brother) |
Signature | |
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Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (Russian: Светла́на Ио́сифовна Аллилу́ева; 28 February 1926 – 22 November 2011), later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife. In 1967, she caused an international furor when she defected to, and later became a naturalized citizen of, the United States. In 1984, she returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship returned. She later went back to the United States and also spent time in France, before settling in the United Kingdom and becoming a British citizen in 1992. She was Stalin’s last surviving child.[1]
Early life
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Lavrenti_Beria_Stalins_family.jpg/220px-Lavrenti_Beria_Stalins_family.jpg)
Svetlana Alliluyeva was born on 28 February 1926.[3] On 9 November 1932, her mother, Nadezhda, shot herself in the head following a public spat with Stalin at a dinner party over the effects of the government's collectivization policies on the peasantry. She was 31 years old.[4] The official announcement was that Nadezhda died from appendicitis.[5][4] 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.'"[6]
At the age of sixteen, Alliluyeva fell in love with Aleksei Kapler, a Jewish Soviet filmmaker who was 38 years old. Her father vehemently disapproved of the relationship and ordered Kapler to be sentenced to ten years in labor camps near Vorkuta and Inta.[7]
Marriages
When she was seventeen years old, Grigory Morozov (1921–2001), a fellow student at Moscow University,proposed to her. Her father grudgingly allowed the couple to marry, although he made a point of never meeting the groom. A son, Iosif, was born in 1945. The couple divorced in 1947, but remained close friends for decades afterwards.[3]
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 got married in 1949. In 1950, Alliluyeva gave birth to a daughter, Yekaterina. The marriage was dissolved soon afterwards.[3] In 1962, she married Ivan Svanidze, the nephew of Stalin through his first wife, Ekaterine "Kato" Svanidze. Her third marriage also proved to be short-lived, and ended in 1963.[8] From 1970–73, she was married to American architect William Wesley Peters (an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright), with whom she had a daughter, Olga.[9]
After the death of Stalin
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.[10]
Relationship with Brajesh Singh
In 1963, while in hospital for a tonsillectomy, Alliluyeva met Kunwar Brajesh Singh, an Indian Communist from the Kalakankar Rajput Zamindar family 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. She was allowed to travel to India to take his ashes to his family to pour into the Ganges river. She stayed in the family home in Kalakankar on the banks of the Ganges for three months and became immersed in local customs, leading to her abandonment of atheism. 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.[11]
Political asylum and later life
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Svetlana_Alliluyeva_1967.jpg/220px-Svetlana_Alliluyeva_1967.jpg)
On 6 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.
At about nine o’clock p.m. in India, eleven in the morning Washington time, I said, "I have a person here who states she's Stalin's daughter, and we believe she's genuine; unless you instruct me to the contrary, I’m putting her on the one a.m. plane for Rome where we can stop and think the thing through. I’m not giving her any commitment that she can come to the States. I’m only enabling her to leave India, and we will see her to some part of the world—the U.S. or somewhere else—where she can settle in peace. If you disagree with this, let me know before midnight." No comment ever came from Washington. This is one advantage that non-career Ambassadors have; they can go ahead and do unorthodox things without anybody objecting, where a Foreign Service officer might not dare do it. We talked to her and said, "Point number one—are you really sure that you want to leave home? You’ve got a daughter and a son there, and this is a big step to take. Have you really thought it through? You could go back to the Russian embassy right now (she was staying there in their dormitory) and simply go to sleep and forget it, and get up Wednesday morning and on to Moscow, as your schedule calls for." She immediately said, "If this is your decision, I shall go to the press tonight; and announce that (a) democratic India will not take me (they had turned her down prior to her coming) and (b), now democratic America refuses to take me." Well, she didn't need to do it; I was just trying it on for size to be sure she had thought it through. But she was very quick on this.
— Chester Bowles[12]
Alliluyeva accepted. The Indian government feared condemnation by the Soviet Union, so she was immediately sent from India to Rome. When the Qantas flight arrived in Rome,[13] Alliluyeva immediately travelled further to Geneva, Switzerland, where the government arranged her a tourist visa and accommodation for six weeks. She travelled to the United States, leaving her adult children in the USSR. Upon her arrival in New York City in April 1967, she gave a press conference denouncing her father's legacy and the Soviet government.[10]
After living for several months in Mill Neck, Long Island under Secret Service protection, Alliluyeva moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she lectured and wrote, later moving to Pennington.[14][15]
During her years in exile, it is claimed that Alliluyeva was never happy. Her children who were left behind in the Soviet Union did not maintain contact with her. While Western sources saw a KGB hand behind this,[16] her children claimed that this is because of her complex character.[17] She flirted with various religions.[7] While some claim she had money problems, others argue that her financial situation was good, because of her great popularity. For example, her first book, Twenty Letters to a Friend, caused a worldwide sensation and brought her, some estimate, about $2,500,000[18][19]
In 1970, Alliluyeva answered an invitation from Frank Lloyd Wright's widow, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, to visit Wright's winter studio, Taliesin West, in Scottsdale, Arizona.[20] In 1978, Alliluyeva became a US citizen,[10] and in 1982, she moved with her daughter to Cambridge in England, where they shared an apartment near the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.[21]
Alliluyeva, for the most part, lived the last two years of her life in southern Wisconsin, either in Richland Center or in Spring Green, the location of Wright's summer studio "Taliesin". She died on 22 November 2011 from complications arising from colon cancer in Richland Center,[3][22] where she had spent time while visiting from Cambridge.[23][24]
At the time of Alliluyeva's death, her youngest daughter, Olga, went by the name Chrese Evans and ran a fashion boutique in Portland, Oregon. Yekaterina, a geologist, was living in Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula studying a volcano. Her son Iosif, a cardiologist, had died in Russia in 2008.[25][10][21]
Religion
Alliluyeva was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church on 20 March 1963. During her years of exile, she flirted with various religions. She then turned to the Greek Orthodox church and is also reported to have thought of becoming a nun.[7]
In 1967, Alliluyeva found herself spending time with Roman Catholics in Switzerland and encountered many denominations during her time in the US. She received a letter from Father Garbolino, an Italian Catholic priest from Pennsylvania, inviting her to make a pilgrimage to Fátima, in Portugal, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the famous apparitions there. In 1969, Garbolino, who was in New Jersey, came 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. In Cambridge, in December 1982, on the feast of Santa Lucia, Advent, Alliluyeva converted to the Roman Catholic Church.[26]
Works
While in the Soviet Union, Alliluyeva had written a memoir in Russian in 1963. The manuscript was carried safely out of the country by Ambassador T. N. Kaul, who returned it to her in New Delhi. Alliluyeva handed her memoir over to the CIA agent Robert Rayle at the time of her own defection. Rayle made a copy of it. The book was titled Twenty Letters to a Friend (Dvadtsat' pisem k drugu). It was the only thing other than a few items of clothing taken by Alliluyeva on a secret passenger flight out of India.[27] 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 own father.[28]
- Alliluyeva, Svetlana; Priscilla Johnson (translator) (1967). Twenty Letters to a Friend. London: Hutchinson.
{{cite book}}
:|author2=
has generic name (help) - Alliluyeva, Svetlana; Paul Chavchavadze (translator) (1969). Only One Year. Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-010102-4.
{{cite book}}
:|author2=
has generic name (help) - Alliluyeva, Svetlana (1984). Faraway Music. India.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
In popular culture
Alliluyeva was portrayed by Andrea Riseborough in the 2017 satirical film The Death of Stalin.[29]
See also
References
- ^ "Land of Opportunity", TIME 26 May 1967.
- ^ Simon Sebag Montefiore "Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar" Random House, 2005 page 226 (photo with Stalin, Beria and Lakoba)
- ^ a b c d Douglas Martin (28 November 2011). "Lana Peters, Stalin's Daughter, Dies at 85". New York Times. Retrieved 25 November 2011.
At her birth, on Feb. 28, 1926, she was named Svetlana Stalina, the only daughter and last surviving child of the brutal Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin. ... Mrs. Peters died of colon cancer on Nov. 22 in Richland County, Wis., the county's corporation counsel, Benjamin Southwick, said on Monday...
- ^ a b "Stalin's women". Sunday Times (UK). 29 June 2003. Archived from the original on 21 November 2003. Retrieved 26 March 2007.
- ^ Kotkin, Stephen (2017). Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941. pp. 110–111. ISBN 9781594203794.
- ^ Winston S. Churchill. "XXVIII: Moscow: A Relationship Established – section: He invites me to an impromptu dinner". The Hinge of Fate. Vol. Book II: Africa redeemed. p. 404.
{{cite book}}
:|work=
ignored (help) - ^ a b c The Telegraph obituary for Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva (aka Lana Peters)
- ^ Rosemary Sullivan (2015). Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. HarperCollins. pp. 230, 232. ISBN 1443414441 – via Google Books.>
- ^ Scott Bauer (28 November 2011). "Stalin's daughter Lana Peters dies at 85". News.yahoo.com. AP. Retrieved 29 November 2011.
- ^ a b c d Martin, Douglas (28 November 2011). "Stalin's Daughter Dies at 85". The New York Times.
- ^ ABC News Time Tunnel, re-broadcast 26 April 2008.
- ^ Bowles, Chester. "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.
- ^ "The Day Stalin's Daughter Asked for Asylum in the U.S." Moments in U.S. Diplomatic History. Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
- ^ Blake, Patricia (8 January 1985). "Personalities the Saga of Stalin's "Little Sparrow"". Time. Retrieved 10 September 2008.
- ^ Tucker, Bev (2 August 2006). "Pennington Piano Teacher Remembers Stalin's Daughter and Granddaughter". Town Topics. Retrieved 10 September 2008.
- ^ The Hawk and the Dove
- ^ The only interview of her son on Channel One
- ^ Svetlana Alliluyeva dies. Vesti.ru
- ^ "Stalin's daughter lived under surveillance". Archived from the original on 4 April 2013. Retrieved 24 March 2013.
{{cite web}}
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ignored (|url-status=
suggested) (help) - ^ Thompson, Nicholas. "My Friend, Stalin's Daughter". newyorker.
- ^ a b "My Friend, Stalin's Daughter". The New Yorker. Retrieved 7 September 2017.
- ^ "Stalin's daughter Lana Peters dies in US of cancer". BBC News. 28 November 2011.
- ^ "Lana about Svetlana: Stalin's daughter on her life in Wisconsin". TwinCities.com. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
- ^ "BBC News – Stalin's daughter Lana Peters dies in US of cancer". Bbc.co.uk. 29 November 2011. Retrieved 30 November 2011.
- ^ Portland granddaughter of Josef Stalin remembers her mother as a talented writer and lecturer in her own right
- ^ "Ante la muerte de Svetlana, la hija de Stalin que se convirtió al catolicismo", Hazteoir 05 December 2011
- ^ Rosemary Sullivan (2015). Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. HarperCollins. pp. 11, 16. ISBN 1443414441 – via Google Books.
- ^ Raymond Pearson (1989). Russia and Eastern Europe, 1789–1985: A Bibliographical Guide. Manchester University Press. p. 124. ISBN 0719017343 – via Google Books.
- ^ Iannucci, Armando (9 March 2018), The Death of Stalin, retrieved 12 March 2018
Further reading
- Sullivan, Rosemary. Stalin’s Daughter. New York: Harper, 2015. ISBN 978-0-062-20610-7
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Matin, Douglas. "Lana Peters, Stalin's Daughter, Dies at 85", The New York Times, 28 November 2011.
- Lana Peters Papers in the Amherst Center for Russian Culture (donated by Thomas Whitney in 1991).
- 1926 births
- 2011 deaths
- British people of German descent
- Russian emigrants to the United Kingdom
- British Roman Catholics
- Deaths from cancer in Wisconsin
- Children of national leaders
- Converts to Roman Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy
- Deaths from colorectal cancer
- Former atheists and agnostics
- Former American Orthodox Christians
- Memoirists from Georgia (country)
- Moscow State University alumni
- Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
- Roman Catholics from Georgia (country)
- Russian memoirists
- Russian Roman Catholics
- Soviet defectors to the United Kingdom
- Soviet defectors to the United States
- Stalin family
- Writers from Moscow
- British people of Georgian descent
- American people of Georgian (country) descent
- Russian people of Georgian descent
- Russian people of German descent
- Russian emigrants to the United States
- People with acquired American citizenship
- People from Spring Green, Wisconsin