Stalin's daughter Svetlana biography personal life. "Returner" Alliluyeva. How Stalin's daughter escaped from the Soviet Union. Svetlana Alliluyeva - biography of personal life

Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (née Stalin, in exile - Lana Peters; February 28, 1926, Leningrad, USSR - November 22, 2011, Richland, Wisconsin, USA) - Soviet philologist-translator, candidate of philological sciences; memoirist.
She became widely known as the daughter of I.V. Stalin, about whose life she left a number of works in the genre of memoirs. In 1966 she emigrated from the USSR to the USA.

Svetlana Peters
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva
Birth name: Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina
Occupation: memoirist
Date of birth: February 28, 1926
Place of birth: Leningrad, USSR
Citizenship: USSR → USA → UK
Date of death: November 22, 2011
Location of death: Richland Center, Wisconsin, USA
Father: Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
Mother: Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva
Spouse: 1) Grigory Iosifovich Morozov
2) Yuri Andreevich Zhdanov
3) Ivan (Jonrid) Aleksandrovich Svanidze
4) (civil marriage) Brajesh Singh (Brajesh Singh)
5) William Wesley Peters

Born in the family of Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Her mother committed suicide on November 9, 1932.
In childhood, her nanny Alexandra Andreevna had a greater influence on Svetlana, who previously, in particular, worked in the family of N. N. Evreinov.
She graduated with honors from the 25th exemplary school in Moscow, where she studied in 1932-1943. After school, she was going to enter the Literary Institute, but her father did not like her choice.

Entered the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, where she studied for a year. She fell ill, after she returned to the first year, but already at the Faculty of History. She chose to specialize in the Department of Modern and Contemporary History, studied Germany. She graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University (1949) and postgraduate studies at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1954 she defended her Ph.D. thesis "The Development of the Advanced Traditions of Russian Realism in the Soviet Novel". Candidate of Philology. She worked as an English translator and literary editor, translated several books, including the works of the English Marxist philosopher John Lewis.

In 1944 she married Grigory Morozov, a classmate of her brother Vasily. Subsequently, the marriage was annulled. Son Joseph Alliluyev (1945-2008) became a cardiologist, doctor of medical sciences.
In 1949 she married Yuri Zhdanov. Yuri adopted Joseph, Svetlana's first son. In 1950 their daughter Ekaterina was born.
After Stalin's death, the guards found a passbook in his bedroom, on which 900 rubles had accumulated - it was handed over to Svetlana.
She worked at the Institute of World Literature from 1956 to 1967, in the sector for the study of Soviet literature.
In May 1962, she was baptized in Moscow and had her children baptized by Archpriest Nikolai Golubtsov.

Emigration
On December 20, 1966, she arrived in India, accompanying the ashes of her common-law husband Brajesh Singh. March 6 asked the Soviet ambassador Benediktov to let her stay in India, but he insisted that she return to Moscow on March 8 and stated that she would no longer be allowed to leave the USSR. On the same day, she appeared at the US Embassy in Delhi with her passport and luggage and asked for political asylum. Permission to leave the USSR was given to her by a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU A. N. Kosygin.

“... my non-return in 1967 was based not on political, but on human motives. Let me remind you here that when I was leaving then for India to take the ashes of a close friend - an Indian, I did not intend to become a defector, I then hoped to return home in a month. However, in those years, I paid my tribute to the blind idealization of the so-called "free world", the world with which my generation was completely unfamiliar. - S. Alliluyeva "

Moving to the West and the subsequent publication of "Twenty Letters to a Friend" (1967), where Alliluyeva recalled her father and life in the Kremlin, caused a worldwide sensation (according to some statements, this book brought her about 2.5 million dollars). For some time she stopped in Switzerland, then lived in the USA.

As Svetlana Alliluyeva's cousin Vladimir Fedorovich Alliluyev recalled, she wrote her first book, Twenty Letters to a Friend, while still in the USSR. One of the copies of the manuscript was stolen and handed over to the Soviet journalist Victor Louis, who secretly smuggled the book to the West and published excerpts from it in the German magazine Stern, deliberately distorting a number of facts; the book "Only one year" was written "under the dictation of experienced "specialists"". Once in the West, Svetlana, as she herself said, immediately fell under strict control. She is quoted as saying: “Thanks to the CIA - they took me out, didn’t leave me and printed my Twenty Letters to a Friend.

She married American architect William Peters (1912-1991) in 1970, had a daughter (Olga Peters, later renamed Chris Evans), divorced in 1972, but retained the name Lana Peters. S. Alliluyeva's money affairs abroad were successful. The magazine version of her memoirs “Twenty Letters to a Friend” was sold to the Hamburg weekly “Der Spiegel” for 480 thousand marks, which, translated into dollars, amounted to 122 thousand (in the USSR, according to her niece Nadezhda, Stalin left her only 30 thousand rubles). After leaving her homeland, Alliluyeva lived on the money she earned as a writer and on donations received from citizens and organizations.
In 1982 Alliluyeva moved from the USA to England, to Cambridge, where she gave her daughter Olga, who was born in America, to a Quaker boarding school. She herself became a traveler and traveled almost the whole world.

Return to the Soviet Union
Finding herself completely alone, at the end of November 1984, unexpectedly for others (as S. Alliluyeva herself writes in the book “A Book for Granddaughters” at the request of her son Joseph), she appeared in Moscow with her daughter. She was enthusiastically received by the Soviet authorities, and her Soviet citizenship was immediately restored. But disappointment soon set in. Alliluyeva could not find a common language with either her son or her daughter, whom she abandoned in 1967. Her relations with the Soviet government deteriorated. She left for the Georgian SSR, where she lived in a three-room apartment of an improved type, she was given a financial allowance, special security and the right to call a car (a black Volga was constantly on duty in the garage of the Council of Ministers of the Georgian SSR to service her). In Georgia Alliluyeva met its 60th anniversary, which was celebrated in the premises of the Stalin Museum in Gori. Her daughter went to school, went in for horse riding. Teachers at home taught Olga Russian and Georgian. But even in Georgia, Alliluyeva had many clashes with the authorities and with former friends.

Second trip to the West
Having lived for less than two years in the USSR, Alliluyeva sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU with a request to allow her to travel abroad. After the personal intervention of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee M. S. Gorbachev in November 1986, she was allowed to return to the United States. After leaving, Alliluyeva renounced the citizenship of the USSR.

In the United States, Alliluyeva settled in Wisconsin. In September 1992, correspondents found her in a nursing home in the UK. Then she lived for some time in the monastery of St. John in Switzerland. In December 1992, she was seen in London in the Kensington-Chelsea area. Alliluyeva drew up papers for the right to help in order to pay for a room after leaving the nursing home. Her daughter Olga leads an independent life in Portland (Oregon).
In 2005, she gave an interview to the TV channel "Russia" for the film " Svetlana Alliluyeva and her men.

In 2008 Alliluyeva, who refused to communicate with journalists for so long, starred in the 45-minute documentary Svetlana about Svetlana. During the interview, she refused to speak Russian, citing the fact that she is not Russian (her father is Georgian, and her mother is the daughter of a German woman and a gypsy).

Recent times Svetlana Alliluyeva lived in a nursing home near Madison, Wisconsin under the name Lana Peters.

She died on November 22, 2011 at a nursing home in Richland, Wisconsin, USA from colon cancer. O Alliluyeva's death was announced on November 28 in The New York Times. At the same time, a municipality spokesman told reporters that the Richland Funeral Home had no evidence of her death or burial site. The owner of a local funeral home told reporters that a few months ago, Lana Peters' daughter came to Richland to draw up paperwork in the event of her mother's death, and at her request, the body of Svetlana-Fotina-Lana Stalin-Alliluyeva-Peters was cremated and sent to Portland, Oregon. The date and place of the funeral are unknown.
In November 2012, it became known that the FBI had declassified the dossier Svetlana Alliluyeva; It follows from the documents that American intelligence agencies monitored the life of Stalin's daughter in the United States.

Personal life
She had many novels, four official marriages and one civil one. When she was fourteen years old, she fell in love with her son Sergo Beria.

marriages
In her first marriage, she was the wife of the Soviet legal scholar Grigory Iosifovich Morozov, a classmate of her brother Vasily. They divorced in 1949.
Son Iosif Grigoryevich Alliluev, Russian cardiologist.
In the second marriage, since 1949 - the wife of Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Yuri Andreevich Zhdanov, daughter-in-law of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A. A. Zhdanov. Yuri adopted Joseph, Svetlana's first son.
Daughter Ekaterina Yurievna Zhdanova, lives in Kamchatka, volcanologist
The third husband is Ivan Alexandrovich Svanidze. The marriage lasted from 1957 to 1959.
Fourth (civil) marriage with Indian citizen Brajesh Singh. The husband died in 1966. Alexey Nikolaevich Kosygin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, personally prevented the marriage. Svetlana's meeting with him, which took place in the Kremlin on May 4, 1965, in her father's office, did not help either. Despite the fact that Singh was already terminally ill, Kosygin told her that she would not be allowed to marry a foreigner.
Fifth marriage - in 1970 she married American architect William Peters (1912-1991), divorced in 1972, but retained the name Lana Peters.
Daughter Olga Peters, changed name to Chris Evans (Chrese Evans)

Novels
In the early 1940s, Svetlana had an affair with the writer Alexei Kapler, who was almost twice her age. This led to the fact that in 1943 Kapler was arrested, accused of having connections with foreigners and spying for England, and sent to Vorkuta for five years, where he worked as a photographer; in 1948, having been released, Kapler, contrary to the ban, came to Moscow, for which he was again arrested and sent to a forced labor camp. He was released and rehabilitated in 1954.
She also had affairs with Andrei Sinyavsky (future dissident), poet David Samoilov.

Compositions
S. Alliluyeva wrote four books of memoirs published abroad:
Twenty Letters to a Friend (New York, Harper & Row, 1967)
One Year Only (New York, Harper & Row, 1969), ISBN 0-06-010102-4
A Book for Granddaughters: A Journey to the Homeland (New York, Liberty Publishing House, 1991)
Russian edition: M.: Novosti Publishing House, - 1992. 168 p. ISBN 5-7020-0520-1

Distant music (published in 1984 in India and in 1992 in Moscow)
She translated from English E. Rothstein's book "Munich Conspiracy" (1959), wrote several small works, including about the writer B. L. Pasternak, and "A Book for Granddaughters" (October, 1991, N 6).
Alliluyeva S. Stalin's daughter. Last interview. - M.: Algorithm, 2013. - 304 p. - ISBN 978-5-4438-0346-3

Movie incarnations
Nadezhda Mikhalkova - Son of the Father of Nations - 2013

Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva was the favorite of her formidable father. It would seem that a girl who was born in the family of a man who headed a huge country is destined for a brilliant fate. But in fact, everything turned out differently. The life of Stalin's daughter turned out to be like a continuous adventure that had nothing to do with the fate of the offspring of high-ranking political figures of the Soviet Union.

Birth

Svetlana was born in Leningrad on the last day of the winter of 1926. She was the second child in the marriage of Joseph Stalin with Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In addition to her, the “leader of all times and peoples” and his wife had a son, Vasily. The girl also had a brother Yakov, whom his first wife Ekaterina Svanidze gave birth to his father (he died in German captivity during the war).

Alliluyeva's life after her mother's suicide

In prosperity, which others could only dream of, Stalin's daughter Svetlana grew up. The biography of her childhood years was overshadowed by the early death of her mother, who committed suicide when the girl was 6 years old. They concealed from Svetlana the true cause of her mother's death, telling her that she died on the operating table during an attack of acute appendicitis. But, as Alliluyeva herself later recalled, her mother simply could not stand the humiliation and insults from her high-ranking husband. After her suicide, Svetlana and Vasily actually remained orphans, because Iosif Vissarionovich was too busy with public affairs and he did not have enough time to raise his offspring.

Sveta grew up surrounded by numerous nannies and governesses. She was taken to class by a personal driver. She studied well at school, knew English. After the outbreak of the war, she and her brother Vasily were evacuated to Kuibyshev. The girl's life was boring. She was forbidden to walk, be friends with neighbor children, talk to strangers. The only entertainment for Svetlana was the films that she watched on a home movie projector.

The first love

Vasily, unlike his sister, did not want to be bored. The father was rarely at home, and the young man, taking advantage of his absence, often held noisy parties. Among his brother's acquaintances, one could meet well-known artists, singers and athletes at that time. At one of these parties, 16-year-old Svetlana met 39-year-old screenwriter and actor Alexei Kapler. Stalin's daughter fell in love with him. The biography of this woman will continue to be full of novels, but she will never forget her first adult love. A solid age difference did not bother either the girl or her chosen one. Alexei was incredibly handsome and was a success with women. By the time he met Svetlana, he managed to divorce twice. His ex-wives were famous Soviet actresses.

Young Sveta impressed Kapler with her erudition and adult reasoning about life. He was a mature man and understood that an affair with the daughter of the “leader of the peoples” could end badly for him, but he could not do anything with his feelings. Although Sveta was always followed by a personal bodyguard, she managed to escape from his pursuit and wander with her lover through quiet streets, visit the Tretyakov Gallery, theater performances, and closed screenings of films at the Cinematography Committee with him. In her memoirs, Svetlana Iosifovna wrote that there was no close relationship between them, because in the Soviet Union sex before marriage was considered a shame.

Stalin became aware of the first adult feeling of his daughter very soon. The General Secretary of the USSR immediately disliked Kapler, and trouble began in the life of the actor. He was repeatedly summoned to the Lubyanka and subjected to many hours of interrogation. Since it was impossible to try Kapler for having an affair with Svetlana, he was accused of spying for Great Britain and sent to the Vorkuta labor colony for 10 years. For the girl herself, this novel ended with several weighty slaps in the face from a strict father.

First marriage

The further biography of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva is connected with her studies at Moscow State University. After leaving school, she entered the Faculty of Philology, but, after graduating from the first year, under pressure from her father, she transferred to the Faculty of History. The girl hated history, but was forced to obey the will of the pope, who did not consider literature and writing to be worthy occupations.

In her student years, Svetlana married Grigory Morozov, a school friend of her brother. The girl was then 18 years old. Stalin was against this marriage and categorically refused to see his son-in-law. In 1945, a young couple had a child, who was named Joseph. Svetlana's first marriage lasted only 4 years and, to Stalin's great joy, broke up. As Alliluyeva said in one of her interviews, Grigory Morozov refused to use protection and wanted her to give birth to ten children for him. Svetlana was not going to become a mother-heroine. Instead, she planned to graduate. During the years of marriage with Morozov, a young woman had 4 abortions, after which she fell ill and filed for divorce.

Marriage at the insistence of the father

In 1949, the daughter of Joseph Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, remarried. This time her husband was chosen by her father. They became the son of the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Andrei Zhdanov, Yuri. Before the wedding, young people did not have a single date. They got married because Stalin wanted it that way. Yuri officially adopted Svetlana's son from his first marriage. A year later, Alliluyeva gave birth to her husband, daughter Ekaterina, and then filed for divorce. Iosif Vissarionovich was dissatisfied with this trick of Svetlana, but he could not force her to live with an unloved person. The Secretary General of the USSR realized that his daughter would no longer obey him, and resigned himself to her rebellious character.

Life after paternal death

In March 1953, the "leader of all peoples" was gone. After Svetlana was transferred to his account, which had only 900 rubles. All personal belongings and documents of Stalin were taken from her. But the woman could not complain about the lack of attention to herself from the government. She developed a good relationship with Nikita Khrushchev, with whom she studied at the university together. Since 1956, Svetlana's place of work has been the Institute of World Literature, where she studied books

Well, what did Stalin's daughter Svetlana do next? her in the 50s replenished with another marriage. This time, Alliluyeva's chosen one was the Soviet Africanist Ivan Svanidze. Life together lasted from 1957 to 1959 and ended, as in previous cases, in divorce. The spouses did not have common children. To brighten up her loneliness, Svetlana started short-term novels. At this time, the list of her lovers was replenished by the Soviet writer and literary critic Andrei Sinyavsky and the poet David Samoilov.

Escape to the West

In the 60s, with the onset of the Khrushchev "thaw", the fate of Stalin's daughter changed dramatically. Svetlana Alliluyeva meets in Moscow an Indian citizen Brajesh Singh and becomes his common-law wife (she was not allowed to enter into an official marriage with a foreigner). The Hindu was seriously ill and died at the end of 1966. The woman, using her connections in the government, asked the Soviet authorities to allow her to take the ashes of her husband to her homeland. Having received permission from the member of the Politburo of the Central Party of the CPSU A. Kosygin, she went to India.

Being away from the Soviet Union, Svetlana realized that she did not want to return home. For three months she lived in Singh's ancestral village, after which she went to the American embassy located in Delhi and asked the United States for political asylum. Such an unexpected trick of Alliluyeva caused a scandal in the USSR. The Soviet government automatically enrolled her in the list of traitors. The situation was aggravated by the fact that Svetlana had a son and a daughter at home. But the woman did not believe that she had abandoned them, because, in her opinion, the children were already old enough and could well live on their own. By that time, Joseph had already managed to acquire his own family, and Catherine was a first-year student at the university.

Turning into Lana Peters

Alliluyeva did not succeed in leaving India straight for the States. In order not to spoil the already strained relations with the Soviet Union, American diplomats sent a woman to Switzerland. For some time Svetlana lived in Europe, and then moved to America. In the West, Stalin's daughter did not live in poverty. In 1967, she published the book 20 Letters to a Friend, in which she spoke about her father and her own life before leaving Moscow. Svetlana Iosifovna started writing it back in the USSR. This book became a worldwide sensation and brought the author about $ 2.5 million in income.

Living in distant America, Svetlana tried to arrange a personal life with the architect William Peters. After her marriage, which took place in 1970, she took her husband's surname and shortened her name, becoming simply Lana. Soon, the newly minted Mrs. Peters had a daughter, Olga. Madly in love with her American husband, Svetlana invested almost all her money in his projects. When her savings ran out, the marriage broke up. Later, Alliluyeva realized that Peters was advised to marry her by his sister, who was sure that the “Soviet princess” should have many millions from her father. Realizing that she had miscalculated, she did everything to get her brother divorced. After the dissolution of the marriage in 1972, Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva (photo with William Peters is presented below) retained her husband's surname and remained alone with Olga. Her main sources of income were writing and donations from charitable organizations.

Return of Alliluyeva to the Union

In 1982 Svetlana moved to London. There she left Olga at a Quaker boarding school and traveled the world. Unexpectedly for everyone, a woman returns to the USSR in 1984. She later explained the reason for this decision by the fact that Olga needed to be given a good education, and in the USSR it was provided free of charge. The Soviet authorities greeted the fugitive kindly. Her citizenship was restored, she was given housing, a car with a personal driver, and a pension. But the woman did not like living in Moscow and she moved to her father's homeland in Georgia. Here Alliluyeva was provided with royal living conditions. Olga began to attend school, take lessons in Russian and Georgian, and go in for equestrian sports. But life in Tbilisi did not bring joy to Svetlana. She never managed to restore the damaged relationship with the children. Joseph and Catherine were offended by their mother because almost 20 years ago she left them. Stalin's daughter Svetlana could not find understanding among relatives. Her biography contains information that in 1986 she and her youngest daughter will again emigrate to America. This time there were no problems with leaving. Gorbachev personally ordered that the daughter of the “leader of the peoples” be released from the country without hindrance. Returning to the States, Alliluyeva forever renounced Soviet citizenship.

Re-emigration and the decline of life

How and where did Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva live after her second departure from the USSR? Returning to the States, an elderly woman settled in the town of Richland (Wisconsin). She completely stopped communicating with her son Joseph and daughter Catherine. Soon Olga began to live separately from her and earn a living on her own. First, Svetlana Iosifovna rented a separate apartment, then she moved to a nursing home. In the 90s, she lived in an almshouse in London, then again went to the United States. Alliluyeva spent the last years of her life in a nursing home in the American city of Madison. She died of cancer on November 22, 2011. In her dying order, Alliluyeva asked to be buried under the name of Lana Peters. The place of her burial is unknown.

Children of Svetlana Iosifovna

Stalin's daughter lived in this world for 85 years. The biography of this woman will be incomplete if you do not mention how the fate of her three children turned out. The eldest son of Alliluyeva Joseph devoted his life to medicine. He studied cardiology and wrote many scientific papers on heart ailments. Iosif Grigorievich did not like to tell reporters about his mother, he was on bad terms with her. Lived 63 years. Died of a stroke in 2008.

Svetlana Iosifovna's daughter Ekaterina works as a volcanologist. Like her older brother, she was very offended by Alliluyeva when she left for the West, leaving the children alone. She prefers not to answer journalists' questions about her mother, saying that she never knew this woman. In order to hide away from increased attention from the press and special services, Alliluyeva's daughter left for Kamchatka, where she lives to this day. Leads a closed life.

The youngest daughter Olga Peters became a late child for Alliluyeva. She gave birth to her in her fifth decade. As an adult, Olga changed her name to Chris Evans. Today she lives in the USA, works as a seller. The woman practically does not speak Russian. As an older brother and sister, Olga did not have a relationship with her mother.

Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva was able to live a long and bright life. The biography with photos presented in the article allowed readers to learn many interesting facts about her fate. This woman was not afraid of scandals, public opinion and condemnation. The daughter of the “leader of peoples” knew how to love, suffer and start life anew. She failed to be a good mother to her children, but she never suffered from it. Svetlana Iosifovna did not tolerate being called the daughter of Stalin, therefore, once in the West, she forever said goodbye to her old name. But, having become Lana Peters, she remained a “Soviet princess” for the whole world.

She was helped to escape from the USSR by the death of her beloved man. But in the West, she did not find happiness, and remained in the shadow of her father's name.

On the evening of March 6, 1967, Svetlana crossed the threshold of the US Embassy in Delhi, and on April 22 she got off the plane at Kennedy Airport in New York. When American diplomats transported her from India in transit through Italy to Switzerland, Alliluyeva silently repeated: “Thank you, Brajesh! That's what you did, that's what you gave me. How can I return such love to you? Hindu Brajesh Singh died after another bout of lung disease on October 31, 1966 in her Moscow apartment. This was the second death that Svetlana had seen so closely. And for the first time it happened in the spring of 1953, when the father of nations died. Her birth father is Joseph Stalin (aka Koba).

She tried to get rid of the seal of the leader's name, of the now hated Soviet reality, with the help of a small urn with the ashes of her beloved. Alliluyeva wrote letters to the then celestials of the USSR Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin, in which she asked to be allowed to bury Singh in his homeland, as he wanted, in the waters of the sacred river Ganges. As the well-known TV presenter Elena Khanga said, such a move was suggested by her mother Leah, who met Svetlana in her student years in Leningrad visiting the composer Tolstoy. Was it really so? The sages on this occasion say: "Do not confirm or refute what you have not seen yourself."

Therefore, we will not guess who gave the decisive advice. Something else is important. The Soviet rulers stood as an impregnable "patriotic" citadel when Svetlana and Brajesh wanted to officially get married in 1965: “Find yourself a strong man of ours. What do you need this old Indian for? But this time, the rulers of the allied Olympus gave the go-ahead for a trip abroad, however, they put forward a condition: “No meetings with foreign journalists!” And on November 11, Alliluyeva was given a passport with an Indian visa. Until the very departure on December 20, Svetlana did not leave the urn for a minute.

True, at that time she had not yet thought of escaping. The decision not to return was already made in India. Bathing in the Ganges River in Singh's homeland in Kalakankar seemed to wash away the remnants of doubt whether to leave the Soviet Union or not.

“I was myself, I breathed freely, and the people around me were not parts of the mechanism. They were poor, they were hungry, they had a thousand worries of their own, but everyone was free to say what he thought, free to choose what he wanted. India liberated and freed something inside of me. Here I stopped feeling like a piece of state property, which I had been in the USSR all my life, ”she wrote in the book“ Only One Year ”.

And still, Svetlana Alliluyeva remained Stalin's daughter for everyone. Despite everything ... In 1967, her first work, Twenty Letters to a Friend, was published, which became a bestseller. There, as it seemed to the author, everything that concerned Stalin and his entourage was stated. But this freedom turned into a creative addiction. The publishers demanded that Alliluyeva write about her father again and again.

“I hated to return again to the memory of the past, to my life in the USSR, in the Kremlin. I forced myself to write about politics in Soviet Russia, about Stalin's politics - everyone needed it so much! Indeed, the critics reacted positively to this. But what I considered more important - the details of the lives of non-famous people - this was not noted by criticism, ”she regretted in Journey to the Motherland, where she spoke about the circumstances of her return to the USSR in 1984 and the subsequent one in 1986“ return emigration.

SO DIFFERENT NEWSPAPERS

How to explain the throwing of the soul? A simple human desire - the search for love. And she was constantly taken away from Svetlana. The first irreparable loss was mother Nadezhda, the daughter of a Bolshevik with the experience of Sergei Yakovlevich Alliluyev. It is with her that the most sunny memories of childhood are connected, and this is only six and a half years ...

Little Sveta remembered her mother as beautiful. And although the memory could not accurately draw her face, figure, movements, but the magic of grace, lightness, elusiveness remained in her heart like a warm coal. Yes, mother, unlike father, did not spoil either son or daughter. Nadezhda Sergeevna often demanded from the "big girl who knows how to think" not to be naughty, to become more serious, to act like an adult. And this was required of a person who, in a couple of months, was to cross such a “turning point” in life as the age of six. However, later, over the years, Svetlana realized that all that warm atmosphere in the house rested precisely on her mother.

The sixth birthday turned out to be very memorable, the last under Nadezhda Sergeevna. In February 1932, a children's concert was given at an apartment in the Kremlin, in which almost all the guests took part. Boys and girls vying with each other recited poems in Russian and German, performed comic verses about drummers and double-dealers, danced the Ukrainian hopak in national costumes, which they made with their own hands from gauze and colored paper. The walls were full of wall newspapers with funny drawings and photographs. They told about adventures at the state dacha in Zubalovo near Moscow, where Stalin's family lived. There were reports about the sports ground, and about the "Robinson's house", which was a flooring made of boards between three pines and which could only be reached by a rope ladder ...

Soon, a terrible line under the holiday was no longer a children's wall newspaper. On November 10, 1932, Pravda writes: “On the night of November 9, an active and devoted member of the party, comrade, died. Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva. Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

Behind these dry lines was a whole drama, the ending of which, as they say, played out at a banquet on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. A seemingly trifling quarrel with Stalin led to this. He told her: “Hey, you, drink!” To which Nadezhda Sergeevna threw: “I don’t Hey!” - and then got up from the table and left the room. But as they knew, this was the tip of the iceberg. Skirmishes with her husband happened more and more often. One of their main reasons was the visits of Lavrenty Beria. "He's a scoundrel! Don't you see it?" - said the wife. "Give me proof!" - answered the husband. “What more proof do you need?!” Hope was indignant.

And the morning of the 9th came ... The housekeeper Carolina Thiel, as usual, went to wake the hostess of the house. And she was already fast asleep. She was covered in blood, with a small Walther pistol in her hand, which her brother Pavel had once brought to her from Berlin. Iosif Vissarionovich himself did not dare to be the first to tell the sad news. They called the closest associates of the leader - Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Avel Yenukidze. They told Stalin when he woke up: "Nadya is no longer with us." When he entered the room, he was shocked, he could only say: “Such a small pistol and so much blood…”

TEARS AND THE SYSTEM

The circumstances of death, of course, were hidden from the children. Svetlana found out about how her mother left only in the winter of 1942, when she improved her knowledge of the English language by reading foreign magazines. There she came across a note in which, as a long-known fact, Nadezhda Alliluyeva's suicide was reported.

Since the autumn of 1932, everything that was connected with Sveta's mother began to get rid of. Already in 1933, in Zubalovo, both the sports ground with swings and rings, and the “Robinson's house” were demolished ... Gradually, they began to get rid of the housekeepers and teachers who appeared in the house with the assistance of Nadezhda Sergeevna. Then there were repressions against relatives and friends. They wanted to take a tiny piece of heat from Sveta too. In 1939, when the flywheel of the fight against “enemies of the people” was already in full swing, the head of personnel found out that the first husband of the nanny of the daughter of the leader Alexandra Andreevna had served as a clerk in the police under the tsarist regime. Stalin was informed about the "unreliable element", and he immediately ordered his dismissal. Upon learning that they were kicking out the grandmother - that's what Svetlana called her - the daughter ran to her father with a roar. Tears melted the ice, and Alexandra Andreevna remained in the family until her death in 1956.

But it was only a small victory. Otherwise, Stalin's daughter inexorably became an integral part of state property. A “stomper” was assigned to her, who accompanied her everywhere: to school, to the country house, to the theater, and during walks in the fresh air.

“I was already in my first year of university,” Svetlana Iosifovna recalled. - And I begged my father: I'm ashamed to go to a university with a "tail". The father said: "Well, to hell with you, let them kill you - I do not answer." So, only at the age of seventeen and a half did I get the opportunity to walk alone.

And still the system could no longer let go. Members of the party caste have always been under control. The clan was ready at any moment to protect itself from alien elements. Unfortunately, Alexei Kapler, a film director and screenwriter, was ranked among those. Svetlana met him in October 1942, when Vasily Stalin brought him to Zubalovo. Kapler worked on a film about pilots, and the leader's son himself, an Air Force officer, undertook to be a consultant for the film.

A spark flew between them. They started dating. Lucy, as Alexei was called, in the viewing room of the USSR Committee on Cinematography showed Svetlana foreign films: “Young Lincoln”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” ... Kapler introduced the girl to the masterpieces of world literature: “To have and not to have” and “For whom the bell tolls” Ernest Hemingway, "All men are enemies" by Richard Aldington.

“He gave me “adult” books about love, quite sure that I would understand everything. I don’t know if I understood everything in them, but I remember these books as if I read them yesterday, ”Alliluyeva said. In January 1943, love literally burned in these two people - in a 40-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl. They could talk on the phone for hours, just walk the streets, kiss madly, even though the spy is only a few meters away.

They tried to “reason” Kapler in a good way. Colonel Rumyantsev, one of Stalin's personal bodyguards, suggested that Alexei leave Moscow on a business trip. Lucy had the imprudence to refuse. And because of this, his filmography has a significant gap. After the release in 1943 of the paintings "She Defends the Motherland" and "Novgorodians" according to Kapler's script, his next work, "Behind the Showcase of a Department Store", dates from 1955.

IN SEARCH OF HEAT

On March 2, Alexei was taken to the Lubyanka, where they were recorded as British spies. Svetlana rushed to her father: “I love him!” For this she received two slaps in the face, and Kapler - five years of exile in Vorkuta, then - the same term in a camp near Inta in Komi. They met 11 years later ... And Alliluyeva did not talk to Stalin for only four months, but they turned into a bottomless abyss that separated father and daughter.

She called Stalin in July, when she had to decide which institute to enter. Svetlana wanted to be a philologist, but the leader categorically objected: "You will go to the historical one." I had to submit to the will of the parent, from whom human warmth was no longer expected. And she needed a man who could give this feeling.

In the spring of 1944, Svetlana decided to marry Grigory Morozov, a student at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, with whom she went to the same school. Naturally, according to tradition, consent to marriage had to be obtained from the father. And this could cause problems, because the chosen one is a Jew. As you know, Stalin did not like representatives of this nationality, suspecting a “Zionist conspiracy” everywhere. Hearing about the intentions of his daughter, Stalin grimaced, but said: “Do you want to get married? Yes, spring... Do what you want. Just don't show up in my house." True, the head of the country helped the young family financially, allocated an apartment, and then allowed them to come to Zubalovo. And no sentimentality - even when in May 1945 Svetlana gave birth to a son, whom she named Joseph. For three years - until 1947 - they were together with Grigory, and then divorced. Oddly enough, without the participation of Stalin, simply for personal reasons.

The next marriage also did not last long - with Yuri, the son of an ally of the leader Andrei Zhdanov. It was a typical marriage of convenience: Stalin always wanted to intermarry with the family of a comrade in the struggle. Svetlana and Yuri had a daughter, Katya, but even this could not prevent the separation, because all the same, “artificiality” was visible in the relationship of the spouses. And it was difficult to get along in the Zhdanovs' house.

“I had to face a combination of formal, sanctimonious “party spirit” and trivial philistinism - chests full of good things, vases and napkins everywhere, penny still lifes on the walls. All this was personified by the widow Zinaida Alexandrovna Zhdanova, the queen of the house, ”said Alliluyeva.

"SECRETARY" STALIN

And what about Stalin? Did the leader of the peoples not love the Light? As Alliluyeva herself claimed, she was a bad daughter, and he was a bad father. But it was Iosif Vissarionovich who came up with the “letter game”. Setanka (as she called herself as a child, when she swallowed the sound “v”) gave dad “orders”, and he reported on their execution. For example: “I order you to allow me to go to the cinema, and you order the film Chapaev and some American comedy. Setanka hostess. Signature and seal. To which the father imposed a positive resolution: “I obey”, “I agree”, “I submit” or “Will be done”. And he almost always signed in the same way: "Setanka's secretary-hostess, the poor I. Stalin." True, there were also original options: “To my sparrow. I read with pleasure. Daddy".

The last humorous letter was sent in May 1941, a month before the attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union: “My dear secretary, I hasten to inform you that your mistress wrote the composition perfectly! Thus, the first test passed. I'm submitting the second one tomorrow. Eat and drink to your health. Kiss daddy hard 1,000 times. Hello secretaries. Mistress.

The war became a zone of exclusion for them, which did not disappear on May 9, 1945, on Victory Day. They just exchanged congratulations. The case with Alexei Kapler, as well as with Stalin's son from his first marriage, Yakov, who died in captivity, played a role. Yes, and Svetlana has become more mature, the games that could bring her closer to her father remained in childhood. And quite in an adult way, she assessed the events of early March 1953, when "the country suffered an irreparable loss." On the 2nd, she was taken from a French lesson at the Academy of Social Sciences and brought to the "near dacha" in Kuntsevo. Svetlana saw how he was leaving - long and painful. Doctors pronounced him dead on March 5.

HINDUS AND AMERICAN

In 1963, at a government hospital in Kuntsevo, she met Brajesh Singh, an Indian communist who had come to Moscow for treatment at the invitation of the CPSU. “I cannot explain why I had a feeling of absolute trust in this stranger from another world. I don’t know why he believed my every word, ”Alliluyeva described her impressions of those rendezvous.

Having completed the prescribed course, Brajesh returned to his homeland. But his heart remained with Svetlana. Therefore, using his connections (Dinesh's nephew was then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs), Singh obtained an invitation to the post of translator in the Moscow Progress publishing house. True, the process did not go quickly due to bureaucratic red tape, and only on April 7, 1965, together with her son Osya, did she meet Brajesh at Sheremetyevo. Everyone was happy, including the children of Alliluyeva, who really liked the Indian "dad".

A common property of most idylls is to end quickly. Singh's illness progressed, so they celebrated the third anniversary of the first meeting in the same hospital on October 9, 1966. They were congratulated by doctors and nurses. Before the loss of a loved one, there was very little left ...

Then there was a trip to India, an escape to the USA, the publication of the books “20 Letters to a Friend” and “Only One Year”, many interviews and articles about Stalin, and another marriage. In 1970, in Arizona, Alliluyeva met architect William Wesley Peters. During a visit to a jewelry store, he bought Svetlana a turquoise ring and put it on her finger. “Will I marry this man?” she thought. Then there was dinner at a restaurant, where Wes, as everyone called him, spoke about a car accident in which his wife and two-year-old son, who was pregnant with their third child, died ... Three weeks later there was a wedding. The wife paid all her husband's debts - about half a million dollars. Alliluyeva then received huge royalties from publishers, so she paid money with peace of mind. As it turned out, Wes was only interested in money. In 1972, he easily agreed to a divorce, leaving Svetlana with her daughter Olga in her arms, without any obligations for alimony.

In the "free" world of the West, she soon became cramped, and she decided to return, as she herself claimed, after a call from her son. In 1984, the Soviet Union opened its arms for Alliluyeva and her daughter. But this "comeback" did not bring her soul the desired peace. With Joseph and Catherine, whom she left in the USSR after the escape, she did not find mutual understanding. And she left again. Already forever.

FACTS ABOUT SVETLAN ALLILUEV

I believe in the power of intelligence in the world, in any country, no matter where you live. The world is too small and the human race is too small in this universe

• Born February 28, 1926 in Moscow;
• In 1949 she graduated from Moscow University with a degree in contemporary history;
• Author of the books “20 Letters to a Friend”, “Only One Year”, “A Book for Granddaughters. Journey home”, “Distant music”;
• She died November 22, 2011 in Wisconsin.

Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva, sometimes referred to as Svetlana Peters, is Stalin's daughter. The biography and personal life of Svetlana is full of interesting facts, and her photos were posted not only by Soviet publications, but also by foreign ones.

She was born in 1926 in Leningrad and died in Richland Center, Wisconsin, in the United States of America. Her biography has always attracted attention, because she was the daughter of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

The name change occurred in 1957, and 10 years later she emigrated to the United States from the then Soviet Union. Trained as a translator, she wrote several books about the life of her great father and is therefore still in the center of attention of historians.

In the photo Svetlana Alliluyeva

Childhood and youth

At the time of the girl's birth, the family already had one child, the boy Vasily. The parents got married in 1918, but officially registered the marriage a year later, and 2 years later, in 1921, the first-born was born. Maternal grandfather was also a revolutionary, S.Ya. Alliluyev, so Nadezhda Sergeevna, who was 18 years old at the time of marriage, left her father's surname. When daughter Svetlana was born, her mother studied at the Industrial Academy.

Svetlana Alliluyeva was told that her mother died of appendicitis, but in fact she committed suicide by shooting herself with a pistol after a quarrel with her husband. When she learned the truth about her mother's death, she was already an adult, but it still led to a severe emotional shock. This is what led to the appearance in her creative biography of the book "Twenty Letters to a Friend", where she tried to understand what led her mother to such a terrible step.

In fact, despite all the idle speculation, Nadezhda Alliluyeva had a serious illness that periodically caused severe and excruciating headaches. She unsuccessfully tried to be treated, but it is now known that the suffering that she experienced could well force her to pull the trigger on the gun.

Photo: Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva

Personal life

The personal life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, diverse, unstable and impulsive, is possibly associated with some hereditary factors transmitted to her from her mother. The views and inclinations may have been influenced by her nanny, who was entrusted with the upbringing of the girl. Surprisingly, but the upbringing was entrusted to a certain Alexandra Andreevna, who had previously worked in the family of N. N. Evreinov, who did not accept the revolution and emigrated to France.

After graduating from school with honors, Svetlana Stalin gathered at the Literary Institute, but, not having received the approval of her father, she was forced to enter Moscow State University.

Her independent biography began at the moment when, after studying for a year, she left the philological faculty, and returning later, after, she began to study history. She graduated from the history department in 1949, but her personal life, like that of her mother, began much earlier.

Already at the age of 18, she married G. Morozov, and a year later she gave birth to a son named, in honor of both grandfathers, Joseph.

The first husband's name was Grigory Iosifovich. He died in 2001, already a professor and Honorary President of the World Federation of United Nations Public Associations. Their acquaintance took place thanks to Svetlana's brother, Vasily, with whom they studied on the same course.

Joseph was adopted by his second husband, Yuri Zhdanov, later rector of the Rostov State University, so sometimes he is mistakenly considered the son of a scientist.

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Morozov was a Jew by nationality, and his famous father-in-law did not want to meet him and maintain an acquaintance. He saw his grandson only a few times in his life and was not at all interested in him. Meanwhile, Iosif Grigorievich became a famous cardiologist, doctor of medical sciences, and practically did not mention his famous relationship, taking the surname Alliluyev.

Adulthood and husbands

The second time, Svetlana Alliluyeva did not miss the choice of her husband. Her husband Yuri Zhdanov not only adopted a son from his first marriage and took him under his wing. He was among his father's close associates, later became not only a doctor of chemical sciences, but also a candidate of philosophy, a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

With him, Svetlana's biography was replenished with her daughter Ekaterina Yuryevna, but her personal life did not work out, and the marriage broke up 3 years after its conclusion in April 1949. Catherine was born in 1950.

Stalin's great-granddaughter, Catherine's daughter, Anna, lives in Kamchatka, where Katya left, becoming a geophysicist. Her mother left her absolutely calmly, leaving the Soviet Union when her daughter was seven years old. Katya went to Kamchatka in 1977, and only once flew to her famous father. And her daughter graduated from an accounting college and married an ensign, and also lives in Kamchatka.

In some sources, in the biography of Svetlana Alliluyeva, there is not even a mention of this child.

The third husband was Jonrid Svanidze, but even with this man her personal life did not continue, because the marriage lasted only two years. The reason for the divorce was vague and vague explanations about personal dissatisfaction, disagreements and the impossibility of continuing further relationships.

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Perhaps the third husband was counting on receiving some kind of preferences on behalf of and funds from his father-in-law, who had already died at that time. But from her father, who turned the course of world history and led the Soviet Union to victory in the Great Patriotic War, Stalin's daughter inherited a passbook with 900 rubles and several worn tunics in the closet.

Svanidze was repressed and later rehabilitated, and it was not by chance that he was surrounded by Alliluyeva. He was the nephew of her father's first wife. There is a version that the marriage broke up due to the fact that the spouses did not have children, but other sources claim that Svetlana did not love her newly-made spouse and did not hide adultery from him.

The apartment, which was allocated to him under the personal patronage of Khrushchev in Moscow, did not save the situation, as did the work of his spouse at the Institute of Oriental Studies.

cardinal changes

The biography of Svetlana Alliluyeva could continue along the knurled line and further. She received a scientific degree, was engaged in translations and successfully worked at the Institute of World Literature.

But after the death of her father, something changed in her worldview, because she:

• she was baptized herself and introduced children to the sacraments;
• fell in love, at the age of 35, with a Hindu named Brajesh Singh, who was 50;
• changed her surname, and became Alliluyeva, after her mother;
• tried to marry a foreigner;
• went with his body to India and started talking about how she wanted to stay in her husband's village.

In the photos taken during that period, changes are noticeable not only in the look, but also in the appearance of a 35-year-old woman. She was not at all interested in all those, in her opinion, conventions, to which the then leadership of the country attached importance. After all, it was the head of the government, P.N. Kosygin opposed the marriage of Stalin's daughter to a foreigner, and after she expressed her desire to stay in India, Indira Gandhi was also concerned about this circumstance.

Svetlana Alliluyeva, despite the insistence of the Indian government and Soviet diplomats, did not return to her homeland, but asked for asylum in the American embassy.

Her decision was not even influenced by a letter from her son, in which he wrote that her little daughter Katya could not calmly accept the fact that her mother had abandoned her. Psychologists see the consequences of this childhood trauma in a permanent stay in Kamchatka and an ineradicable desire for loneliness after the suicide of her husband, who had cirrhosis of the liver.

Svetlana was aware of how hard the children took her abandonment of the Motherland, but she was not worried about either the anxieties of the Government of the USSR or the experiences of the children. Moreover, the furor caused by her act in the United States and the opportunity to publish her memoirs gave her the opportunity to get rich, receiving a fantastic fee.

America and obscurity

It should be noted that Alliluyeva never watered her Motherland with mud, unlike other defectors. Also, she did not try to earn preferences on fried facts that she could report to the American yellow press. In the States, she met her fifth husband, Peters, and began calling herself Lana Peters.

Lana Peters gave birth to a girl, Chris Evans, later known as Olga, whom she also baptized. But her life did not work out with this husband either, and in 1973 they divorced. The official version this time was the lack of money from Svetlana, who dispersed in an incomprehensible way. The fee for the memoirs amounted to an astronomical sum of one and a half million at that time.

A few years later, everyone forgot about the once popular figure, so it was no coincidence that a decision was made to return to the USSR. Chris Evans was not trained in Russian and was extremely unhappy with her mother's decision to return to her homeland. The children, abandoned to the mercy of fate, grew up, and Joseph became a complete stranger, just like his first husband.

In Georgia, in the homeland of her famous father, there was also no proper attention, according to Alliluyeva, and when she asked Gorbachev for permission to go back to the United States, she was told that she could do as she pleased, and no one was worried about the question of her whereabouts.

Chris Evans was brought up in a boarding school in Cambridge, and Svetlana herself lived out her last days in a nursing home in Wisconsin. She continued to write memoirs, which were of little interest to anyone, and in the last interview she scolded the country that gave her shelter, and was proud that she did not betray her father and did not become Pavlik Morozov. Despite the constant surveillance of American intelligence services, it is still unknown whether Alliluyeva's remains were buried, which, after cremation, were sent to the state of Oregon.

Svetlana Alliluyeva is the only daughter of the "leader of all times and peoples" Joseph Stalin. Throughout her life, she moved 39 times, trying to escape from the "huge shadow" of her father. Svetlana Iosifovna entered world history in 1967 after the publication of her memoirs Twenty Letters to a Friend, in which Stalin's daughter spoke about her father and Kremlin life.

Childhood and youth

Alliluyeva Svetlana Iosifovna was born on February 28, 1926 in Leningrad in the family of a Soviet revolutionary and. She became the second child in the family of the future "leader of the people" - she had an older sibling and paternal half-brother, born in Stalin's first marriage to Ekaterina Svanidze.

Vasily Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva and Joseph Stalin

Alliluyeva's childhood, despite the financial well-being of her family and the love of her parents, cannot be called bright and happy, since the father expressed his love in an insulting way for the child, which left an imprint on the entire future fate of the girl.

In 1932, six-year-old Svetlana became half an orphan - her mother committed suicide, so the children remained in the full care of their father, who could not give them due attention due to full employment in the public service.

Then the nanny Alexandra Andreevna, who had previously worked in the family of the French playwright and philosopher of Russian origin Nikolai Evreinov, took up the upbringing of the children of Stalin, Svetlana and Vasily. It was her influence that set the key direction for the future career of Svetlana Iosifovna, who from childhood wanted to become a philologist. Alliluyeva graduated with honors from exemplary school No. 25, where she showed her pronounced interest in literature.

The school years of Stalin's daughter passed next to her father in the Kremlin, but this did not bring joy to the child. She was taken to school by a personal driver, at home she was surrounded by numerous governesses, but she was strictly forbidden to communicate with her peers, walk with the neighbor's children and engage in conversations with strangers. Therefore, she brightened up her leisure time by studying English and watching Soviet films on a home movie projector.

Svetlana Alliluyeva and her father Joseph Stalin

At the end of school, Svetlana Alliluyeva wanted to enter the Literary Institute, which caused the anger of her father, who considered writing an unworthy occupation for his daughter.

Stalin insisted that she enter the Faculty of History at Moscow State University, but after graduation, Svetlana nevertheless received Joseph Vissarionovich's "blessing" and became a graduate student at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1954, Stalin's daughter defended her dissertation and became a candidate of philological sciences.

The fate of Stalin's daughter

After graduate school, Svetlana Alliluyeva actively took up literary activity, as a real “philological maiden” came out of her. She got a job at the Institute of World Literature, where she studied books by Soviet writers and translated English-language books, which included John Lewis's The Munich Plot.

Documentary film "Svetlana daughter of Joseph", part 1

In the 60s after the death of Stalin, who left Alliluyeva 900 rubles in a savings book, and during the beginning of the "Khrushchev thaw", the biography of Svetlana Alliluyeva radically changes its direction.

Having already been divorced twice, she enters into a civil marriage with an Indian citizen Brajesh Singh, with whom she lived for several years. In 1966, Singh dies from a serious illness, and she decides to bury him at home. The Soviet authorities allowed Stalin's daughter to go abroad, from where she did not want to return to the USSR.

Documentary film "Svetlana daughter of Joseph", part 2

Svetlana Iosifovna asked the United States for political asylum, which caused a loud scandal in the Union. She was automatically included in the list of "traitors-defectors", for which Alliluyeva was deprived of citizenship. It was not possible for Stalin’s daughter to leave India directly for the States - she was first sent to Switzerland, and only after that she managed to move to America.

Unexpectedly for everyone in 1984, Svetlana Alliluyeva decided to return to her homeland. In the USSR, the “fugitive” was kindly welcomed and provided with all the conditions for a comfortable stay - housing, a personal car with a driver and a pension, since the KGB did not want to let her out of sight.

According to Stalin's daughter, at that time she fell under the hermetic "cap" of the Soviet regime, which the woman categorically refused to put up with. Therefore, she moved to her father's homeland in Georgia, where she was also provided with truly royal conditions for life.

But two years in the Union did not bring Svetlana either happiness or peace, so she decided to return to America. This time, the first and only president of the USSR helped her to leave. He personally ordered that Stalin's daughter be freely released from the country, after which Svetlana Iosifovna forever renounced Soviet citizenship.

Documentary film "Svetlana about Svetlana"

Returning to America, she was never able to arrange her life, so she had to settle in a nursing home in the city of Madison. In 2005, for the first time in many years, Svetlana Alliluyeva agreed to give an interview to Russian journalists and even star in the documentary Svetlana about Svetlana.

True, at the same time, Stalin's daughter categorically refused to speak Russian, referring to the fact that she had nothing to do with the Russian people, since her father was a Georgian, and her mother was the daughter of a gypsy and a German.

Books

Throughout her life, Svetlana Alliluyeva was engaged in writing memoirs, in which she outlined her memories of her father and Kremlin life. Her first essay, 20 Letters to a Friend, was published in London in 1967. The book made a splash both in the West and in the USSR, which brought Stalin's daughter world fame and a fee of $ 2.5 million.