Why did Stalin's wife die? Why did Nadezhda Alliluyeva shoot herself? Resentment and humiliation
09 May 2016
Nadezhda Alliluyeva is the second wife of Joseph Stalin, the mother of the deceased Svetlana Alliluyeva-Peters.
There are many mysteries associated with this woman. It still remains a mystery under what circumstances Stalin's wife died: she committed suicide or was killed.
The published letters of the Soviet leader and his young girlfriend Nadezhda Alliluyeva turned the story on its head. For many years it was believed that Stalin shot his wife. However, it became clear from the correspondence that Nadezhda had shot herself.
“Give me, if you can, 50 rubles, I am completely without money,” she wrote. “I give you 120 rubles with a friend who is leaving for Moscow today,” Stalin replied.
In MOLOTOV's diaries, Alliluyeva's suicide, witnessed by Stalin and his wife Polina Semyonovna, is described as follows: “She was very jealous of him. Gypsy blood. She shot herself the same night. Polina condemned her act, said: “Nadya was wrong. She left him at such a difficult time!” What do you remember? Stalin raised the pistol with which Alliluyeva had shot herself and said: “And the pistol was a toy, I shot it once a year,” the pistol was a gift; gave her a brother-in-law, in my opinion ... - "I was a bad husband, I had no time to take her to the movies." Rumor has it that he killed her. I have never seen him cry before. And here, at the coffin of Alliluyeva, I saw how tears rolled down from him.
For many years, the circumstances of the death of hope were studied by the historian Yuri Alexandrov. He also put forward a new version of the death of Alliluyeva.
In his opinion, jealousy really could cause the death of Nadezhda.
“Jealousy, of course. In my opinion, completely unreasonable ... Alliluyeva was, in my opinion, a little psychopath at that time ... ”, Alexandrov said.
Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev also adhered to the version of jealousy. According to his recollections, Alliluyeva committed suicide after she learned that during the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin did not come home to spend the night, as he was with a certain young woman.
According to eyewitnesses, - says Yuri Alexandrov, - Alliluyeva was jealous of Stalin for the wives of his close associates and even for the hairdresser with whom Stalin shaved.
“He was too smart not to understand that suicides always think to “punish” someone with their death ... He understood this, but could not understand - why? Why was he so punished? And he asked those around him: didn’t he love and respect her as a wife and as a person? ... In recent years, shortly before his death, he suddenly began to often talk to me about this, completely driving me crazy with this ... Then he suddenly took up arms against the “filthy little book” that my mother read shortly before her death, ”the daughter recalled Stalin Svetlana Alliluyeva.
As Alexandrov later suggested, this is Dmitrievsky's book On Stalin and Lenin. It is in this book that for the first time it is described in detail about the repressions organized and carried out personally by Stalin in Tsaritsyn, in Poland, after the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion.
Stalin looked for this book and did not find it. Most likely, it was destroyed by his assistant Boris Dvinsky, who, at the request of Alliluyeva, got it in Germany, Alexandrov believes.
They say that during the funeral of Alliluyeva, Dvinsky was hysterical. After the funeral, Dvinsky never returned to the Kremlin.
In the diary of Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s friend, Maria Svanidze, who was shot as an “enemy of the people” in 1942, there is an entry dated April 1935: “... And then Joseph said: “How can Nadia ... could shoot herself. She did very badly." Sachiko put in a line - how could she leave two children. “What children, they forgot her in a few days, and she crippled me for life. Let's drink to Nadia! Joseph said. And we all drank to the health of dear Nadia, who left us so cruelly ... ".
Versions
One of the most common: Nadezhda Alliluyeva was shot dead on Stalin's orders. He seemed to have been informed that his wife was connected with "enemies". Another hypothesis: Stalin publicly insulted Alliluyeva during a feast on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution. She could not bear the shame and committed suicide.
Another version is that Stalin himself shot his wife because of jealousy. Alliluyeva seemed to have a close relationship with Yakov, Stalin's son from his first marriage, and this is what prompted the leader to kill. However, historians consider it absurd.
Iosif Dzhugashvili allegedly had a love affair with Alliluyeva's mother, and Nadezhda was in fact Stalin's daughter. When she asked Stalin if he had an affair with her mother, he replied that he had many affairs, possibly with her mother as well. After this conversation, Alliluyeva shot herself.
Nadezhda Alliluyeva was only 31 years old.
Her name was Ekaterina Semyonovna Svanidze or simply Kato. She was born in 1885, 7 years later than her future chosen one. Catherine came from a noble family, but, as Andrei Galchuk writes in the publication Amazing Russia, at the very beginning of the 1900s she was an ordinary day laborer, that is, she made a living by washing, ironing and sewing for strangers. It was at that moment that fate brought her to Joseph. This happened thanks to Kato's brother Alexander, whom relatives called simply Alyosha.
Alyosha Svanidze studied at the Tiflis Theological Seminary with Joseph Dzhugashvili. Moreover, they were friends. Therefore, it is not surprising that one day Alyosha invited Stalin to visit him. Alexander was well aware of the political position of his friend, therefore, according to the author of the book “Stalin. The life of one leader ”Oleg Khlevnyuk, tried with all his might to protect his 3 sisters from this information. However, the girls were not too interested. Moreover, the appearance of the guest, according to Edward Radzinsky (“Joseph Stalin. Beginning”), did not make any impression on them. But Dzhugashvili himself was struck by the beauty of one of Alyosha Kato's sisters.
Booker Igor 06/17/2019 at 15:00
When telling stories about politicians who have not lost their relevance (even if these are stories of their love), one should always clearly indicate one's position. The muse of history Clio does not like accuracy, but the lady is very principled. Depending on the preferences of the writer, Stalin's second wife, Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva, either committed suicide or was killed.
The daughter of professional revolutionary Sergei Yakovlevich Alliluyev, Nadezhda, was 20 years younger than Iosif Dzhugashvili. She became not only Stalin's comrade in the party (after Lenin's secretariat she worked in the editorial office of the Revolution and Culture magazine at the Pravda newspaper), but also the hostess in his house. Nadezhda gave birth to her husband two children: in 1921 - Vasily, in 1926 - Svetlana.
Her letters to her husband, whom she called "Dear Joseph", breathe love: "It's very, very boring without you." Stalin jokingly answered her, calling her “Tatka”. As her nephew Vladimir Alliluyev wrote: “One day, after a party at the Industrial Academy, where Nadezhda studied, she came home completely sick because she sipped a little wine, she became ill. Stalin put her to bed, began to comfort, and Nadezhda said:“ And you "You love me a little bit." This phrase of hers, apparently, is the key to understanding the relationship between these two close people. In our family, they knew that Nadezhda and Stalin loved each other.
On the day of the 15th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, Nadezhda Sergeevna had a painful headache. Despite the gloomy autumn morning, she walked in the festive column of the Industrial Academy and, together with everyone else, greeted the leaders of the party and the country standing on the podium of the newly built marble mausoleum. The next day, Stalin and his wife were present at a dinner with the Voroshilovs, where a quarrel broke out between them. Here, the versions of what happened also differ, as do the statements about whether a murder or suicide later occurred. There is no definitive answer to both questions, and it is unlikely that there will ever be, except for regular hypotheses.
On November 9, 1932, 31-year-old Nadezhda Alliluyeva shot herself with a small pistol "Walter", brought by her brother as a gift from Berlin. Why did he have such a present? A participant in the Civil War, Pavel Alliluyev, at the suggestion of Stalin, who respected him very much, was seconded to the Soviet trade mission in Germany as a military representative. Upon his return in the spring of 1932, he served as military commissar of the Armored Directorate of the Red Army of the USSR.
Svetlana Alliluyeva transferred the relationship of parents to a purely political plane. Her mother "understood in her heart, in the end, that her father was not the new man he had seemed to her in her youth, and she suffered a terrible, devastating disappointment here." Stalin's daughter drew her conclusions on the basis of the allegedly later stories of her old nanny. Svetlana Alliluyeva wrote that her mother was in a deep depression in the last days before her death: "the nanny heard my mother repeating that" everything is tired "," everything is disgusted "," nothing pleases.
The already mentioned nephew of Nadezhda Sergeevna, on the contrary, is inclined to see the cause in a medical diagnosis. Unfavorable heredity affected: in their family there were people with a weak psyche. V. Alliluyev recalled: “Apparently, a difficult childhood was not in vain, Nadezhda developed a serious illness - ossification of cranial sutures. The disease began to progress, was accompanied by depression and headache attacks. All this noticeably affected her mental state. She even went to Germany for consultations with leading German neuropathologists... Nadezhda threatened to commit suicide more than once."
Shortly before her death, there is a mention of depression in Stalin’s wife in the memoirs of Alexander Barmin, a Soviet defector diplomat who saw her with her brother Pavel Alliluyev on Red Square on November 7, 1932: “She was pale, looked tired, it seemed that everything that happened was not enough of her It was evident that her brother was deeply saddened and preoccupied with something.
Years of life: 1901 - 1932
The ancestors of Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva, the second wife of I.V. Stalin, came from serfs, and her parents were professional revolutionaries. Their marriage turned out to be happy, it was not even overshadowed by the fact that Olga Evgenievna Alliluyeva, having a very expansive nature, was sometimes fond of some man: either a Hungarian, or a Pole, or a Bulgarian, or a Turk. When her next hobby passed, peace and tranquility returned to the family again.
Nadezhda was born in Baku and spent her childhood in the Caucasus. According to family tradition, in 1903 Joseph Stalin saved two-year-old Nadya when she fell into the water while playing on the embankment. Fourteen years later, they met again - a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and a thirty-eight-year-old exiled revolutionary who returned from Siberia. Soon they got married...
In 1921, Nadezhda and Stalin had their first child, who was named Vasily. The boy was mainly taken care of by his grandmother, grandfather and servants. Svetlana was born in 1926.
Nadezhda at that time actively participated in social work, and the main responsibilities for caring for the girl lay with the teacher. After the death of V.I. Lenin, Alliluyeva, his former secretary, began working in the Revolution and Culture magazine. Having no education, except for the sixth grade of the gymnasium, she was ready to do any work, just not to sit with the children in the Kremlin walls.
From the memoirs of Svetlana Alliluyeva: “She was very beautiful and was scented with good perfume. In the evenings, my mother came to my bed, kissed me, touched me with her hands and left, but the smell remained, and I fell asleep in a fragrant cloud.
Meanwhile, having truly unlimited possibilities, Nadezhda Sergeevna, by her nature, remained a modest and thrifty woman. Her grandson, director A.V. Burdonsky (son of Vasily), gave a very characteristic example in one interview: “Somehow in the fifties, my grandmother’s sister, Anna Sergeevna Alliluyeva, handed us a chest where Nadezhda Sergeevna’s things were kept. I was struck by the modesty of her dresses. An old jacket with patches under the arms, a worn skirt of dark wool, patched on the inside. And it was worn by a young woman who was said to love beautiful clothes.”
“Stalin’s marriage to Alliluyeva cannot be called happy,” writes historian Alexander Kolesnik in his book Truth and Myths about Stalin’s Family. He was mostly busy with work. He spent most of his time in the Kremlin. His wife clearly lacked his attention. She left him several times with her children Vasily and Svetlana, and shortly before her death she even talked about her moving to relatives after graduating from the Industrial Academy, where she studied.
With daughter Svetlana
More and more often, Nadezhda Sergeevna turned to God (despite her revolutionary ideas, she was a believer). Maybe that saved her for a while. But still did not save from the fatal step ...
The year 1926 turned out to be difficult for the leader’s family… Svetlana Alliluyeva writes: “Somehow back in 1926, when I was six months old, my parents quarreled, and my mother, having taken me, my brother and the nanny, went to Leningrad to my grandfather not to return. She intended to start working there and gradually create an independent life for herself. The quarrel broke out because of rudeness, the reason was not great, but, obviously, it was already a long-standing, accumulated irritation. However, the resentment has passed. My nanny told me that my father called from Moscow and wanted to come and "put up" and take everyone home. But my mother answered the phone not without malicious wit: “Why do you need to go, it will cost the state too much! I'll come myself." And everyone returned home ... "
I.V. Stalin, N.S. Alliluyeva, E.D. Voroshilov, K.E. Voroshilov. Sochi, 1932
Everyone who knew Nadezhda well spoke of her as an extremely nervous, excitable person. In this respect, the spouses were similar to each other, although Stalin himself knew how to hide his feelings. One of the women who knew Nadezhda Sergeevna said: “In general, it was noticeable that she was a little “that”. As they say now, with violets in my head. Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, remembering her, also admitted that "she was a little mentally ill, sawed and humiliated him (Stalin) in the presence of others."
Mentally unhealthy… Researchers agree on one thing: Nadezhda Sergeevna went to Berlin for a consultation about severe headaches. And the doctors allegedly refused to operate on her. Although the disease was more than serious - fusion of cranial sutures.
“What his wife Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva discovered for herself in Stalin and what she knew about him that made her life impossible - probably will never be known,” A. Kolesnik suggests. “Her psyche could not stand it, and on the night of November 8-9, 1932, N. S. Alliluyeva died.”
An interesting version of the death of Nadezhda Sergeyevna is cited in her book by Larisa Vasilyeva: “Once, it was about a week before the seventh of November, Alliluyeva told her friend that something terrible would happen to her soon. She is cursed from birth, because she is Stalin's daughter and his wife at the same time ... Stalin allegedly told her this himself at the time of the quarrel. And when she was dumbfounded, he tried to correct the situation: he joked, they say. She pressed her mother, who had a good walk in her youth, to the wall, and she admitted that she really was close to Stalin and her husband at the same time ... and, to be honest, she doesn’t know which of them Nadia was born from ... ”
JV Stalin did not go to the funeral of the mother of his children. She was buried by her family and friends. Behind the coffin were Abel Yenukidze and Alexander Svanidze, each of whom the Muscovites mistook for Stalin. There is a version that I. V. Stalin himself shot his wife. But to date, there is no evidence of this.
According to eyewitnesses, Alliluyeva was jealous of Stalin for the wives of his close associates and even for the hairdresser who shaved Joseph Vissarionovich. Maybe there really were reasons for jealousy. At one time, the book "Confessions of Stalin's mistress" about the opera singer Vera Davydova, with whom the leader allegedly often visited Sochi, made a sensation.
“It can be assumed that Alliluyeva knew about their relationship,” says Sochi historian Yuri Alexandrov. - Stalin met Davydova in the spring of 1932, and judging by the active participation he took in her move from Leningrad to Moscow, Davydova made a great impression on Stalin. When I talked with the old workers of Stalin's Sochi dacha, none of them could remember Davydov. But the hostess and librarian Yelizaveta Popkova told me that Stalin was often visited by his second cousin, an opera singer named Mchedlidze. I searched for information about Mchedlidze for a long time and found in ... the Soviet encyclopedia: "Vera Davydova (Mchedlidze), opera singer, People's Artist of the USSR."
Stalin regarded the suicide of his wife as a betrayal. In the diary of Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s friend, Maria Svanidze, who was shot as an “enemy of the people” in 1942, there is an entry dated April 1935: “... And then Joseph said: How can Nadia ... could shoot herself. She did very badly." Sachiko interjected - how could she leave two children. “What children, they forgot her in a few days, and she crippled me for life. Let's drink to Nadia! - said Joseph. And we all drank to the health of dear Nadia, who left us so cruelly ... "
Joseph Stalin with his wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva in a Rolls-Royce. Driven by Pavel Udalov. Moscow Kremlin. 1923. RGALI
“The first days he was shocked,” Svetlana wrote. - He said that he himself did not want to live anymore ... They were afraid to leave his father alone, in such a state he was. From time to time, some kind of anger, rage found on him. This was due to the fact that his mother left him a letter.
Apparently she wrote it at night. I never saw him, of course. It was probably immediately destroyed, but it was, those who saw it told me about it. It was terrible. It was full of accusations and reproaches. It wasn't just a personal letter: it was partly a political letter. And, after reading it, my father might have thought that my mother was next to him only for appearances, but in fact she was walking somewhere near the opposition of those years.
Stalin - actor Duta Skhirtladze, Nadezhda Alliluyeva - actress Olga Budina
He was shocked and angry at this, and when he came to say goodbye to the civil memorial service, then, going up to the coffin for a minute, he suddenly pushed it away from him with his hands and, turning, walked away. And he didn't go to the funeral.
Enraged by his wife's suicide, Stalin imprisoned and executed many of her relatives. Even harmless, non-political sisters were arrested: "They know too much and talk too much."
Vladimir Alliluyev, in his book The Chronicle of a Family, cites an eyewitness account that in October 1941, “when the fate of Moscow hung in the balance and the government was supposed to be evacuated to Kuibyshev, Stalin came to Novodevichy to say goodbye to Nadezhda. Security officer of the Secretary General A. T. Rybin claims that Stalin came to Novodevichy several times at night and sat silently for a long time on a marble bench set opposite the monument.
The former assistant to the commandant of the Stalinist dacha, Pyotr Lozgachev, said that in the last year of his life, Joseph Vissarionovich began to think more and more about Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In the dining room, her portrait appeared from somewhere on the wall (obviously, the same one that, on the orders of the leader, was painted by the artist Gerasimov in the morgue). Stalin used to stand in front of him for a long time and think about something ...
Text by E. N. Oboymina and O. V. Tatkova
Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva
Nadezhda Alliluyeva with her daughter Svetlana.
(photo from http://www.rt-online.ru/)
Alliluyeva Nadezhda Sergeevna (Dzhugashvili) (1901, Baku - 9.11.1932, Moscow), wife I.V. Stalin . The daughter of a revolutionary, "Old Bolshevik" Sergei Yakovlevich Alliluyev (1866-1945), is Georgian by mother. There is a mythical story (not confirmed by facts) that in 1903 it fell into the river and was saved by Stalin, who was here. In 1918 she joined the RCP(b) and married Stalin, who was more than 20 years older than her. Worked in the People's Commissariat for Nationalities Affairs, in the secretariat IN AND. Lenin . On 12/10/1921, during the purge, she was expelled from the party, but on 12/14/1921 she was reinstated as a candidate member of the RCP (b). In 1926 she entered the Moscow Industrial Academy. According to the memoirs of her contemporaries, she was a kind, but mentally unbalanced woman. Committed suicide (shot herself). The immediate cause of her act was a quarrel with her husband at a festive evening (where the Molotovs and Voroshilovs were also present). Her sudden death caused many versions, incl. about her violent death. From Stalin had two children - Vasily (1921) and Svetlana (1925).
Used materials from the book: Zalessky K.A. Empire of Stalin. Biographical encyclopedic dictionary. Moscow, Veche, 2000
I.V. Stalin, N.S. Alliluyeva, E.D. Voroshilov, K.E. Voroshilov. Sochi, 1932
Alliluyeva Nadezhda Sergeevna (1901-1932). Stalin's second wife. Born in Baku, in the family of a revolutionary S.Ya. Alliluyeva. Stalin had known the Alliluyev family since the late 1890s. According to family tradition, Stalin saved Nadezhda when she fell into the sea from the embankment in Baku. (1903). They met again only in March 1917 in Petrograd, where Stalin returned from Siberian exile. In 1918, Nadezhda joined the party and began working in the Council of People's Commissars as a secretary-typist. In the same year, Stalin was sent to Tsaritsyn as an emergency commissioner for the food supply of the Eastern Front. Nadezhda, as part of Stalin's secretariat, accompanied him with her father. On this trip, they got to know each other better. In 1918, she married Stalin, and his letters with a marriage proposal were handed over to 17-year-old Nadezhda N.I. Bukharin.
Later, N. Alliluyeva worked in the secretariat of V.I. Lenin, then collaborated in the editorial office of the journal "Revolution and Culture", in the newspaper "Pravda". In 1921, she was unexpectedly expelled from the party "for social passivity and commitment to anarcho-syndicalism" and, despite Lenin's petition, was reinstated only in 1924. In 1929-1932. Alliluyeva studied at the Industrial Academy at the Faculty of Artificial Fiber. In 1921, her son Vasily was born, and in 1926, a daughter Svetlana.