In Stalin's Shadow: Svetlana Alliluyeva

on November 22nd 2011 an 85 year old woman named Lana Peters passed away in Wisconsin from complications due to colon cancer eventually her death made it into some newspapers but it seemed to go largely unnoticed by an American public that seemed to have largely forgotten who she was and all the attention that she had gained during one of the seminal events of the Cold War that happened 53 years ago today a March 9th 1967 Lana Peters otherwise known as Svetlana Lu Ava represented the contradictions of the era of the Cold War and was witness to some of the greatest crimes of that era she's most known because of her famous father but is perhaps most notable because of how very different she was from him the defection of woman whose birth name was Svetlana Stellina the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin deserves to be remembered born Joseph Ukash viele the Imperial state of Georgia then part of the Russian Empire in 1878 Joseph Stalin already had a reputation for brutality when he was arrested in exile by the Cyrus government in 1908 he had purportedly been responsible for a bank robbery in 1907 that had killed some 40 people and had as well his story put it established himself as George's leading Bolshevik it was sometime during this period that he started using the name Stalin meaning roughly Man of Steel he spent various periods in exile on the run first from the Czarist government and then the so called provisional government that existed after Czar Nicholas advocated in 1917 during the period when Stalin was in exile received aid from Bolshevik supporters Sergei in agha Lu Ava occasionally staying at their home in 1917 after the October Revolution Stalin became a trusted supporter of Vladimir Lenin in a vocal supporter of the brutal period of political repression and mass execution called the Red Terror appointed People's Commissar for nationalities in 1919 he took sergei and Oguz daughter nadezhda who had worked as a clerk in linens office as his secretary the two married later the same year at the time Nadezhda was 18 and Stalin was a 40 year old widower his first wife having died of typhus in 1907 Stalin and Nellie Ava had two children Vasily born in 1921 and Svetlana born in 1926 at the time of her birth Stalin was general secretary of the Soviet Union it had largely gained the upper hand and the struggle to replace Lenin following his death in 1924 as intrigues continued in the Soviet Union Stalin's daughter was fettered by both the Soviet people and her father whom showered her with gifts and called her little sparrow according to her obituaries in the New York Times she became a celebrity in her country compared to Shirley Temple in the United States thousands of babies were named Svetlana so was a perfume but being the daughter of the Man of Steel did not lead to an easy destiny while she was being treated like Shirley Temple Soviet collectivization of the agricultural sector essentially forcing peasants onto collective farms was resulting in various periods of famine over the period of collectivization an estimated 14 million people died due to starvation on November 9 1932 Yosef and nadezhda had a public argument about collectivization policy at a dinner party when they got home that evening she went into a separate room and shot herself to prevent scandal her death was reported as because of an appendicitis her children Vasily was 11 and Svetlana just six were told the same lie for fear if they knew the truth that they might accidentally reveal it Svetlana did not know the truth of how her mother died until she read it in an American newspaper in 1942 nearly six decades later she was quoted saying I do regret that my mother didn't marry a carpenter well she still enjoyed her father's favor with a notoriously unsentimental stall and even playing little games with her she and her siblings were also under great pressure to be examples to the Soviet people and even Svetlana was not free from the brutality of her father's regime in December 1934 when Sergei Kirov a fellow revolutionary and close friend of Stalin's was assassinated Stalin used the event as a provocation for the Great Purge in fact some historians argue that it was Stalin who was behind Kiros murders pretext for the repressive F to purge what Stalin called enemies of the people including counter-revolutionaries and essentially anyone who is a threat to Stalin's power monthly as many as one and a quarter million victims of the purge was Alexander's Vantage the brother of Stalin's first wife from Svetlana knew as a favorite uncle more relatives were removed as well as someone spent longest school friends who's once privileged lives were shattered when their parents were deemed untrustworthy when she protested to her father on behalf of one of her friends her father replied to his fourteen-year-old daughter sometimes you were forced to go against even those you love she later said that it took her years to grasp the extent of her father's crimes when Germany invaded in 1941 Stalin sent his sons to war when his oldest son Svetlana's half-brother Jakob whom Svetlana affectionately called Yasha was captured after his unit was overrun Stalin was furious that Yakov had allowed himself to be taken rather than commit suicide far from showing sympathy for his only surviving child from his first marriage Stalin even had Yakov's wife arrested as untrustworthy later when the Germans offered to trade Yaka for a captured German General Stalin refused and Jack have died in the German POWs camp reportedly by suicide in 1943 svet Lana met and fell in love with filmmaker Alexei Keppler who was married in 23 years her senior Coppola later said that he was drawn to Svetlana by the freedom within her Stalin disapproved for numerous reasons but Lama suspected he was most insulted by the fact that Kapler was Jewish Keppler was arrested and charged with being a British spy although it was assumed the actual crime was the indiscreet affair with Stalin's daughter Stalin destroyed the letters that who had written each other he banished Svetlana from his house because of moral depravity and even punished her brother of whose home she'd met Kepler and her grandparents for failing to intervene Kepler was eventually imprisoned for 10 years when Stalin's purges continued after the war they ensnared more of the set Lana's family including her mother's sister when she tried to intervene with her father on her aunt's behalf Stalin made it clear to her that she also could be accused a March 2nd 1953 she was called from class her there had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was dying she later wrote in a memoir he was dying and I hadn't talked to the doctors but I did not doubt it for a second Stalin lingered for four days as she believed God grants an easy death only to the just as the news of Stalin's death was announced that lana was sitting a room with his servants that a complex relationship was clear when she wrote to the memory of that moment they knew that I had been a bad daughter and my father had been a bad father but that he had loved me all the same as I had loved him the family had difficulty blaming the man who had been both patriarch and villain even as family members returned from the gulag they became convinced that it wasn't Stalin's fall that someone else was responsible for making them a political target that Stalin had been poisoned against them but the prisoners returning from the gulags were compelling evidence of the crimes of Stalin the new leader who was consolidating power Nikita Khrushchev saw bringing down the cult of Stalin is critical to retaining the support the people in February 1956 he gave a speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union entitled on the cult of personality and its consequences the speech popularly called the secret speech began a period of de-stalinization while careful to preserve Stalin's views on the party the speech decried the purges speech greatly affected Soviet policy although it was carefully presented publicly to prevent Western powers from exploiting or criticizing the situation the speech began a period when repression and censorship were relaxed known as the Khrushchev thaw by then Svetlana had had two failed marriages and had two children in 1957 to escape the stigma of her father's name she went to her mother's maiden name and became semana Lu Ava she wandered through love affairs flirted with different religions spent another year on a another failed marriage a friend later said of her she was a very kind and warm-hearted person but it was impossible to escape her terrible heritage she couldn't trust anyone how could you if you were Stalin's daughter she alternately had to deal with people who sought to associate with her in hopes of getting some favor and others who her for her father's crimes in 1963 you own the hospital for a tonsillectomy FET monomyth an Indian national named Rajesh Singh the Indian government enjoyed a cordial relationship with the Soviet Union and Singh had become a communist in the 1930s saying it is the best way to fight for Indian independence Singh was 53 and suffering from chronic bronchitis and emphysema fat lana was 37 and fell in love with a man 16 years or senior she sought to marry him but that required state permission and once again she suffered from the curse of being Stalin's daughter in October 1964 Khrushchev was pushed out of power by Leonid Brezhnev Soviet leadership moved back towards Soviet orthodoxy and Stalin's image was rehabilitated purges of intellectuals began again in the Soviet Union suddenly Stalin's daughter was important to the party again and they would not give her permission to marry a foreigner even from the grave her father interfered in her personal life Singh died from emphysema in October 1966 singing to ask for his ashes to be scattered over the sacred water of the Ganges River and Svetlana wanted to fulfill his wishes she had not expected to be granted permission to travel to India but Singh's nephew was a minister in the Indian Cabinet and had intervened with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi swetlana was allowed to travel to give seeing his traditional funeral as long as she did not talk to any foreign reporters she managed to through stubbornness get the Soviets tomorrow to extend her trip staying in the village we're seeing it lived she later described the village as a small paradise on earth but Svetlana was finally compelled to return she was staying at the guesthouse of the Soviet embassy in Delhi and on March 9th 1967 no one apparently suspected her motives when she went outside held a cab entered the US Embassy in India presented her Soviet passport and asked for asylum the request took the Americans completely off-guard Chester Bowles the US ambassador to India didn't even know Stalin had a dollar or less that she was visiting India while the defection of Stalin's daughter would be a cold war coup the US and the Soviet Union were actually in a delicate phase of negotiated and consular agreement and bawls knew that her defection would endanger relations if he granted her asylum at the u.s. embassy it would be surrounded in challenge relations with both India and the Soviet Union finally he decided to get her quickly out of Delhi without making it official promises from the United States to some place where she could more fully consider her decision Bowles put Svetlana on the next plane to anywhere but Moscow and center with a diplomat actually a CIA agent as escort to Rome the assessment by the CIA at the time was our own preconceived notions of what Stalin's daughter must be like just didn't let us believe that this nice Pleasant attractive middle-aged hofstra could possibly be who she claimed to be svetlana ali abbas defection required a lot of political maneuvering she had spent time both in Italy and then in Switzerland before she could finally go to the United States the Soviets tried to portray her as crazy calling her kakuka or cuckoo bird later was revealed that the KGB had made plans to either kidnap her or assassinate her but they decided not to because it would be too easy to trace back to them finally in the United States she supported herself by selling a manuscript of a memoir that she had written while in the Soviet Union the book 20 letters to a friend is a deeply personal if romanticized memoir of her family that was described in Los Angeles Times as fascinating revealing profoundly human and significant it received some criticism for pushing off many of her father's crimes to his rival Lavrentiy Beria but finishes with a notable conclusion about the time of her father's purges period were estimates of the death toll of her father's leadership range between nine and twenty million we are all responsible for everything that happened the sales from the book allowed her to among other things bill the hospital in bajas sings village in India in the United States she married one last time between 1970 and 1973 to an architect named William Peters they had a daughter named Olga she went by the name Lana Peters for the rest of her life in 1978 she became a US citizen but in 1984 she and her daughter all been returned to the Soviet Union she was convinced that was the only way to reconnect with the children that she had left there the move required that she repudiate much of the criticisms of the Soviet Union that she made while she was the West but she found she was shunned there and she and Olga returned to the United States in 1986 she had spent much of the earnings she'd earned from her books on charity lived in near poverty towards the end of her life and the woman who enter youth had been compared to Shirley Temple who would raise such a furor when she defected in 1967 faded into obscurity when author Nicholas Thompson decided he wanted to interview her for a book he was doing on us-soviet relations during the Cold War in 2006 he had to do a public record search to find her she was living in Wisconsin when she passed away in November 2011 the New York Times found it difficult even confirm her death which wasn't even reported in the local newspaper it's not clear if in that obscurity she found the little paradise on earth that she was looking for but it does seem that the woman who was so unlike her father had finally escaped her father's shadow

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Keywords: history, the history guy, cold war, svetlana alliluyeva, joseph stalin, history guy, russia

Id: NB4N-7u4qlU

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2020