Twenty Letters To A Friend

by Svetlana Alliluyeva

Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (1926–2011), later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife. In 1967, she defected and became a naturalized citizen of the United States until 1984 when she returned to the Soviet Union. Her first book, Twenty Letters to a Friend, caused a sensation. In it, she remembers her father and describes growing up amongst the highest ranks of the Communist Party.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Russia, Biography, Biography Memoir, Russian Literature

291 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (Russian: Светлана Иосифовна Аллилуева, Georgian: სვეტლანა ალილუევა, later known as Lana Peters (Georgian: ლანა პეტერსი), was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife. In 1967, she caused an international furor when she defected and became a naturalized citizen of the United States until 1984 when she returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship returned. She later went back to the United States and also spent time in the United Kingdom. At the time of her death she was the last surviving child of Stalin.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Svetlana Alliluyeva was the daughter of Josef Stalin, Twenty letters to a Friend a book she wrote about herself and her family life and particularly her father that was published after she defected to the West. I remember sticking the book into the inside pocket of my overcoat one day when travelling up to London to sit an exam. As it happened it was an exam on Russian and Soviet History. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that taking it into the examination room would have been grounds enough to have disqualified me. But it is ok to be absent minded so long as you aren't discovered.

This is the spoiler bit, of course you only read a book like this to find out what she says about her father? She does talk of him as surrounded by darkness, which is a restrained way of alluding to her mother's suicide and the waves of deaths that ran through her maternal family. Admitting that unpleasant things tended to happen around her father was about as far as she went, not just in the family but in national politics too, there she tries to shift responsibility for the various terror and purges and treason trials on to Stalin's various lieutenants. This is mildly unconvincing as part from from the men who managed to outlive him, those directly engaging in running purges themselves ended up dead only for the pattern to repeat eventually. If she believed her own unconvincing explanation I could not say. Being Stalin's daughter was a difficult business I suppose.

[Gini · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing memoir published in 1967 by the daughter of Joseph Stalin. Beautifully written, Svetlana Alliluyeva reveals how she grew up as a child suspecting, and later as an adult confirming, her father had commited horrible atrocities. Stalin's murderous impulses struck close to home leading to the disappearance of Alliluyeva's beloved relatives and and the suicide of her mother. Though she was estranged from Stalin at the end of his life, she manages to convey through this painful personal examination how a daughter's conflicted love for her father and an utter abhorrence of his actions could co-exist.

[Gabriele Goldstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this memoir again after reading Sullivan's book: Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva|22638321] The two deserve to be read together. Very rewarding to view the family tree and photographs that Sullivan's book contains and compare them to Svetlana's letters. Fascinating.

My copy of this book came from my parents' shelves. It was a German translation, published in 1967 and read by various aunts and uncles who were all victims of Stalin in one way or the other. I wonder what they thought of Svetlana and her insider view of Josef Stalin.

[Becky J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this feeling sure I'd be dissatisfied by it, but I also wanted to have read it and found out what she said. It was pretty much as disappointing as I expected, as a memoir by Stalin's daughter, but it was enlightening in other ways. What stood out to me (especially when she was describing her 'nurse,' who apparently went seamlessly from being a servant for the nobility to being a servant for the Communist upper class, and spent a lifetime nursing Svetlana while her mother did almost no mothering at all, and then kept living at one of the family's dachas and fussing over Svetlana when she was on vacations until S. had her own children, who were then raised by the same nurse just as S. had been) was how completely and relatively quickly the Communist ruling class seems to have stepped into the place of the nobility after the revolution, from Svetlana's innocent descriptions of her life. I found myself wondering if she had any idea how different her lifestyle was from everybody else - I mean, I'm sure she had an idea, but did she really understand the material and financial difficulties most people endured?
All of the 'people back then were REAL people, all y'all today are just whiny losers in comparison' got annoying too. And blaming EVERYTHING her father did on Beria - although to be fair I've heard that from others too, and have never read much about Beria, so maybe she had a point. But there are places in the book where she drops that and speculates that her mother's suicide made something snap in him. I suppose it's naive of me to hope that she might have had any really deep insights; nobody really wants to deal with the fact that her parent is a monster. But I felt sure for much of the book that she wasn't being honest and instead just writing something she thought people would accept that just skimmed over the reality.
I have the second book and will read it also, just out of curiosity.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Josef Stalin's only daughter wrote this series of twenty letters within 35 days, the summer of 1963. This book gripped me, and I'm a bit in a turmoil while I process it.

Svetlana's first letter relates Stalin's death following a stroke in March, 1953. I could not help but juxtapose it with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's account in The Gulag Archipelago. For his daughter, Stalin's death was sad, confusing, awkward. Solzhenitsyn rejoiced with internal elation, but kept a grave demeanor on his face. But, friends, I. could. not. believe. it. Doctors applied leeches to his neck and the back of his head. What?? 1953? Leeches? Really??!!

Reading her letters brought another book came to mind: Mary Soames' Growing Up Churchill: A Daughter's Memoir of Peace and War. The difference, of course, is that Mary had immense respect for her father. I try to imagine what it would be like to be the daughter of such an evil father, a person responsible for more deaths than Hitler. When Svetlana was younger, Stalin was affectionate and attentive. Later he was rough and unkind. "To hell with you, then. Get killed, if you like. It's no business of mine."

Svetlana's mother died when she was six; she was told it was appendicitis, but the mother shot herself after a fierce argument with Stalin. Her nurse became a mother figure who kept Svetlana's life as stable as she was able. I was intrigued by S.A.'s education: loads of time outside, German, Russian, arithmetic, drawing, modeling, music, and later English.

I gasped as I read Alliluyeva (her mother's family name) brief statement about religion (although she alludes to God several other times in the book):

By the time I was thirty-five and had seen something of life, I, who'd been taught from the earliest childhood by society and my family to be an atheist and materialist, was already one of those who cannot live without God. I am glad that it is so.

Next book is Only One Year which tells the story of Svetlana's trip to India and ultimate defection to the United States.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 3 Extra:
Writing as if to a close friend, Josef Stalin's daughter recalls her extraordinary life as an eyewitness to history, beginning with the searing memory of her father's final hours, and the turmoil provoked by his terrible death...

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating insight into the family of one of the 20th century's strongmen. While there is no doubt that Stalin's rule was one of hardship for many Russians, this book shows another side of him. His daughter doesn't sugarcoat it; she acknowledges his temper and paranoia, but you get the feeling that after his wife's suicide that he was never quite the same. This book also gives the reader an insight into the machinations of the Party, where men fell over - and condemned - each other in their attempt to rise to the top. Particularly poignant is the tragic story of her brother, Vasily.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

We (I) want to see people in stark black and white rather than any shades of gray. As a result, I was often frustrated by the first six letters of Twenty Letters to a Friend. Svetlana Alliluyeva was ambivalent about most people in her life (excepting Lavrentiy Beria). She described her father, Joseph Stalin, as loving and supportive, especially in the first years after her mother's suicide, but also described him as too busy to spend time with her. She also described him as easily influenced by the men around him, readily believing that family and friends were betraying him.

Once he had cast out of his heart someone he had known a long time, once he had mentally relegated that someone to the ranks of his enemies, it was impossible to talk to him about that person any more. He was constitutionally incapable of the reversal that would turn a fancied enemy back into a friend. Any effort to persuade him to do so only made him furious.... The only thing they accomplished by it was loss of access to my father and total forfeiture of his trust. (p. 61)

In many ways, ambivalence is a more truthful stance that either demonizing people or failing to see problems. We can hate what family members do and still love them. We can love our country, our peoples, our religious leaders, despite their failings – and hold them accountable.

Alliluyeva defected to the west in 1967 and became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1978. She moved back to the Soviet Union in 1984 and was given citizenship, moving back to the US in 1986, where she denied her previously-made anti-American statements.

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Rosemary Sullivan’s brilliant biography, titled “Stalin’s Daughter”, I wanted to read the two books written by Svetlana herself to get a more composite picture of her life. “Twenty Letters to a Friend” is her first book, written in 1963, when she was still living in Moscow. She got the Indian ambassador to the USSR, Mr. T. N. Kaul, to smuggle it out of the Soviet Union in his diplomatic pouch. It is a memoir, structured as letters to a friend (later revealed as the physicist and friend, Fyodor Volkenstein), about the first thirty-seven years of her life. It covers her life as Stalin’s daughter, and his extended families through his two marriages to Katya Svanidze and Nadya Alliluyeva. Svetlana writes about her mother Nadya Alliluyeva, her aunts, uncles and cousins from Georgia, about her life in the Kremlin and life in Moscow. It is an intimate personal journey through her complex young life among formidable figures of twentieth century Soviet history. There are deep reflections on her life and that of others who affected her. We get a picture of how the Soviet power elite lived and how it alienated Svetlana right from her childhood. Svetlana and her children received loving support from the Alliluyev and Svanidze families. This was despite the violence inflicted upon them by the Stalinist regime.

The book opens on that fateful day - March 5, 1953 - when Joseph Stalin died. Svetlana recounts the last moments when Stalin opened his eyes, cast a fearful, vicious look at the doctors, his fellow politburo members and others. Then, raising his hand, he pointed a finger upwards, as if cursing everyone around him before dying. Svetlana talks about the fear that ruled his last days, as no one dared to contemplate the idea that Stalin was dying. From the ‘letters’, it appears Svetlana was the only family member present by his bedside during those last moments.

We get a picture of Stalin as father, husband, and dictator. Prior to 1939, Stalin had a close relationship with his teenage daughter. He liked to play the game of taking ‘orders’ from her and ‘executing’ them to her approval. He called her ‘my little sparrow’ and wrote loving notes to her. But the 1930s also saw Stalin morph into the ‘brutal cleanser’ of Soviet society and the party, creating terror all round. As the world war reached the USSR in 1941, Svetlana and Stalin drifted apart. Stalin spent most of his time in the Kremlin. They led separate, unconnected lives during his final twenty years and could not create a family, a shared existence, even if they both wanted to. Svetlana says her father got used to the freedom of being lonely and kept it that way.

Stalin’s wife, Nadya - Svetlana’s mother - committed suicide when Svetlana was just six years old. The cause was Stalin’s boorish behavior during a drunken night at his dacha, which offended her deeply. Stalin’s immediate response to her suicide was shock, punctuated by intermittent rage lasting several days. Rather than own up to his inhumanity, Stalin saw it as his wife betraying him. He did not attend his wife’s funeral and never went to her grave at Novodevichy in his life. Stalin believed she left him as his personal enemy because of a letter she wrote him as her last offering. Though Stalin destroyed the letter, Svetlana’s aunts later told her that Nadya had shown political opposition to Stalin’s purges and terror. Svetlana writes that only in the final years before he died, Stalin started talking about Nadya’s death to Svetlana. Svetlana felt he sought an acceptable motive for Nadya’s suicide, but failed. He would blame Nadya’s best friend, Polina Molotov, and then her brother Pavel and sister Anna. However, towards the end of his life, Stalin started speaking about his wife more gently and even stopped blaming her for committing suicide.

Svetlana says Stalin had considered Nadya her best friend in life. Because he viewed her suicide as a betrayal, it destroyed his faith in his friends and people overall. Svetlana says once Stalin had relegated someone to the rank of his enemies, he was incapable of reversing the fancied enemy back into a friend. She suggests Beria, the intelligence chief, used this to turn Stalin into the monster he became later through his terror, purges and gulags. It is the daughter’s instinctive desire to blame Beria for all the ‘Stalinist cruelty’ of her father. Svetlana herself came to accept her father’s responsibility for all the terror in her second book, “Only one Year”, which was published some years later.

The book offers additional perspectives on Stalin. Svetlana recounts Stalin’s discourteous treatment of Kremlin elites, contrasting with his polite demeanor toward his personal staff. Little things pleased him. The servants often asked him for help and he never refused them. Compared to the servants, Svetlana had limited knowledge and experience with Stalin. She writes they loved and respected him for the most ordinary qualities of which servants are the best judges. Stalin had an interest in gardening. He spent hours roaming the garden in his dacha as if he looked for a quiet, comforting spot but did not find it. Svetlana says she understood her father’s interest in nature only as she grew older. He, like a peasant, worked the garden, transforming it with no philosophical reflection of nature.

Letter no.16 captures Svetlana’s first love at age sixteen with Alexei Kapler, a forty-year-old Jewish film maker. The year was 1942, and the battle was raging in Stalingrad. They met a few times in 1942-43 in Moscow and then Kapler went to Stalingrad. However, a powerful attraction developed between them. In November 1942, an article in ‘Pravda’ titled “Letters of Lieutenant L from Stalingrad” shocked Svetlana. It was a letter from Kapler to the woman he loved, describing everything happening in Stalingrad. It described his walks with Svetlana in the Tretyakov in Moscow and even ended with a personal note, “it is perhaps snowing now in Moscow. You can see the triangulated wall of the Kremlin from your window”. Kapler returned to Moscow in January, 1943. Panic-stricken, Svetlana implored him to leave, her fear of her father’s response overwhelming her. Her fears came true when, in March 1943, authorities arrested Kapler, accusing him of being a British spy and sending him far north to Vorkuta, beyond the Arctic Circle. Svetlana’s protests were of no avail and Stalin, furious with rage, slapped her, the first time in her life. Kapler, being a Jew, seemed to bother Stalin more than anything else, writes Svetlana. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Svetlana thought about Kapler and wondered what happened to him. The letter concludes with Svetlana meeting Kapler at the Second Congress of Soviet Writers in the Kremlin in 1954, eleven years after his exile in Vorkuta. However, Svetlana was married already twice by then.

Two women occupy pride of place in Svetlana’s letters. The first is her mother, Nadya Alliluyeva. Next is Alexandra Andreevna, her nurse of the first thirty years. The picture she paints about her mother must have come from her mother’s sisters, brothers and her friends because it does not feel like the impressions of a six-year-old. Nadya was twenty-two years younger than Stalin. According to Svetlana, Nadya had the looks of a southern Slav. She also had something of the Gypsy about her, languid and Oriental, sad eyes and long, slender fingers. Svetlana says she would have looked beautiful in an Indian sari. Nadya was firm and aloof with her children. Svetlana does not see it as unkindness or lack of love, but that she expected a lot of her children. Nadya seldom kissed her children or stroked her hair. She was an idealist, a communist who believed in its pristine principles. Though she was only a few years older than Yakov, Stalin’s son by his first marriage, Nadya cared for Yakov. Stalin, however, treated him with disdain and discourtesy. She was close to her sister Anna and brother Pavel. On the night prior to her suicide, something snapped inside her as she went round and round the dacha’s garden in the company of her best friend, Polina Molotov. Later, she retired to her room, but the servants found her dead with a pistol wound in the morning. Stalin covered it up by announcing it as death because of appendicitis. Svetlana did not know it was a suicide until she read about it in an English magazine at age sixteen, a decade later.

Alexandra Andreevna was Svetlana’s nurse, but she played the role of her mother after Nadya’s demise. Svetlana considered her a member of the family more than anyone else. But for her steady warmth, Svetlana claims she would have gone out of her mind. Alexandra worshipped three people in the Stalin household. Nadya was the first. The second was Nikolai Bukharin, whom Svetlana says everyone loved. The third was grandfather Sergei Alliluyev. Alexandra had a superb command of the Russian language, pure, beautiful and grammatically correct. She was a living chronicle of the time in which she lived. Her marvellous stories recounted life in Czarist St. Petersburg and later, post-revolution, in the Kremlin. She told stories about Trotsky’s ‘wives’, Bukharin’s ‘wives’ and famous German communists like Clara Zetkin and Ernst Thälmann. In 1956, Alexandra died; the family fittingly buried her next to Nadya Alliluyeva in a Novo-Devichy grave. Svetlana pays a lovely tribute to her in letter no.20. She writes, “she was like a healthy, sheltering tree of life that rustles its leaves in the sun, that is washed by rain and gleams in the sunlight. A tree which blossomed and bore fruit despite all the storms that tried to beat and break it..”

A refreshing feature of the book is Svetlana’s raw and disarming honesty. Such open, expressive writing from a Soviet citizen in 1967 would have been unexpected. The letters bring out her deep yearning for independence and freedom, living all the while close to immense power, control and tyranny. We can see her as a daughter desperate to love her father even though she was well-aware of his crimes in killing her beloved uncles, aunts, and friends. Her letters recall poignant anecdotes, rare tender moments with her father and cruel, lonely moments with him as well. Throughout the book, Svetlana’s struggle to establish her independent identity, away from the brutal legacy of her father, stands out and crumbles under its own immense weight. Svetlana’s love of nature and great feel for flowery prose are visible in these letters.

This book is worth reading because it provides a personal connection to 20th-century history. It helps us understand the past and its relevance to the present.

[Mishka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m still not precisely sure how I stumbled across this book—a first edition, no less!—but I picked it up to read the other day and scarfed it down within the next forty-eight hours. Svetlana’s letters are some of the most intimate, delicate, psychologically-fascinating autobiographical works I have ever read. Yes, in large part, the book’s magnetism can be accounted for by the fact that her father was none other than Joseph Stalin himself, but there is more to it than that; Svetlana herself is a thoughtful, introspective, and very conflicted individual, and the way she puts her memories to paper is both captivating and haunting.

Perhaps my favorite part about this book was the pamphlet I found slipped inside the cover from the publishing company, sponsored by “The American Book of the Month Club.” I read through this little leaflet before diving into the book, and the amount of passive-aggressive jabs in it left me bracing myself for an altogether pathetic book. Here’s just a snippet of what the Book of the Month Club has to say about Ms. Alliluyeva’s work:

First, it cannot be claimed that this is a great work of art [read: our apologies for forcing this book on you]. The author is not an experienced professional writer. She has simply set down, in spontaneous fashion, what lies heavy on her heart and lives within her memory. She is clearly a woman of good will and character, of a rather innocent cast of mind [read: of low intelligence]. Biological accident gave her for father a man of ill will possessing a complex and evil mind. The contradiction between father and daughter has produced a book that of necessity is enormously interesting [the writer’s use of the word necessity makes their reluctance palpable].

What remains is a transparently sincere human document, often moving in its very lack of sophistication [taste the disdain?], that shows us a Stalin which no historian, no scholar, and indeed no other Russian could show us. What remains is a pathetic [yes, pathetic] yet never overwrought account of the tragedy of a strange family […].

Now, having read the book in full, I am left baffled, indignant, and admittedly a bit amused at America’s inability to say something nice about a Russian in 1967. Every single compliment veils scorn and judgment. While Svetlana may not be a professional author, her words paint vivid portraits of her family and the life they shared in Russia, and her perception into the personalities and motivations of her parents, siblings, aunts, and uncles is remarkably keen. She is introspective, humble, and, despite what the Book of the Month Club may imply, highly intelligent. In particular, I found myself entranced by the psychological complexity of her relationship with her father, Joseph Stalin.

Svetlana gives her readers a glimpse at a side of Stalin the history books will never illuminate: Stalin the father. Svetlana’s childhood was far from perfect, but despite being the daughter of the most powerful man in all of Russia, she was neither spoiled nor neglected as a child. While she remains candid in recounting her father’s bullying ways towards her brother Yakov (who eventually committed suicide), she also recalls his love for the outdoors, his longstanding jokes with her, his games, and his many kisses. To Russia and the world, he represented fear and power. To Svetlana, he was simply father. She doesn’t sugarcoat his monstrosities, doesn’t apologize for his sins, and doesn’t beg for our sympathy. She tells her story as it needs to be told: with care and candor.

There’s not much more can, or even should, be said about Svetlana’s letters. Whether she intends it or not, they illuminate a coexisting love and repulsion within her heart for her father, Stalin. She loves him with the unshakeable love of a daughter, yet she refuses to ignore the pain and death he wrought upon his family, his country, and the world. It’s this enigma of conflicting emotion, love and hatred, that make Svetlana’s letters so deeply haunting. I am not likely soon to forget them—or her.

No matter how cruel or harsh our country may be, no matter how often we stumble and are hurt, no matter how many undeserved wrongs we may endure, no one who loves Russia in his heart will ever betray her or give her up or run away in search of material comfort. Her beauty, tranquil and wise, shines like a soft, sorrowful light from the pale sky. It will survive everything and go on forever.

[Butterfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written glimpse into Stalin's daughter's life, from before the Revolution (as told to Svetlana by her older family members) to 1963. The 20 letters are basically her memoirs up until that point in her life, only a few years before she defected to the US. The stories offer very unique personal insights into Stalin's character as a "regular guy" and what it was like for the author to grow up as his daughter. Stalin is one of the main figures, but much of the book is devoted to Svetlana's mother and extended family. There are passages that are absolutely beautiful: about God, family, human nature, and the beauty of the natural world. Svetlana is relateable, humble, and likeable.

I found the English version to be very good. Some of the language comes across as slightly antiquated ('splendid'), but I felt like that just adds to the atmosphere of the first half of the 20th century. Some of the words struck me as slightly odd: 'whatever' (instead of 'whatsoever'), 'any more' and 'for ever' (instead of 'anymore' and 'forever' or 'always'), but on the whole the language flowed beautifully.

Next time I read it I will make a sketch of Svetlana's family tree for reference, since I found all of the relatives and names hard to keep track of.

I'm looking forward to reading "Only One Year", too.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

The daughter of Josef Stalin opens this book with a description of the day he died in their home. A sorrowful account spanning 3 decades of the consequences of being the daughter of a historical figure who is also a tyranical totalitarian. Her method of telling the story through letters to an anonymous friend(the reader) added to my enjoyment of it

[Ana Castro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Filha dum monstro conhecido pela maneira fria e desumana com que provocou a fome, a morte, a tortura e os trabalhos forçados a milhares de seres humanos descreve neste livro a sua infância e a sua adolescência ao lado deste pai que adorava .
Uma família espantosamente serena e feliz , uma infância acarinhada e rodeado por familiares amigos .
A partir da morte da sua mãe que se suicidou em 1933 o ambiente que a rodeava foi-se modificando e Svetlana assistiu a essa mudança sobretudo nas atitudes e decisões do seu pai .

Ela põe o odioso em Beria chefe do NKVD , em Vlasik que dirigia todas as casas de Stalin e no sistema

Svetlana acha que Stalin se sentiu traído e apunhalado pelo suicidio da sua mulher e a partir daí deixou de confiar em todos os familiares dela e mesmo nos amigos .
Passou a confiar cegamente em Beria que foi trepando na hierarquia do Estado e que se aproveitou do estado de alma do chefe para o ir convencendo que toda a família da sua mulher eram traidores e “ inimigos do povo “, acabando todos eles por serem mortos, cometerem suicidio ou serem presos .

« People vanished like shadows in the night” .

“Apesar de ser um homem todo poderoso , Stalin era impotente em face do medonho sistema que foi crescendo à sua volta tal como um gigantesco ninho de vespas que não conseguiria destruir ou controlar . “ (minha tradução)

Só uma filha pode contar desta forma a sua vida junto dum pai tão responsável por tantas atrocidades cometidas.

Mesmo os homens mais tenebrosos tiveram uma família que amaram e por quem foram amados .

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Svetlana's mother shot herself and Stalin never understood why.'

Abridged by Eileen Horne.

Writing as if to a close friend, Josef Stalin's daughter recalls her extraordinary life as an eyewitness to history, beginning with the searing memory of her father's final hours, and the turmoil provoked by his terrible death...

Read by Stella Gonet

Producer: Clive Brill A Pacificus production for BBC Radio 4.

"I kees you"

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both of the author’s short memoirs are worth reading. Svetlana Alliluyeva is a natural writer with a great story to tell. Of course, her books would be worth reading if only because she has something to say about one of the most famous men who ever lived: her father, Stalin. But S.A. had a sensitive soul and therefore strove to come to terms with her father’s evil legacy. Her biography is also well worth reading.

[W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Conveys the mixed emotions she had towards her father.

[Reuben Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

For sure this was a very interesting book. I think it could have been cut back a little; the long descriptions about her extended family and the sometimes repetitive, unchronological order could make it hard to remember who was who - if it hadn't been for that this likely would have gotten five stars.
It felt to me that Svetlana was an (unintentionally/unwittingly) unreliable narrator, especially concerning her father and general judgements on the characters of the different people that dotted her life, but I think this only made the book more interesting in some places! It seems she certainly may have been somewhat naive about her father's position, often trying to pass the greater blame for the huge swathes of arrests and deaths that plagued the soviet union (and her own family) with other officials (Beria) and the system in general.
Whatever the case with her father's involvement truly was, she makes it clear that he was a multi-faceted and not altogether inhumane man. The letters she received from him are very touching and playful, she detailed his loving side just as clearly and vividly as she did his cruel, vindictive side - which must have been a very hard thing to do.
Definitely a fascinating and worthwhile read.

[Carole Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Svetlana Alliluyeva was the daughter of Josef Stalin, and these 20 Letters to a Friend are chapters of her life with him. She starts with Stalin’s terrible and painful death, and goes back to describe her life. Her mother, Nadya Alliluyeva, Stalin’s second wife, committed suicide early on in the marriage leaving Svetlana to be brought up by her very much loved nurse. She tells of those terrible times coherently and well, in a chatty style which I am not sure is due to the translator as much as her. We read of all the main characters as well as some of the minor ones disappearing, or being ‘repressed’ which meant being liquidated. Her half brother and brother both met very sad endings, and Svetlana also writes about her loves and the end of her two marriages.
I learned a lot about Russian history from this book, and would urge anyone with an interest in this period to read this by a woman who grew up in the Kremlin in the shadow of her father, Josef Stalin.

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Så fascinerande att läsa. Konstigt att det som kan kännas som ett grått och obetydligt liv för någon, kan vara så intressant för andra. Försöker hon rentvå Stalin genom att lägga skulden på Beria? Jag tänker att det inte funkar så. Bägge har sitt ansvar, och Stalin har det översta på grund av sin position. Att en dotter reflekterar runt hur hennes pappa var och tänkte, gör ju bara att en får ett till perspektiv på människan bakom handlingarna. Det tror jag bara är bra, och vill oavsett aldrig ändra på ansvaret för handlingarna.

[alexa king · Rating 2 out of 5]

honestly this was an odd one- it’s not a particularly long or tough read and it’s kinda interesting to get a personal perspective on stalin’s reign in the ussr, but alliluyeva’s descriptions of her father and his cadre of peers is definitely not a very reliable source for the inner workings of soviet leadership, especially given how disinterested she seems in major global events like, say, wwii (also there are an upsetting number of relationships between teenage girls and forty year old men framed as very normal things and i Do Not Like It)

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

All I knew about Stalin were from Animal Farm and the documentaries I watched about him when I was in high school. I learned about his regime from history books and other Russian writers, like Solzhenitsyn, but you learn about the man from the distance - as you do most historical figures. Everybody has a preconception about Hitler, Marx, George Washington as they do from history books and from what they are exposed to in popular culture. Stalin to me, as he is to countless others, is a heartless bastard.

I picked up the book not knowing that he had a daughter. Reading from the blurb and an outline of her life, I thought that she was a rebel who hated her father. She moved around quite a lot and it seemed that she shunned her family and motherland, but the facts are otherwise. Svetlana had a complex relationship with Stalin, but she loved him as he loved her. Their relationship in some ways were banal, he loved her as he can for someone who scarcely had time and an abundance of responsibilities. She loved him from the distance and as she got older found it harder to get along with Stalin.

It was most interesting to observe what he was like from the beginning, and what he became towards the end of his life. Early on, Stalin lived a rudimentary life and spurned luxuries. In short, he was principled. Towards the end, Stalin was lost in luxuries to feed the parasitic military honchos around him that he did not even know how much he was spending, and how much of this were used to line the pockets of those around him. Money became valueless.

He was also close to his family and relatives, to his first wife and her husband. Svetlana chronicled these characters nesting around Stalin's life in some detail - describing their countenances, tempers and dynamics. At times it became almost like a list of jagged memories, pieced together as she wrote. She wasn't writing to any friend in particular, she was writing for herself, to herself.

Some of the stories of these characters are heartbreaking. Most of them came to an early end. Some of their demise were brought upon by her father. In her mind, she cannot justify how he could cut the cords for the people that he loved once, that he became cold and brutally heartless. The man her father was, and the man who took these actions were not the same. She blamed this change on Beria, Stalin's most influential secret police chiefs but she cannot blame Stalin. She couldn't bridge that gap. This for me, was a grey area and muddle the facts.

But I am here to understand better, not to know facts. The book is still a fascinating read and gives another angle to someone who everybody knows as a bastard. There is a human side to Stalin. If anything, his daughter portrayed him as a mere man - not the best father, not the best man, but someone who lives and breathes to make do with what he can until his eventual decay.

[Klaas Bisschop · Rating 4 out of 5]

De memoires van de dochter van Stalin, in de vorm van twintig brieven aan een vriend, die ze schrijft als ze 37 is.

Het gezins- en familieleven van/onder vadertje (!) Stalin, van binnen uit beschreven. Svetlana put daarbij uit haar geheugen, niet uit een of meerdere archieven. Zij roept herinneringen op naar haar vroegere, druk bezochte, vrolijke huis, toen het huishouden nog bestierd werd door haar gastvrije moeder. Aan het bos rond hun zomerhuis, door Stalin gecultiveerd. Zij geeft daarbij ook de gevoelens die zij persoonlijk had en, terugblikkend, heeft. Zo komen, in het begin van het boek, haar grootouders en haar jong overleden moeder er bijzonder goed van af. Allemaal bijna perfecte liefdevolle mensen, maar juist daardoor: ‘Alle kinderen van grootvader en grootmoeder waren te ontvankelijk, zij hadden een te goed, deelnemend hart om ongedeerd te kunnen blijven in dit onmenselijke leven (…) Geen van hen is oud geworden (…)’.

Ze negeert de negatieve kanten van het Sovjet bewind onder Stalin niet. Ze is getuige van het verdwijnen van de mensen uit haar omgeving. Als jong kind nog vol onbegrip voor de achterliggende krachten. Stalins intieme vrienden waren veel bij hem over de vloer, de jonge Svetlana kende ze goed. ‘In 1937 werd Redens gearresteerd. Dit was de eerste slag voor onze familie, voor ons huis. Kort daarop arresteerde men ook oom Aljosja en tante Maroesja’.
Maar later, als zij meer inzicht heeft gekregen, ziet ze hoe bij haar vader: ‘(…) het (…) in zijn hoofd (is) opgekomen , dat zij allemaal heimelijke “vijanden van het volk” en zijn persoonlijke tegenstanders waren (wat later voor hem helaas een en hetzelfde werd …))’. Maar ze ontziet hem toch, want ze meent één ding zeker te weten: ‘hij zelf had dit niet kunnen bedenken’ – maar Beria wel. ‘Het is verbazingwekkend, hoe hulpeloos vader was tegen de kuiperijen van Beria.’.

Na de dood van haar moeder ‘ontmenselijkt’ haar omgeving. Alle personeel waar ze een zekere band mee had wordt vervangen door kille staatsfunctionarissen, inclusief een bewaker die haar overal volgt. Tegen de tijd dat ze naar de universiteit gaat roept ze haar vader op te stoppen haar tegen haar wil te ‘bewaken’. ‘Vader begreep kennelijk het absurde van de situatie en zei alleen maar: “Wel, de duivel hale je, laat ze je maar vermoorden, ik ben er niet verantwoordelijk voor.” (Hij was net terug van de conferentie van Teheran in december 1943 en was in een heel goed humeur.) Zo kreeg ik pas, toen ik ruim zeventien jaar was, het recht om alleen (…) over straat te gaan.'

Een illustratief voorbeeld voor de moraal van het Sovjet-denken is dat leden van het Centraal Comité geen recht hadden op een honorarium voor artikelen of boeken, dat deze inkomsten voor de partij waren. Maar de vrouw van Stalin, Nadia, vond het beter dat je kreeg wat je verdiend had, dan eindeloos de hand in de staatskas steken voor alles wat je nodig had … voor je huis, voor zomerhuizen, voor auto’s, het salaris van het personeel enz.

‘Ik heb bijna zeven jaar in een normaal, goed, interessant gezin gewoond, dat ons, kinderen, veel heeft gegeven (…) iedereen probeerde hen te vermaken en hun iets te leren (…). Dat was mama’s regel, haar orde, haar wet.’
Op 8 november 1932 pleegt haar moeder zelfmoord.
Maar pas rond haar 16e leest Svetlana in Engelstalige magazines over de ware toedracht rond haar moeders dood.

Svetlana en haar vader spreken met geen woord over deze dag. Zij weet zelfs niet of haar vader zich deze datum herinnerde, maar zij kan hem niet vergeten. Exact 20 jaar later, vier maanden voor zijn dood, gaat Svetlana met haar kinderen bij hem op bezoek. Ze beschrijft de tafel waar zij aan zitten, bedekt met allerlei smakelijke dingen, verse groente, fruit, noten en goede Georgische wijn. Zelf at hij maar weinig, de kinderen snoepten naar hartenlust van het fruit. Zij herinnert zich deze avond omdat het de enige keer was dat zij samen met haar kinderen bij hem op bezoek was. Dan schrijft ze: ‘Het schijnt dat hij tevreden was over het avondje en over onze visite.’. En: ‘Wij waren door ons leven van de laatste twintig jaar al zo van hem geïsoleerd geraakt, dat het onmogelijk zou zijn geweest ons in een gemeenschappelijk bestaan, in de schijn van een gezin (…) te verenigen, zelfs als daar een wederzijds verlangen naar was geweest. Maar die was er niet … Maar het avondje hebben wij allen onthouden – zelfs mijn kinderen.’.

Het hele boek door zijn er veel momenten dat Svetlana bij hoge Sovjetfunctionarissen moest komen. Nergens lees ik dat zij dat wel eens weigerde, wel vertelt zij hoe vaak ze bang was en hoe meegaand omdat het toch geen zin had je te verzetten.

Door het concept van ‘twintig brieven’ is de chronologie in het boek behoorlijk zoek. Als in een echte brief is de emotie en de herinnering leidend. Dat leidt tot een lastige nogal van de hak op de tak springerige structuur. Daarbij ontbreekt een register met persoonsnamen, een echte omissie voor een boek vol Russische voor-, bij- en achternamen en al hun koos-vormpjes.
Hier en daar kent het boek wat oppervlakkige algemeenheden en amateur psychologie: Dostojevskaanse emoties, romantisch liefde voor het land, vertrouwen in God en dat door een naar incident die mensen meemaken zij sterven aan een hartaanval.

Maar al met al krijg je uit de eerste hand een uniek inkijkje in het tragische leven van de familie Stalin.
Heel dicht bij komt het als Svetlana beschrijft hoe ze in Leningrad een museum bezoekt, het vroegere huis van haar grootvader. In de juli dagen van de revolutie ‘hield Lenin zich enkele dagen in zijn woning verborgen, waar hij het kleine kamertje van mama kreeg toegewezen. (…) Het was zo’n vreemd en griezelig gevoel te stappen op de traptreden waarover mama naar het gymnasium gerend was; het was zo vreemd de woning binnen te gaan, waar zij vader voor het eerst had ontmoet’.

Typerend is dat het laatste hoofdstuk, de laatste brief, gaat over degene die haar het meest nabij is geweest: haar ‘njanja’. Haar kindermeisje, Alaksandra Andrejewna, die tot aan haar dood bij Svetlana gebleven is. Svetlana schrijft: ‘Wie had ik al niet verloren? Je zou toch moeten wennen aan sterfgevallen, maar nee, he deed me zoveel pijn, alsof ze een stuk van mijn hart afgesneden hadden … ’. Svetlana regelt dat njanja, haar dierbaarste, begraven wordt naast Svetlana haar moeder.

Op 19 maart 1967 vluchtte ze de Amerikaanse ambassade in Delhi binnen en komt na wat omzwervingen in Amerika aan. Haar volwassen kinderen Josef en Katja liet ze alleen achter in de Sovjet-Unie. De KGB zette een lastercampagne op touw waarin de dochter van Stalin werd voorgesteld als een promiscue en labiele vrouw die haar kinderen voor wat zilverlingen verraden had.
Twintig brieven aan een vriend maakte haar rijk. Het is het verhaal van een intelligente vrouw die in het reine moest zien te komen met het feit dat haar vader een van de grootste massamoordenaars van de wereldgeschiedenis is geweest.
Op 22 november 2011 overlijdt ze op 85-jarige leeftijd.

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Twenty Letters to a Friend", is an outpouring of Svetlana Alliluyeva's deepest feelings and memories before her defection in 1967. She recounts the happiness and tragedies in the first half of her life, much as a woman would do if writing a letter or speaking to a close friend. She shares fond, warm memories of her childhood; people who loved her and treated her kindly. Even her father, Josef Stalin, seems to have had a moderate degree of tenderness toward his only daughter. Every daughter wants her parents' love. Svetlana was no exception. I wonder if perhaps Svetlana was struggling to find memories of Stalin's parental love for her own sake, rather than to offer an accurate account of her childhood. Others with whom she did have loving relationships; aunts, uncles, caregivers, etc..., were frequently arrested and jailed at her father's behest. How difficult to love a father who brought unspeakable cruelties upon people she loved!

I read this book after having read, "Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva", by Rosemary Sullivan. "Twenty Letters...", captures Svetlana's emotions toward her family and friends while living under Communist rule. Having read, "Stalin's Daughter..." first, provided the historical background and explanation of events that helped me understand and sympathize with Svetlana and her touching, personal stories in "Twenty Letters...".

Her writing is very good, especially when taking into consideration that it's a translation from the original which was written in Russian. From reading these very personal 'letters', it's easy to understand Svetlana's behaviors and choices made throughout the second half of her life, which are not included here. Hers was a life of contradictions, disappointments, and secrets. I recommend this book for its modest, intimate nature. I would have rated this a 4.5 if such a rating was available here.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this memoir by Josef Stalin's daughter interesting from a psychological perspective. I've always found it puzzling how tyrannical dictators can go out every day and commit horrendous acts of violence against their citizens and then go home and play with the baby on the carpet like Father Knows Best. Svetlana gives a view of what it was like to live with Stalin, although the parenting styles of the class and time were pretty much hands off. She had a nurse and a nanny and was intermittenly shuffled from dacha to dacha .

Her manner of coping with the fact that anyone, including family members, who displeased her father would promptly be sent away to prison or killed, by believing he was really a nice guy -- the "system" just kept him in the dark about such things. As she matured I think her armor began to crack a little, but I never got the feeling in this book that she had any idea what Josef Stalin stood for.

Very sad little girl.

[Masha · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a weird book, historically it's priceless but it's not something you'd read for entertainment. You will see Stalin from quite a shocking side - that person could love apparently and his closest friends, his children's nurses teachers guards etc all these people were surprisingly dedicated to him and loved him very much. The scene of Stalin's death described in such a way I got goose skin and I consider it the best part of the book. Read the book if you are interested in what is going inside a family of such a person as Stalin it is incredible to actually see the personal side of his life but it is scary as you think of what he has done to people, what a beast he was and next thing you read is how he covered his daughter's forehead with kisses or how generous he was to simple people surrounding him

[Kari · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ s. What an interesting look at Stalin and the atrocities he committed. Frequently we read about these giants in history but forget that they were someone's husband, son, father. Alliluyeva doesn't apologize for her fathers behavior but instead tries to understand it. When and why did he change from the "little papa" from her your into the Jospeh Stalin we all know? Was it her mothers suicide? Was it the people around him melding him? Alliluyeva wonders this too, but first and foremost, this man whom history has cast as evil, unyielding, atrocious, was her little pap who played games with her, wrote to her, and allowed her to "order" about.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall a fascinating look into the lives of the family surrounding Stalin, as well as providing unique insights into Stalin himself; insights which at times are contrary to the popular conception of him, while not covering up his flaws either. The author's own life seemed to mimic that of her father: as the years go by an increasing isolation from the reality of everyday life that most people experience. After his death, things would change in both Svetlana's life as well as in her brother's life.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly engaging. I did not expect Stalin's daughter to be as eloquent or timeless in describing some of the most tumultuous, dangerous times in Russian history.

Alliluyeva wants to set the record straight, writing about the few virtuous characters and the many monsters in papa Stalin's court. She gives Western readers a unique perspective about the burgeoning Bolshevik years until the immediate post-Stalin years in which the book was written.

Worth reading if you are a student of Russian history, or if you are curious about Stalin, the man.

[Masha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading books found on others' shelves is a favorite with me.

[Daisy]

by Stalin's daughter

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituarie...