Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

by Rosemary Sullivan

'Compassionate and compelling, this is not a political story but a quest for love in the heart of darkness' Simon Sebag Montefiore

'A biography on an epic scale, with a combination of tragedy and history worthy of a Russian novel' Independent

'Superbly well told' Sunday Times

Who was Svetlana Alliluyeva?

A little girl, her father's only daughter, his "little sparrow"; instructed to bury her secrets in her heart by her mother, who shot herself soon after.

An observer as her relatives were mercilessly killed and her first love exiled.

A woman who tore through relationships with men, joined and abandoned various religions, and became the most famous defector to the United States.

The victim of an inescapable truth: "You are Stalin's daughter. . . . You can't live your own life. You can't live any life. You exist only in reference to a name."

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Russia, Biography Memoir, Politics, Audiobook

624 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2015

About the author

Rosemary Sullivan is a Canadian poet, biographer, and anthologist. She is also a professor emerita at University of Toronto.

Reviews

[سـارا · Rating 5 out of 5]

یه زندگینامه منحصر به فرد، عجیب، و همه چی تموم که بخش عمده ای از تاریخ روسیه (از انقلاب اکتبر تا فروپاشی شوروی) رو تو خودش جا داده. نثر کتاب اونقدر جذاب و پر کششه که با وجود حجم بالاش (۱۱۰۰ صفحه) خواننده رو خسته نمیکنه.
در طول روایت زندگی سوتلانا با زاویه های دیگه ای از شخصیت استالین هم رو‌به رو‌ میشیم که شاید کمتر ازش گفته شده، با این حال استالین از دید تنها دخترش هم همون موجود بی رحم و نفرت انگیزیه که بیشتر مردم جهان می شناسند..
بیژن اشتری کارای دیگه ای رو هم با همین مضامین ترجمه کرده که بنظرم کتاب های خوب و مهمی‌ان. دیکتاتورها خواسته و ناخواسته بخش مهمی از تاریخ معاصر رو تشکیل دادن و خوندن ازشون میتونه دید جامع و کاملی بهمون بده.

[Dem · Rating 5 out of 5]

My FAVOURITE book of the year .

From the first sentence Of this book I was hooked....................

What would it mean to be born Stalin's daughter, to carry the weight of that name for a lifetime and never be free of it?

From her days in the Kremlin, to her defection to the US Svetlana Alliluyeva's life is a fascinating and an emotional read both historically and psychologically.

The title of this book is not an exaggeration, Svetlana Alliluyeva's life was extraordinary and tumultuous and Rosemary Sullivan's research and writing is outstanding. I found this a compelling biography, packed full of history, fast paced with plenty of emotion .

I had the whisper sync version on kindle which enabled me to read and listen to this book. I perfer to read historical books but loved listening to the pronouncations of the Russian names of places and people and the narrator was very easy to listen to. The kindle version has plenty of photos and a family tree which is such a bonus.
I think readers who enjoy Russian history will find Svetlana's story facinating reading. I just loved this book and although it took me close to two weeks to finish it, this is because I savoured every sentence and spent so much time googling people and places. I didn't want the book to end and the hardback copy is on my Christmas Wishlist as this is a book I want in my Library.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook!!
I've been taking some long trail hikes recently--hiking 2 and 3 hours every other day --Listening to this story became tedious.

I certainly didn't get any voyeurism satisfaction ....which at times...I had the thought, the setting creates.

We learn the history about Stalin's daughter, Svetlana....
The Kremlin Years, The Soviet Reality, Fight to America, Learning to live in the West.

We learn basic facts about her mother, her brother, her relationship with her father,
( Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin), as a child.. and as a teenager.
We learn about her studies in American History, her close friend who was Jewish..
and her first love. We learn of Svetlana's first marriage-- the birth of their son.
We learn about her second marriage -- the birth of their daughter.
We learn about the man from India she loved and married...and his death.

We continue to learn Svetlana was a cooperative defector.....a kind, friendly, quiet woman.

When she came to the U.S. She left behind her children --- married again in the United States ...birth of 'their' daughter! Whew!
By now... MY BODY... was exhausted --- just thinking of all the babies she had!.
I was getting exhausted by 'details' and 'names' dropped. Another divorce....another move into another house. Another lover yet to come. ( or maybe I was in need of a break from hiking) ...

At times this story was as dry as the dirt I was walking on. For all the 'editor-police-readers'.....you just might add this novel to your pile of books to send to
"The Editor's Jail". I would have enjoyed this book just as much - honestly- even if 200 pages were missing. Weeks of listening to this audiobook made my brain hurt after awhile!
Yet, author Rosemary Sullivan, makes sure we remember THE MOST NOTED DEFECTOR --in the United States -- in the 20th century!


3.5 stars

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

ETA: So I woke up at 4 AM irritated b/c I had left stuff out of my review. I should have given examples of the humor. One chapter is entitled something like, 'Don't Try To Commit Suicide in a Tight Skirt". What else? Svetlana wanted to be cremated after her death. She told her daughter, Olga, to spread her ashes over a river in Wisconsin. Then she got thinking ....her daughter would be accused of polluting the river because they were the ashes of Stalin's daughter! Her daughter spread then over the Pacific.

**********************************

This book is fantastic!

It is well written, based on solid research, engaging and will leave you rooting for Svetlana. Svetlana who? Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (1926-2011). Stalin's only daughter, or Lana Peters, the name by which she preferred to be called. The book covers her entire life.

What do I mean by well written? We are presented with both detailed and sometimes contradictory information. When divergent explanations are possible the reader is given adequate information to draw their own conclusion. Many, many quotes are provided, both about Svetlana and from the mouth of Svetlana. Great lines, wise lines, funny lines. There certainly is humor in this book that could have been so dark. Historical events related to her life are those that are presented; there is a perfect balance of personal and historical facts.

The information presented is thorough and detailed, but never dry. Svetlana's life story is utterly fascinating. What she lived through is exciting and will have you on the edge of your seat - not once, not twice, but many times. The book plunges you immediately into her defection in 1967 from the U.S.S.R. Then it backtracks. You must have heard about Frank Lloyd Wright's wives and about Taliesin. Well, Svetlana's fourth husband was Wes Peters, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright's last wife (Olgivanna) and Frank Lloyd Wright's stepson! Anybody who has read The Women by T.C. Boyle will certainly want to read this too. If you have read that you will know of the shenanigans of these architects, of these communal artisans. Their behavior, well, let’s leave it at this, Svetlana fit right in. Sort of, in some ways, until…...

You know what kind of a father she had. Did you know that her mother died when she was six and a half? That her father killed, imprisoned and utterly destroyed many of their own family? That when she defected to the U.S. she left behind two children? There is more you don’t know.

Are you interested in love stories? Svetlana spent her life searching for love.

The reason why I loved this book, beyond the fact that it is well executed, is that Svetlana was such an amazing person.....but human. The author shows you who she was in her soul, intimately and honestly, by her deeds, by her humor, by her anger, by her willingness to say she was sorry, by her humility. She was head-strong. She was volatile and emotional. She had a temper! She was very intelligent. I really admire her. What spunk. What courage. You have to read this book to meet this woman.

Here is one of those few exceptional non-fiction books that is simple to read because it is so engaging, because you have to know what happens. Why? Because you come to care.

This book shows you who Svetlana was in her heart, in her head. I admire her because she never gave up, even though she had such a hard life. You root for her, regardless of her foolish mistakes. Everybody thinks she was wealthy – just forget that! So many lies have been woven around her. You have to read this book to get to the truth.

One word about the audiobook narration by Karen Cass. I wanted to know and remember every detail. I wanted to forget nothing, and for that I need a very slow narration. While Cass does a very good job, I personally wish it had been a bit slower. I don't think others are quite as neurotic about speed as I am.

Now I want to read all the books written by Svetlana Alliluyeva. Unfortunately only some of the titles are listed here at GR.

[Rosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب دختر استالین، ی درام خانوادگی با پس‌زمینه‌ی تاریخی_سياسی و خفقان آوره، زندگی سوتلانا ی فرار دائمی از سایه‌ی پدری دیکتاتور به درازای سالیان و وسعت ی کشور و همچنین تبعید از خونه و وطنش به واسطه ی یک زندگی قرنطینه ای و سوال برانگیزه ، فقط با کمی رد پای ارواح کرملینی.
جلد اول، با فضای بسته‌ی شوروی، عواطف کرم زده و بیرحمی و شکاکیت جنون آميز پدر، ترس، انزوا و سوال همیشگی "آیا می‌شود فرزند یک دیکتاتور بود و آدم معمولی باقی ماند؟"، روایتی پر کشش و قابل تامل رو ارائه می‌ده.
اما جلد دوم، انگار نویسنده و سوتلانا هر دو کمی خسته و سردرگم شده‌ن چون داستان از ریتم میفته و تا حدی ی سیکل معیوب روانی رو دنبال میکنه و اغلب محدود میشه به فهرست سفرها، ازدواج‌ها و رابطه های ناموفق، سرگشتگی‌های قاره‌به‌قاره… و خب، توی ی روایت بیوگرافیک، این سطح از تکرار، جذابیت رو کم می‌کنه.
سالیوان قلم روانی داره، نثری تمیز و آکادمیک‌ـ‌روایی که برای این سرنوشت سنگین لازمه. اما این نثر ی مشکل هم داره، اینکه گاهی بیش از حد تمیز به نظر میرسه،
انگار همه‌چیز مرتب، خط‌کشی‌شده، کنترل‌شده و عاری از تپش باقی می‌مونه، در حالی که برای زندگی سوتلانا که از پارادوکس پره، مثه بحران هویت و انتخاب‌های عجیب، این نوع روایت کمی بی جون دیده میشه. ولی نویسنده در توصیف روح و روان آشفته، روابط مادر و پدر و فشارهای تاریخی کارش رو خوب انجام داده. مثلا صحنه‌هایی که در اون‌ها فشار حضور و سابقه ی استالین روی زندگی دخترش سنگینی می‌کنه، از لحاظ ادبی بهترین بخش‌های کتاب‌ن.
مشخصا سالیوان با وسواس سندی کار کرده. از نامه‌ها، عکس‌ها، مصاحبه‌ها و آرشیوهای بین‌المللی، ارجاعات و...از این لحاظ کتاب محکمه‌پسنده ،اما یجورهایی هم این وسواس باعث شده بخش‌هایی از جلد دوم تبدیل به گزارش بشه و نه ی رمان مستند که به شرایط عاطفی ی زن، ی انسان و ی سرنوشت محتوم به شکست، گره خورده. یعنی خواننده به جای این‌که در افت و خیز داستان غرق بشه، گاهی بیرون میفته و حس میکنه با ی پژوهش سر و‌کار داره ، نه ی زندگی.
سوتلانا ی نمونه‌ی کلاسیک از آدمی‌ه که در سایه‌ی چهره‌ی افسانه‌ای و هولناک ی پدر مونده، مدام تلاش می‌کنه از هویت تحمیلی فرار کنه، ولی هر جا می‌ره، بار سنگین ریشه ها و گذشته ای که حتی خودش در اون نقشی نداشته هم همراهشه. نویسنده به‌خوبی به مفهوم هویت گرفته‌شده و آزادیه تاوان‌دار می‌پردازه. سوتلانا به‌معنی واقعی، زندانی نام خانوادگی‌شه، نه تنها خودش که حتی بچه هاش...
بخش‌های روان‌شناختی کتاب، از عمیق‌ترین لحظات شرح زندگی سوتلاناست، مخصوصا که در جلد اول درگیری درونی اون بیشتر محوریت پیدا میکنه.
کتاب نشون می‌ده که چه جوری آدم حتی اگه دختر استالین هم باشه، باز هم قربانی سیستم میشه. نه دفاعی از پدرش می‌کنه، نه بطور مستقیم ضدش دیده می‌شه، بلکه تبدیل می‌شه به بازتابی انسانی از دوره‌ای که اغلب فقط با آمار قربانی ها و خشونت ازش یاد می‌شه. این نگاه انسانی به تاریخ هم نقطه قوت کتابه.
اما در جلد دوم، این بعد سیاسی تا حدی کم‌رنگ می‌شه و عملا به سفرنامه‌ی فردی تبعیدی تبدیل می‌شه. هم مهم و رقت انگیزه، هم خسته‌کننده و فرساینده..
کتاب دختر استالین، شرح زندگی ی خاندان، ی کشور، ی جغرافیا در سایه‌ی بابا کوچولوی سوتلاناست و ا��ن‌قدر تاریک، پیچیده و تراژیک هست که ناباورانه می بینیم هیچ کس ،حتی نزدیک ترین هم خون های این مرد هم از مسمومیت فضا و نچشیدن طعم مرگ مشکوک، تبعید، زندان، اعدام و شکنجه و... در امان نموندن.
سوتلانا بیشتر شبیه ی مسافر خسته س که از هر جایی رد می‌شه ولی هیچ‌جا خونه‌ش نیست، کنار هیچکس امنیت و اعتماد رو پیدا نمیکنه، و ذهنش تا آخرین روز اون رو با امید پیدا کردن خونه ی همیشگی و عشق واقعی و آسایش بی دریغ فریب میده...
3.5⭐️

[Alam · Rating 4 out of 5]

جلد یک رو خوندم و تا به اینجا ۳.۵ امتیاز داشت. بعد خوندن جلد دوم نظرم رو مینوسم.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I want to explain to you, he broke my life.”

Joseph Stalin purged and punished in greater numbers than Hitler’s Reich and he disappeared members of his own family. Author Rosemary Sullivan shows the weight his terror, and the desires of those in the power structure he created, on his only daughter.

Sullivan recounts Svetlana’s tragic childhood and lonely life as the “princess of the Kremlin”. She was shaped by her mother’s death, her father’s on and off attention and her growing awareness of her father’s role in the disappearances of her relatives. Despite her isolation, she made some friends, some of whom paid a price for knowing her.

Smith takes you through her education, her romances, her relationship with her father, her marriages and the birth and early life of her two children. You learn of her love for Brajesh Singh, and how this led to her defection.

She came to the US with little understanding of the political, social or economic systems and was both helped and taken advantage of. You marvel at her book deal and earning potential and how she lost most of it in an unusual marriage. She had signed away her copyrights but did not recoup those loses despite offers to lecture, write more or provide information.

You see her yearning for love, intellectual companionship, stability or just normalcy and how she undermined her search for each with abrupt decisions. She is described as spirited, pleasant, and warm but loses friendships in fits of anger. She faced down her father, diplomats and party officials for her freedom but didn't know how to use it, and even attempted to return to Russia where she knew she'd be restrained. She wanted stability, but divorced 4 husbands and moved uncounted times, leaving houses and furniture on two continents. She died in poverty in 2011 at age 85.

The List of Characters was helpful such that I only needed the Index a few times and each time it worked. There are B&W photos placed with their content throughout. The Acknowledgements and Notes show the breadth of this as a research project. Sullivan has the skill to present this research as a highly readable, and at times a page turning narrative.

A 2011 documentary, “Hitler’s Children” shows through the lives of the descendants of Himmler and Goering and others the difficulty of living a family legacy of mass murderers. Svetlana Alliluyeva’s burden was many times more difficult.

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

پیش از این کتاب، کتاب "استالین" رو خونده بودم ولی نگاه به زندگی استالین با چشمای دخترش لایه های بیشتر و عمیق تری از این انسان رو برامون آشکار میکنه. دوگانگی ها، باورها و روحیاتش. فردی که برای عملی کردن باورهاش هیچ استثنائی قائل نبود، حتی برای خونواده ی خودش.
ما تقلای یه انسانو میبینیم برای فرار از چیزی که انتخابش نکرده ولی همه جا و تا همیشه همراهشه؛"دختر استالین بودن" و تلاش برای اثبات خودش که جدا از باورهای پدرشه. پدری که با وجود همه ننگایی که براش به همراه داشته، نمیتونست دوسش نداشته باشه.
برخلاف انتظارم این کتاب صرفا به زندگی شخصی سوتلانا(دختر استالین) پرداخته و تنها بخشهایی از اتفاقات تاریخی روسیه که ارتباط مستقیم با زندگی سوتلانا داشته رو بیان کرده و کتاب جامعی برای بررسی تاریخ روسیه در دوران حیات سوتلانا نیست.
ترجمه ی جناب اشتری مثل همیشه بسیار روان و دلنشین بود که خوندن این کتاب رو لذت بخش تر میکرد. ولی متاسفانه چند قسمت از کتاب مشکل ویراستاری داشت که از نشر ثالث چنین انتظاری نمیرفت.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing story of the life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter. After growing up in the Kremlin and experiencing the tragic death of her mother, failed marriages, and repression under her father's regime and those who succeeded him, she makes a sudden decision to defect to America. There is so much about her life that is hard to believe and even more that was unknown generally in part because she attempted to live quietly and write her books. She was always a bit naive, especially with men, and continued her string of failed marriages one resulting in her American-born daughter, Olga. Although the general public's perception was that she was wealthy, in fact she struggled partly because she was taken advantage of by people around her who she trusted and late in life was getting by on social security. On a personal note she lived for a while near Spring Green, Wisconsin, an area I am familiar with near where some of my relatives live. She died there in 2011. This was a page turner for me and would recommend for anyone curious about her life.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

What would it mean to be born Stalin’s daughter, to carry the weight of that name for a lifetime and never be free of it?

Svetlana (Alliluyeva) Stalina (later known as Lana Peters) led a larger life than most, and in the exhaustively researched Stalin's Daughter, author Rosemary Sullivan presents a woman that most people would have found mercurial and unlikeable in person, but on the page, a reader can't help but step back and wonder, What must it have been like to be born Stalin's daughter? How do you survive finding out that your beloved father was a monster when you're not a monstrous person yourself?

On the one hand, most Russians thought of Svetlana as the Princess of the Kremlin, but the childhood she describes (in letters, remembered conversations, and her own memoirs written years later) is one of a lonely little girl with a distant mother, an absent father, no real friends, and a home in gloomy bureaucratic quarters. After Svetlana's mother committed suicide when the little girl was only six (the fact of the suicide only accidentally revealed to Svetlana many years later), she became even more isolated and lonesome. Svetlana's story jumps ahead years at a time and the book isn't even half done when Stalin dies – and that's important to note because this isn't really Stalin's story, but his daughter's.

Through the years, Svetlana was a romantic, passionately falling in love with inappropriate mates, and eventually endured four failed marriages. When she fell for an Indian diplomat whom the Russian government refused to give her permission to marry, Svetlana lived as his wife for years, nursed him through his final illness, and was shocked when the Politburo gave in to her demands to carry his ashes to India for last rites. While in India – and despite leaving two adolescent children behind in Moscow – Svetlana presented herself to the American Embassy with the intent to defect. Much cloak and dagger ensued, and despite not wanting to provoke a major incident at the height of the Cold War, the US eventually allowed Svetlana to emigrate in order to publish her first memoir about growing up in the Soviet Union.

Because the book made a lot of money (and because Svetlana was clueless about taking care of money and still a hopeless romantic), the widow of Frank Lloyd Wright was able to lure her to Taliesin West (Wright's desert-based utopian society) and encourage Svetlana to marry her own widowered son-in-law. The marriage didn't last, but the couple had a daughter (despite Svetlana now being 44), and taking care of her became Svetlana's raison d'être. Money was an issue for Svetlana for the rest of her life, and in order to give little Olga the best possible education, they moved constantly – from state to state, to England, a defection back to the USSR (!), a return to the West – and along the way, Svetlana alienated those who would try to help her, would erupt with anger every time someone mentioned her father, would give her heart to men who didn't know how to deal with her. At the very end, Svetlana lived as an anonymous hunchbacked old woman in a small town nursing home, surviving on the meager pension she had been able to accrue, looking forward to visits from the one child she still had contact with.

This (and so much more) is the story of Svetlana's life, and the research is evident on every page, with quotes and footnotes in nearly every paragraph. For the most part, the story is told in Svetlana's own words (in addition to having written four memoirs, the woman was a constant letter-writer), and where former friends are quoted, it's often from their own memoirs (and I have to think that most of them wouldn't have published books if they hadn't known Stalin's daughter, so I don't know how impartial their opinions of her actually were). And yet, despite the fascinating potential of this story and the obvious scholarship involved, I found this book to be a little dull.

I also felt the presence of the author and her own opinions throughout these pages. Often, there would be declarative statements like:

Buried in the minds of us who are lucky is a childhood landscape, a place of magic and imagination, a safe place. It is foundational, and we will return to it in memory and dreams throughout our lives.

In a book where so much is supported by quotes and footnotes, when a statement like that is made unsupported, I can't help but think, “If that's an important psychological concept that you're trying to tie in, you ought to note a source. If, on the other hand, it's just common knowledge (which I suppose is the case), then what's the point of saying it?” And while that might sound like a petty complaint, it happened many times on these pages and it started to irk me. I also felt the unwelcome presence of the author in passages like:

As he lay dying on the evening of March 1, it is unlikely that Stalin was sending a silent cry for help to Svetlana, however much she may have longed for him to do so. It is heartwrenching that she imagined he was.

Or:

One thinks of Svetlana at that door, banging for an hour until she broke the glass and her hands bled, and imagines that she was beating in fury against all the ghosts of her past who had failed her: her mother, her father, her brother. Her lovers. And now, this new life.

In a work of nonfiction – no matter how intimately the author got to know her subject – I reject the notion that she can know what's on other's minds. And yet...Rosemary Sullivan won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for Stalin's Daughter, I see that most reviewers liked it very much, and for myself, I am glad to have learned about the unhappy biography of someone I hadn't ever heard about. This was not a waste of time, but not nearly as good as I had hoped.

[Yasaman · Rating 4 out of 5]

در اتحاد جماهیر شوروی سوسیالیستی، استالین اسطوره بود . او همان رهبر معظمی بود که اتحاد شوروی را به یک ابرقدرت تبدیل کرد و جنگ علیه نازی‌های آلمان _هیتلر _را برد. با وجود این، میلیون‌ها تن از قربانیان استالین در شوروی وی را مسئول به راه انداختن دوره وحشت بزرگ و برپایی اردوگاه‌های کار اجباری در سیبری می‌دانستند. استالین در مغرب زمین همچون شریرترین و بی‌رحم‌ترین دیکتاتوری که تاکنون تاریخ جهان به خودش دیده است جلوه داده می‌شد.
دختر استالین بودن، به دوش کشیدن بار سنگین این اسم برای همه عمر و هرگز رهایی نیافتن از آن به چه معناست؟
مترجم این کتاب قید کرده که نگارش این کتاب توسط رز ماری سالیوان پنج سال به درازا کشیده است . به همین دلیل این کتاب علاوه بر یک زندگینامه حاوی بخشی از تاریخ مهم روسیه _شوروی سابق_ در سال‌های حیات استالین به شمار می‌رود.
در جلد اول کتاب تا جایی به زندگی سوتلانا_دختر استالین _ می‌پردازد که پس از مرگ پدرش همچنان سایه اسم او بر روی زندگیش حضور دارد و با توجه به جرقه‌ای که سالیان سال در سر داشت و در مکان درستی که بر حسب اتفاق و یا خوش شانسی که پس از سالیان متوالی زجر کشیدن نصیبش شده بود تصمیم به پناهندگی می‌گیرد.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one thinks about the demonic characters that dominated the twentieth century most people do not focus on the impact their lives have had on their offspring. But with Rosemary Sullivan’s remarkable new biography, STALIN’S DAUGHTER: THE EXTRAORDINARY AND TUMULTUOUS LIFE OF SVETLANA ALLILUYEVA we have just such a book. Sullivan’s narrative and analysis is thoughtful and reasoned and by the conclusion of her 623 page effort the reader will feel they have entered a surreal world that explored not only Stalin’s child, but the author of the cult of personality that dominated Russian history from 1924 until his death in 1953. What emerges is a portrait of a child who is raised in the ultimate dysfunctional family. Svetlana had to endure the suicide of her mother, Nadya in 1932, the erratic emotional roll a coaster that was her father, and the demands of being the daughter of a man who was responsible either directly or indirectly for the deaths of between 20 and 40 million people. This leads to a flawed adulthood that saw four marriages, countless love affairs, and a wandering nature that saw her abandon her own children when she first defected to the United States in 1967, later returning to the Soviet Union in 1984 and again in 1986, then traveling to England and finally dying in the United States in 2011.

Sullivan has done an extraordinary job in piecing together Svetlana’s life. Relying on her subject’s own published writings and private papers, interviews, and other documents she has prepared an incredible story that would be difficult to imagine. Sullivan begins by describing Svetlana’s defection to the United States which she correctly begins a pattern of escapism and the need to fill an emotional hole in her psyche that is repeated throughout her life. From this point on Sullivan successfully transitions to a description of a childhood growing up in the Kremlin and her interactions with her mother, Nadya, a deeply flawed woman who finally succumbed to the pressures of dealing with an abusive husband by committing suicide when her daughter was only six. What amazed me was Sullivan’s description of the environment which Svetlana was raised. Stalin’s household mirrored that of Tsarist royalty that the Bolshevik revolution was designed to replace. Nannies, special schools, summer homes, pseudo palaces, tennis courts were all part of the picture. Svetlana spent little time with her mother, and Sullivan remarks that her father was more affectionate toward her than her mother. The result was that Svetlana became an emotionally needy child, a state of mind that would dominate her actions for the remainder of her life.

Sullivan is able to weave the major events of the Stalinist regime into her biography. Purges, collectivization, show trials of the 1930s, the Nazi invasion of June, 1941, the devastation caused by World War II, and the Cold War are all portrayed in detail through the lens of Stalin’s daughter and the effect they had on her life. The disappearance of family members and others who made her childhood secure made it very difficult for Svetlana as she had no idea why things were happening. Her mother’s suicide was especially difficult, and once she learned the truth as to what occurred during the war her view of her father radically changed and she began to perceive him as the monster that he was. Stalin’s impact on his daughter’s emotional life was profound as he prevented her from pursuing certain relationships, forced her to attend Kremlin events with his cronies late at night in the Kremlin and perform for them, forced her to attend certain schools, but most importantly played a game of withholding his parental love on and off throughout her childhood.

It is not surprising that Svetlana evolved into a very confused and emotionally flawed individual prone to impulsive actions to fill the vacuum in her life. “Her first love, the prominent screenwriter Aleksei Kapler, was sent to labor camps when Stalin learned of their courtship. Her half-brother Yakov, with whom she was close, perished in a German P.O.W. camp after Stalin refused a prisoner exchange to save him. Her remaining brother, Vasili, died of alcoholism two days short of his 41st birthday.” (New York Times, “Stalin’s Daughter,” by Rosemary Sullivan, by Olga Grushin, June 12, 2015) Svetlana married Grigori Morozov, a Jewish college student when she was eighteen. Stalin hated Jews as he always believed that there was a Jewish conspiracy against him throughout his life. There was no marriage celebration and Stalin did not meet him before the wedding. By eighteen, Svetlana was pregnant. As her marriage deteriorated and she went through three painful abortions she sought the emotional support of her father that was not there. In this instance and others, Sullivan points out that Svetlana “grew disparate as she did not know how to be alone. Alone she felt totally exposed. She thought she would be safe if only she could entwine her life in another, but then, once she had achieved this, she would feel suffocated, a pattern that would take decades to break, if she ever succeeded.” (136)

When her father finally died in 1953, Svetlana’s unstable psychological profile produces feelings of guilt that she was not a good daughter and that she could have done more to help their relationship. Grief can distort one’s feelings and true to her nature her own willful blindness distorted her view of reality. Following her father’s death Svetlana disavowed politics and tried to keep herself as anonymous as possible. However, this goal was constrained by the fact that she was deemed as “state property” by the new government. People’s reactions to her would always be filtered by their view of her father. A greater impact on her life was Nikita Khrushchev’s “DeStalinization Speech” on February 25, 1956 before the Twentieth Party Congress in which the Soviet leader laid bare Stalin’s crimes. Svetlana was terrified that she would be identified with her father and hated, so as usual she withdrew into isolation. By 1957 she would change her name from Stalina to her mother’s maiden name, Alliluyeva. She would become a gossip target because of her failed marriages and sexual affairs, reflecting the contempt that developed in Soviet society for her father. Svetlana suffered from a compulsive need to turn each love affair into marriage. No matter how many bad relationships she suffered she always held on to the belief that marriage would provide a bulwark against inevitable loss. Sullivan is correct in arguing that “at core she was an emotional orphan with a tragic frailty that always threatened to sink her.” (222)

Sullivan explores the most important aspects of Svetlana’s journey as she prepares her first memoir TWENTY LETTERS TO A FRIEND. The book explores her “cruel bereavements,” disappointments and losses as she describes her childhood and personal relationships. The book revealed no state secrets and had no political agenda apart from condemning the Stalinist regime. The book would become her financial ticket for the future, especially after she falls in love with Brajesh Singh, an Indian raj who was chronically ill. They would marry, and Svetlana’s desire to return his ashes to India after he died leads her to defect to the United States. The author’s discussion of Svetlana’s defection to the United States after visiting India are fascinating. The diplomatic machinations among the Indian, Italian, Swiss and US governments reflect the political dynamite she represented visa vie the Soviet Union. The work of George Kennan, the esteemed American diplomat and historian, who oversaw Svetlana’s life for decades is accurately described as he locates a publisher for her work and deals with the fallout from her defection and the complexity of her plight. Sullivan’s analysis of Svetlana’s psyche are credible as she describes all aspects of her journey from abandonment of her family in Russia, to her settlement in the United States , and the Soviet campaign to defame her as a capitalist who was playing on her father’s name to become rich.

Svetlana’s journey throughout this period was rife with emotional and financial failure as she had no clue how to manage her life. This inability to control herself would lead to numerous personal disasters that make the reader feel a great deal of pity for Svetlana. Sullivan’s descriptions of Svetlana’s many love affairs from the prism of her constant anxieties and fear of loneliness is eye opening. She examines each love affair whether with the Princeton historian Louis Fischer or her four husbands and their impact on her personality and self-worth. The most devastating relationship was her marriage to William Wendell Peters, an architect who was tied to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesan located in Arizona, a communal situation controlled by a cult leader, Olgivanna Wright, the famed architect’s wife. Svetlana’s marriage would result in financial ruin, a daughter, Olga, and divorce. Svetlana’s life after Peters was dominated by how to raise her daughter which contributed to her wanderings that would eventually lead her to England, a return to the Soviet Union, back to England, and eventually the US.

Throughout the book the image of her father seems to dominate. The author’s discussion of Svetlana’s second book ONLY ONE YEAR encapsulates her situation as she continued her struggle to maintain her reputation against Soviet attacks. The book is more than a recapitulation of her voyage from India to the US. She revisits her past as she excoriates her father’s actions and makes the argument that her father was solely responsible for events. She lays part of the blame with those who cooperated without whom the events of the 1930s could not have occurred. She commits the blasphemy in Soviet Communist Party eyes of linking her father’s behavior with Lenin, who she argues created the atmosphere for Stalin’s crimes to be carried out. It is interesting to witness how the Soviet government’s attitude toward Svetlana evolves throughout the 1980s and 1990s as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to implement glasnost and perestroika. Even as leaders of the Soviet Union devote less and less attention to Svetlana’s situation over time, she remains paranoid about what they might do to her to the extent that when she is approaching the end of her life she wants to make sure that the Russian government cannot take advantage of her demise.

Sullivan describes a woman who is caught in a cycle of emotional disasters throughout her life as she tries to establish meaningful relationships. Svetlana rebounds from one crisis to another as her confidence suffers from extreme highs and lows. Her impulsive nature and naiveté born of a need to fill the emotional abyss that dates back to her mother’s suicide appears to the underlying psychic motivation of her erratic behavior. For Svetlana setting the historical record straight concerning her life’s story came to dominate her life once her marriage to Peters collapsed. In the end Svetlana’s perceptive nature in dealing with Russian history is offered as she correctly warns the west of who Vladimir Putin really is and what he hoped to achieve. From her viewpoint, a restoration of Russian power by appealing to Russian nationalism, a prediction made in the late nineties and early two thousands that has come to pass. In the end Svetlana Alliliuyeva’s life can be seen as a tragedy born of events and personalities that she could neither control nor understand. Sullivan has written an exceptional biography dealing with another victim of Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror, his own daughter.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and learned so much about the early years of the USSR and Stalin’s family. I am always appalled every time I read the numbers of death in Russia from the famine in the 1930 to the number of dead in WWII.

Svetlana grew up in the Kremlin surrounded by adoring relatives, governesses and tutors. Her mother committed suicide when she was 6 years old. Svetlana was born in 1926; she lived through the purges, war and the disappearances of most of her relatives into gulags. Her first love, Aleksey Kaples was sent to a labor camp when Stalin learned of their courtship. Her half brother Yaakov, with whom she was close, died in a German P. O. W. camp after Stalin refused a prisoner of war exchange. I was most interested in Svetlana’s meeting with Winston Churchill when he came to meet with Stalin during WWII. Churchill noted her red hair and told her he had also been a redhead when he was young.

In 1967, fourteen years after Stalin’s death, Svetlana defected to the United States. Her life reads like a clock and dagger suspense spy thriller. She had three children from three of her four failed marriages, published several books, made money and lost it. She moved constantly unable to stay in one place very long. She died at age 85, nearly destitute in Wisconsin under the name of Lana Peters. I found her comments about Putin most interesting and that she thought the United States was most naïve about Russia.

Rosemary Sullivan is an eminent biographer. I enjoyed her biography of Margaret Atwood. The book is well researched, and Sullivan maintains a neutral view of the troubled life of Svetlana. Sullivan allows the reader the freedom of their own interpretation. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is fairly long at 20 hours; Karen Cass does a good job narrating the story.

[Saeede · Rating 3 out of 5]

ذهنتیتی که از کتاب داشتم برآورده نشد.
خیلی از تاریخ روسیه صحبت نشده تو این کتاب، درواقع دخترش سوتلانا خیلی خودسانسوری داشته... نسبت به حجم بالای کتاب انتظار بیشتر داشتم. ولی به مسایل جزیی خیلی پرداخته، نقل قولش زیاده یعنی حتی نوشته سوتلانا یه فنجون چایی رو با پنج قاشق شکر میخورده!
در کل توصیه نمیشه مخصوصا اگه کتاب های خیلی قوی تری در مورد تاریخ روسیه مطالعه داشتین.

[Sanam · Rating 4 out of 5]

ای کاش کشیش میشد:))

[Dolores · Rating 4 out of 5]

This compelling biography is the intimate and tragic story of a woman fated to live in the shadow of her father, the notorious Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

When I was a school girl during World War II, I thought "Uncle Joe" was the USA's strong friend, and I was glad that he was on our side. I had no knowledge of his cruelty or merciless purges. As the years went by, I was shocked and horrified to learn the extent of his evil and brutality.

I was a little intimidated by the thickness of this book, but totally absorbed as soon as I started reading. I recommend it highly and am indebted to Goodreads for sending it to me free of charge.

[Pegiii attari · Rating 5 out of 5]

آزادی و رهایی
استقلال فکری و‌کاری
عشق بی قید و شرط
همه‌ی اون چیزی بود که سوتلانا، دخترِ استالین سعی داشت به دست بیاورد

دختری که سایه‌ی اسم پدر، همه‌ی زندگیش رو تاریک کرده بود
و روح پدر در او تنیده شده بود
چیزی که همیشه باعث خشم سوتلانا بود

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Wherever I go, whether to Australia or some island, I will always be a political prisoner of my father's name.", a true statement from Svetlana Stalin, who lived in her father's shadow her entire life. The book begins as her life begins with statements such as,"whenever she asked him for something, he would say,'why are you only asking? Give an order and I'll see to it right away.' She was a beloved child, but love was not openly expressed, especially by a father who was so controlling and angry, driving her mother to commit suicide. By 1942, she was in the tenth grade and suddenly learning about her father'a atrocities. At the age of 16, Stalin had her first love arrested. Soon after Stalin died, which led to a period called "The Thaw", and she was caught in a whirlwind of gulag releases, anti Stalin speeches, and cultural and political reforms. Regardless she was still addressed as Stalin 's daughter, Russian royalty, a princess of the common people, but people were either afraid of her or ignored her, dropping her socially like an old hat. Her life was a constant quest for love and peace, and she was compelled to write books to exorcise the demons of her past, which never seemed to happen. She was viewed by the United States as the most famous defector of the USSR, having "iron in her soul", iron that expressed itself in her passionate outbursts. She was stubborn, explosive, insecure, but brutally honest.

I found the Russian portions of the book more engaging that the US portions. When she lived in the United States, her life seemed like a soap opera, like she was a fish out of water. She just didn't fit in. And viewing the family photos of Stalin with his children was quite surreal. Stalin kissing a child's face? That happened? I was left not quite knowing how to feel about svetlana. I still don't after writing this review.

[Chris Steeden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit that I was little wary before reading this. Is this going to be just too confusing for me to keep up with? It is something to do with Russia and politics that scares me a little. I should not have been worried. The storytelling is clear and easy to read. Was I glad about that, especially as it is 700 pages long?

Svetlana Alliluyeva was Joseph Stalin’s daughter. She was born on 28-Feb-1926. Her mother, Nadezhda ‘Nadya’ Alliluyeva, committed suicide (shot herself in the heart) when Svetlana was only six and a half. Nadya was Stalin’s second wife. This is the story of the princess of the Kremlin.


The book is split into four parts. ‘The Kremlin Years’, ‘The Soviet Reality’ (her family being sent to the gulags or disappearing), ‘Flight to America’ and finally ‘Learning to Live in the West’. I was taken in by the whole story.

As you can probably guess it goes through Svetlana’s childhood and adulthood, but the book does go into detail showing Russia in the 1930’s, 40s and 50s but in a way that does not get bogged down and boring. Then comes her defection in 1967 and her memoir being published in book form and serialized in newspapers making her a millionaire (although she did make big donations to many charities).

Her life is full of twists-and-turns with a few manipulators thrown into the mix for good measure. From living in the US to moving to England, back to Russia, back to the US, back to England and back to the US. There are surprises along the way for sure.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

دختر استالين

يك رمان دوجلدي جذاب با ١١٠٠ صفحه كه توسط رزماري ساليوان در مورد زندگي سوتلانا تنها دختر استالين نوشته شده است. شرح وقايع از شش سالگي او و حادثه مرگ مادرش آغاز شده و تا مرگ وي ادامه دارد. منبع كتاب از نوشته هاي خود سوتلانا و نامه نگاري هاي او با دوستانش است.
دختر استالين همه ي عمر در تلاش براي فرار از سايه ي سهمگين نام پدرش و در نوسان بين عشق و نفرت نسبت به پدر ترسناكش بود.
حاصل چهار ازدواج سوتلانا سه فرزند بود كه بيشتر عمرش را جدا از دو فرزند ساكن شوروي خود سپري كرد.
وي علاقه ي زيادي به تغيير محل زندگي نه در يك شهر و مملكت بلكه بين قاره ها نيز داشت و سرنوشت عجيب او پر از شجاعت ها و جنگيدن او با سرنوشتش بود.
.
در قسمتي از كتاب ميخوانيم:
"در سال ١٩٩٦ وقتي گزارشگري از سوتلانا پرسيد آيا خوشحال است؟ او جواب داد:
خوشحالي چيست؟ من راضي ام و موقعي كه شما هفتاد سالتان است اين رضايت چيز بدي نيست. اوقات بسيار خوبي داشتم و اوقات خيلي بد، هرگز خودم را شهيد يا قرباني به حساب نياورده ام. چرا بايد گلايه كنم؟
در گلايه هيچ خيري نيست. شايد صليبي براي حمل كردن دارم اما رنج نميبرم"

[Kaveh Rezaie · Rating 5 out of 5]

زندگی دختر استالین تا زمان پناهندگی به سفارت امریکا در هند، در جلد اول روایت می‌شود. کتاب در عین اینکه یک اثر پژوهشی با منابع معتبر گوناگون است اما رمان‌وار و بسیار پرکشش و جذاب است: کودکی رنگارنگ سوتلانا تا درگذشت مادرش که نقطه عطفی در همه زندگی او بود... رابطه عاشقانه‌ای که با استالین پدر داشته... ناپدید شدن به تدریج همه عزیزانش توسط استالین... روابطش با برادر تنی‌اش واسیلی و برادر ناتنی‌اش یاکوف، همسالان و همکلاسی‌هایش... جنگ جهانی دوم... اولین رابطه عاشقانه سوتلانا و برخورد سخت پدر، پایان جنگ و ازدواج و فوت پدر، بی‌قراری و روابط عاشقانه او، سفر به هند و پناهندگی.
همگی مستند روایت شده‌اند. ترجمه عالی است.

[Ria Gehrerová · Rating 5 out of 5]

Príbeh o Stalinovej dcére je taký neuveriteľný, že ak by ho mal niekto vymyslieť, neurobil by to tak dobre. Keď si našla prvého frajera, otec ho dal zavrieť do basy. S jej manželom sa zasa nikdy nestretol, lebo bol žid. No a popri tom dostávala od známych také super darčeky, ako napríklad koberec s vytkaným portrétom svojho otca. Fascinujúce čítanie, naozaj, dajte si! Takýchto lahôdok je plná kniha.

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una dintre poveștile care m-a impresionat cel mai mult din viața Svetlanei Alilueva este cea a ultimelor sale zile, cînd o prietenă încearcă s-o încurajeze spunîndu-i că toată familia de „dincolo” va veni s-o întîmpine. Întrebarea acesteia: „Și ce se întâmplă cu oamenii pe care nu doresc să-i văd?” însumează spaimele și oroarea tuturor acelor copii forțați să poarte povara trecutului părinților lor mai mult sau mai puțin monstruoși.

Foarte bună treabă a făcut canadianca Rosemary Sullivan cu biografia fiicei lui Stalin, în contextul în care a creat imaginea, foarte credibilă și foarte vie, a unei personalități complexe, care s-a zbătut toată viața să se elibereze de umbra sufocantă a Tatălui. Din păcate, deși i-am înțeles foarte bine frustrările și furia cînd presa și opinia publică păreau mai interesate de Stalin decît de ea și de scrierile ei, recunosc că și pe mine paginile din biografie care se referă la el mi-au reținut cel mai mult atenția.

Cu toate informațiile din interior, din păcate ușa spre iad rămîne abia întredeschisă, sau poate n-ai unde să găsești vreo explicație pentru răul absolut cînd și aceia care au suferit de pe urma lui au continuat să creadă în el: Maria Svanidze, mătușa Svetlanei, de pildă, nu se îndoia de faptul că membrii din vechea gardă a Partidului Bolșevic ar fi trădat idealurile revoluției nici măcar după propria arestare, fiind convinsă că s-a făcut o greșeală și că Stalin nu știa nimic, și probabil cu convingerea asta a murit în fața plutonului de execuție; sau Jenia Allilueva, altă mătușă care, la ieșirea din închisoare (după mai bine de cinci ani de detenție!), a crezut că a fost eliberată de Stalin și cînd a aflat că acesta murise „nu se putea opri din plâns.”

Spre sfîrșitul vieții, Svetlana va explica această trăsătură a poporului rus de a fi consecvent în greșeli:

„A fi rus înseamnă să nu spui niciodată că-ți pare rău (...). Nici măcar astăzi, rușii nu sînt în stare să deplîngă și să se căiască pentru crimele lui Stalin...”

Aceeași trăsătură va înlesni instaurarea unei noi dictaturi sub Putin, „acest îngrozitor fost SPION-KGB” pe care guvernele lumii și democrații din interiorul Rusiei îl vor primi cu brațele deschise în loc să-l boicoteze, contribuind astfel atît la eliminarea treptată a drepturilor omului cît și la creșterea corupției:

Se plângea că poporul rus nu se uita la toate astea: nivelul de trai se îmbunătățise în mare măsură datorită creșterii prețului petrolului și gazelor, dar mita și corupția făceau ravagii, și oamenii erau hrăniți de propaganda naționalistă și cu măreția Rusiei „de parcă ar fi fost laptele mamei lor”.

Svetlana a murit în 2011. Viitorul n-a făcut, din păcate, decît să-i confirme previziunile.


Într-un inspirat Cuvînt înainte la ediția românească, Lavinia Betea vede în biografia Svetlanei Alilueva o desacralizare a mitului copilăriei fericite din orice direcție ai privi-o:

„Dacă în epoca imperiului sovietic, partidul s-a erijat și în responsabil cu fericirea obligatorie, sub ideologia consumerismului, funcționează, tot mai agresiv, industria ei publicitară. Datorită ei, copiii sunt sori ai familiei, prinții și prințesele viitorului. În perspectiva evoluției psihologice însă, preafericirea prunciei devine premisa inadaptării la presiunile și frustrările maturității.
În același spirit al funcționalității, biografia fiicei lui Stalin poate conta ca insolită terapie pentru invidia față de cei din familii ilustre.”


P.S. Am început să citesc această carte cu vreo șapte luni în urmă, dar pentru că am citit doar în „ferestrele” de la școală și a mai fost și vacanța, perioada lecturii s-a prelungit considerabil, fără a avea însă vreo legătură cu valoarea ei, dimpotrivă 😊.

[Atena · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتاب ها واقعا جادویین...
این کتاب تو رو به راهروهای کرملین میبره، بین اتاق ها و خصوصی ترین جاهاش، و تو از اونجا میتونی شاهد تاریخ باشی.
این کتاب حقیقت های تلخ و تاریک تاریخی و سیاسیش رو از دید دختر استالین روایت میکنه، اما این فقط کتاب تاریخی یا سیاسی نیست. این قصه ی دختریه که تمام عمر زیر سایه ی اسم پدرش زندگی می کنه.
داستان سوتلانا، زن قوی، پر شور و شجاعی که هیچ شباهتی به پدرش نداره، پر از پیچ و خم و تلخی و زیباییه...

[Mehrnaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

ترجمه‌ی بسیار عالیِ بیژن اشتری. از بهترین بیوگرافی‌هایی که خوندم.
هنر و زحمتی که رزماری سالیوان برای نوشتن این کتاب خرج کرده؛ ستودنیه.


حس کردم شخصیت احساسی سوتلانا [خصوصا تو روابط عاطفی با اطرافیانش] کمی به شخصیت من نزدیکه و حس هم‌دردی
با وقایع دردناکی که پشت سر گذاشته بود داشتم.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book: Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
Author: Rosemary Sullivan
Publisher: ‎ Harper Perennial; Abridged edition (21 June 2016)
Language: ‎ English
Paperback: ‎ 624 pages
Item Weight: ‎ 629 g
Dimensions: ‎ 15.24 x 3.18 x 22.86 cm
Price: 1554/-

What was the heartrending accurate story of Stalin's daughter?

What would it mean to be born Stalin’s daughter, to bear the burden of that name for a lifetime and never be liberated of it?

In the USSR, Stalin was mythic. He was the ‘vozhd’, the ultimate leader who built the Soviet Union into a superpower and won the war against the Nazis.

To his millions of Soviet victims, nonetheless, he was the man accountable for the Terror and the notorious Gulag.

In the West, he was extensively demonized as one of the world’s most atrocious dictators.

Try as she might, Svetlana Alliluyeva could never break away from Stalin’s silhouette.

This book tells her story.

The book has been divided into four parts:

1) The Kremlin Years
2) The Soviet Reality
3) Flight to America
4) Learning to Live in the West

On November the 22nd 2011, in rustic Wisconsin an aged woman passed away at the age of 85. Her name was Svetlana Peters.

And she was the last of Stalin's children.

Her story is one representative of countless Soviet Russians.

The author says, “In the USSR, her life was inconceivably excruciating. Her mother, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, committed suicide when Svetlana was only six and a half.

In the purges of the Great Terror in the late 1930s, Stalin did not spare his family. Her beloved Aunt Maria and Uncle Alexander Svanidze, the brother and sister-in-law of Stalin’s first wife, were arrested and executed as enemies of the people; their son Johnik, her childhood playmate, disappeared. Uncle Stanislav Redens, the husband of her mother’s sister Anna, was executed.

Uncle Pavel, her mother’s brother, died of a heart attack brought on by shock. When she’d just turned seventeen, her father sentenced her first love, Aleksei Kapler, to the Gulag for ten years.

The Nazis killed her half brother Yakov in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1943. In 1947 and 1948, during the wave of repression known as the Anti-Cosmopolitan Campaign, her mother’s sister Anna and Pavel’s widow, Zhenya, were sentenced to seven years in solitary confinement. Zhenya’s daughter Kyra was imprisoned and then exiled…”

The steady understanding of her father's brutality her life had been spent, first attempting to flee her father's regime and later striving to step out from the colossal shadow, Stalin had cast over her.

Regarding Stalin, Svetlana said, “Wherever I go, here or Switzerland or India or wherever, I will always be a political captive of my father's name.”

Svetlana's outlook towards her father was delineated by a contradiction of love and later hate.

During her childhood Stalin was kind towards her, openly stating he preferred her over her brothers. However the Soviet leader's paranoia brutality and heartlessness wasn't restrained to the walls of the Kremlin. Over time, Svetlana's independence increased, paralleling her growing comprehension of her father's cruelty.

Consequently Stalin became increasingly controlling and Svetlana became just another of his millions of victims. Initially, the Soviet dictator would watch movies with her, bring her presents and refer to her as ‘little sparrow’. During this time Svetlana loved her father. However the piece of her childhood was soon shattered, when at age six Svetlana's mother shot herself, leaving her traumatized.

After her mother's death Stalin stopped visiting his children. The love Svetlana had once felt was unexpectedly replaced by desolation.

Consequently her childhood became forlorn. At only six she had to overcome the anguish she felt after her mother's suicide, without any support from her father. Neither svetlana nor her brother Vasily was told that their mother's death was suicide, until 10 years later.

As Svetlana grew older, she became gradually more conscious of her father's power.

At 14 she noticed a friend weeping at school, after their father had been taken during the night. The friend's mother gave Svetlana a letter and asked that she gave it to Stalin. However upon receiving the letter, Stalin would react with wrath, stating that sometimes you are forced to go even against those you love.

As a young woman, the liberation Svetlana craved was something her father refused to permit. Stalin became progressively more controlling and attempted to preside over every aspect of her life.

Later at 17, Svetlana fell in love with a man named Alexi Kepler. Alexi was 39 and was walking a tightrope which he would soon fall from, when Stalin discovered their relationship.

Infuriated by the affair, Stalin had Alexi arrested. Alexi spent the following five years in exile and subsequently another five years in a gulag. This provided the concluding straw for Svetlana and Stalin’s relationship.

And from then Svetlana never saw her father in the same light.

In 1953 Stalin died and following this Svetlana began to dream of leaving the USSR. But there was no closure for her.

The author states, “After her father’s death in 1953, the tragedies continued. Her elder brother, Vasili, was arrested and eventually died of alcoholism in 1962.

Her literary friends in the mid-1960s were sent to forced-labor camps.

When she finally found peace in a loving relationship with a man named Brajesh Singh, she was officially refused the right to marry him before he died, though she was given official permission to carry his ashes back to India…”

After her Indian husband passed, she was granted authorization to visit India in order to spread his ashes.

While in India she defected to the U.S. embassy and left the Soviet Union and her two children behind.

Upon her arrival, Svetlana censured the Soviet regime and was greeted with open arms. Over the following years she continued to disapprove of the USSR and its conduct of its citizens. Svetlana lived a long life in America, marrying again and having another child. She also wrote and published her memoirs in the United States.

However she remained chained to the legacy of her father. Svetlana later stated, “You can't regret your fate although I do regret my mother didn't marry a carpenter.”

The author says, ……“she was called unstable. The historian Robert Tucker remarked that ‘despite everything, she was, in some sense, like her father.’ And yet it’s astonishing how little she resembled her father.

She did not believe in violence. She had a risk taker’s resilience, a commitment to life, and an unexpected optimism, even though her life spanned the brutalities of the twentieth century in the most heartrending of ways, giving her a knowledge of the dark side of human experience, which few people are ever forced to confront.

Caught between two worlds in the Cold War power struggles between East and West, she was served well by neither side. She had to slowly learn how the West functioned. The process of her education is fascinating and often sad.

Alliluyeva had as much trouble explaining her father as anyone else did. Her attitude toward Stalin was paradoxical. She unequivocally rejected his crimes, yet he was the father who, in her childhood memory, was loving—until he wasn’t. She sought, with only partial success, to understand what motivated his brutal policies.

‘I don’t believe he ever suffered any pangs of conscience; I don’t think he ever experienced them. But he was not happy, either, having reached the ultimate in his desires by killing many, crushing others, and being admired by some.’ ………

Svetlana had as much trouble explaining her father as anyone else did. Her attitude toward Stalin was paradoxical. She unequivocally rejected his crimes, yet he was the father who, in her childhood memory, was loving — until he wasn’t.

She sought, with only partial success, to understand what motivated his brutal policies. “I don’t believe he ever suffered any pangs of conscience; I don’t think he ever experienced them.

But he was not happy, either, having reached the ultimate in his desires by killing many, crushing others, and being admired by some.”

However, she warned that to dismiss him as simply grotesque would be a serious error. The question is what happens to a human being in his private life and within a particular political system that dictates such a history.

She always insisted that her father never acted alone. He had thousands of accomplices.

A most recommended book for history buffs.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give the writing and research 4 stars, but the length became so tedious. I do feel like I know Svetlana pretty well. I was very interested to read about her life, both with her father and later. And although her father died when she was a young adult, she felt his shadow her whole life. Our parents, of course, will affect the course of our lives, for good or bad, but when your father was a famous dictator, known for extremely harsh policies, executions and imprisonments . . . well, that's quite a deep shadow to live with. I think she was as happy as any average person is, and I think that's saying something, considering the baggage she carried around.

Her life would make a wonderful historical fiction book. A lot of conflict around her as well as within.

[Mahtab · Rating 5 out of 5]

یک زندگینامه‌ی کامل و همه چی تموم… به نظرم واقعا دیگه چیزی نبوده که نویسنده جا انداخته باشه یا بهش اشاره‌ای نکرده باشه، مگر اینکه جزو رازهای خیلی پنهان سوتلانا یا اسناد محرمانه‌ی سیا و کا گ ب بوده باشه… از خوندنش لذت بردم.

[Ali Di · Rating 4 out of 5]

روایتی خواندنی از یک عمر تلاشِ دختر برای فرار از زیر سایه‌ پدر

[Nasrin · Rating 1 out of 5]

واقعا چرا این کتاب رو بزرگ کردن و القابی بهش دادن که ابدا سزاوارش نیست😑
بیوگرافی سوتلانا نهایتا 250 الی 300 صفحه نیاز داشت. نه هزار و خورده ای صفحه برای خوندن رفتارا روزانه و تصمیمات عجولانه و بیهوده و فوق معمولی یک زن!
ابدا نخرید. اتلاف وقت و هزینه ست.