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

Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
Rosemary Sullivan

Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-FictionA New York Times Notable Book of 2015A painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history’s most monstrous dictators – her father, Josef Stalin.Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy – the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States – leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father’s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Spring Green, Wisconsin.With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it’s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father’s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.

Copyright (#ulink_bc9483f0-d541-5a46-b63c-aa6411776537)

Fourth Estate

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First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015

First published in the United States by Harper in 2015

Copyright © Rosemary Sullivan 2015

Rosemary Sullivan asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work.

Cover photograph © The David King Collection

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780007491117

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780007491124

Version: 2016-06-29

Dedication (#ulink_833c2bca-b114-519d-bf9f-b4a88ccf18ed)

For my mother,

Leanore Marjorie Guthrie Sullivan

Frontispiece: Eight-year-old Svetlana with her father, Joseph Stalin, on vacation in Soshi.

(Svetlana Aliluyeva private collection; courtesy of Chrese Evans)

Contents

Cover (#uabe5114a-7a95-5080-a35b-230bfb8b26aa)

Title Page (#u74b5a4f1-0171-5418-a698-d9067f7418ce)

Copyright (#ulink_31654517-0986-545a-b404-485589baad0d)

Dedication (#ulink_1217686c-7c1e-50bf-9f57-873beeea6a49)

The Djugashvili and Alliluyev Family Trees (#ulink_97cf49e6-cbb8-5101-b686-1c1ecfd7505d)

Preface (#ulink_9c289442-90f3-53e9-8b2a-0f21ccd00809)

Prologue The Defection (#ulink_6aa64c73-a177-5217-94a6-3ac14baca51d)

PART ONE: The Kremlin Years

Chapter 1 That Place of Sunshine (#ulink_8f259f1d-ceb6-5f70-93f3-049c34ba4632)

Chapter 2 A Motherless Child (#ulink_8f839934-3748-5afc-8cc5-e70ec3844d3f)

Chapter 3 The Hostess and the Peasant (#ulink_10c5c007-2f8d-59b9-aba6-dddc916cd1f5)

Chapter 4 The Terror (#ulink_f08d33ad-506e-5397-a556-f177a324094c)

Chapter 5 The Circle of Secrets and Lies (#ulink_61ec9ee2-fe45-5f00-9317-4b3256ec4441)

Chapter 6 Love Story (#ulink_cec44b1f-5ac3-5f5c-bcc4-c6f0499dc531)

Chapter 7 A Jewish Wedding (#ulink_e22ab5a9-0fc6-5a60-8338-aaa1a3df52ed)

Chapter 8 The Anti-Cosmopolitan Campaign (#ulink_9bec8070-4c91-54d3-a3fb-ea59b5476ad0)

Chapter 9 Everything Silent, as Before a Storm (#ulink_3d1aed74-72f5-5de2-934a-4fd42d4c3006)

Chapter 10 The Death of the Vozhd (#ulink_3b719821-9178-588d-ad81-ccbfcae6df41)

PART TWO: The Soviet Reality

Chapter 11 The Ghosts Return (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 The Generalissimo’s Daughter (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 Post-Thaw (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 The Gentle Brahman (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 On the Banks of the Ganges (#litres_trial_promo)