Stalin had three children, two of whom were sons, and Svetlana was his only daughter.
What people never expected was that this "princess" who was most loved by Stalin,
When he grew up, he became the person who hurt his heart the most.
Stalin and his daughter
1
Stalin, who was 47 years old in the year her daughter was born, named her "Svetlana," which means "light and shadow," derived from a Romantic poem in Russia.
At that time, the children of the Soviet Union were either called "Oktyabry" (October Revolution) or "May Day" (May Day), and since the birth of "Svetlana", thousands of newborns in the Soviet Union have given the same name as her.
Stalin treasured this only daughter, and he often held her in his arms and affectionately called her "Little Sparrow."
When Svetlana was 6 years old, her mother died. Since then, Stalin has poured more attention into his daughter.
He even called his daughter his "mistress" and asked her to issue orders to himself:
"My First Secretary, Comrade Stalin, orders you to allow me to go to the cinema or to see a play with you— the mistress Shetanka (Shetanka is Svetlana's nickname)".
This is a game that Svetlana used to play with her father as a child.
Stalin loved his daughter more than he loved his two sons combined.
But as Svetlana grew older, the gap between her and her father grew.
Stalin was not only politically authoritarian, but also rather authoritarian in the education of his children.
He did not allow his daughter to wear skirts and short sleeves on the grounds that he did not want others to see her bare knees and arms.
Once, when Svetlana went to a Young Pioneer summer camp, short skirts were in vogue, and she sent a picture of herself wearing short skirts to her father.
Who knew that Stalin was furious, and used a red pencil to make a big cross on the photo, and then wrote "prostitute" on the back, and also sent a plane to send the photo back to his daughter.
You can imagine how aggrieved and angry Svetlana felt when she received this photo.
At the age of 10, Stalin asked her to read Bolshevik history textbooks, which Svetlana found boring.
It is normal for 10-year-olds not to like boring books, but Stalin was furious.
In 1943, Svetlana studied at Moscow University, and she originally wanted to major in literature, but her father insisted that she choose a major in history, and Svetlana could not refuse.
If these things only made Svetlana dissatisfied with her father, the next thing that happened was enough to fill her with hatred for her father.
At the age of 16, Svetlana met 40-year-old film director Alexei Kapler at a party of her brother and friends.
Alexei was in his 40s at the time and already had a wife and children.
But Svetlana still fell irrepressibly in love with him, and she fell in love with Alexei at first sight, believing that he exuded the light and charm of knowledge.
The moment Alexei invited her to the dance floor, Svetlana fell completely in love.
It was her first love.
During their relationship, Alexei recommended many books and records to his little girlfriend, and also introduced her to some American works that were banned in the Soviet Union, such as Hemingway's "For Whom the Death Knell Rings", "Rich and No Rich", and so on.
The two visited the Grand Theater and Exhibition Hall in Moscow together, watched dance plays, listened to operas...
First love is always beautiful and unforgettable, and Svetlana still remembers the experience years later.
But when Stalin learned of this, the reaction was extremely fierce.
He thought that his daughter and Alexei were simply provoking their own dignity, and after slapping his daughter twice, Stalin scolded loudly:
"You don't look at yourself, who wants you?" He has women around him, and you're such a fool! ”
"A writer who can't even say a decent word of Russian... Can't you find a Russian? ”
In front of his daughter, Stalin tore to shredded Alexei's love letters, photographs, Manuscripts of Alexei's novels and new plays.
This alone was not enough to quell Stalin's anger.
In his eyes, the Jewish man who "seduced" his daughter was simply unforgivable.
Later, Alexei was exiled to Siberia, where he spent a long 10 years, only to be released after Stalin's death.
The Alexei affair gave Svetlana her first recognition of her father's cold, brutal side.
Not long after that, having learned English, she saw a report in the London News about the truth about her mother's death, which said that Svetlana's mother had not died of an acute illness, but had committed suicide with a pistol because she could no longer stand her husband.
From that moment on, the glorious image of her father collapsed in an instant, and Svetlana developed a strong hatred for her father.
Not knowing whether she wanted to get revenge on her father, Svetlana soon talked about her second relationship, this time with a college classmate.
Learning the lesson of the last time, Svetlana, who is only 18 years old, decided to cut first and play later, and she quietly lived with her boyfriend.
By the time Stalin learned of this, the raw rice had been cooked to maturity, and even his grandson had it, and he seemed to have been very disappointed in his daughter, and only scolded: "Do as you please!" ”
The unblessed marriage did not last long, only three years, and the two parted ways because of emotional problems.
Svetlana left her husband with the child, and her husband was subsequently fired from the unit, and the whole family suffered.
It is said that if he had not cared that he was his grandson's father, Stalin would have killed him.
At the age of 23, Svetlana finally did something that satisfied her father: she married the son of Andrei Zhdanov, secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Before the marriage, Svetlana hadn't even dated each other.
According to Svetlana,
She agreed to the marriage because her father was old and she was unwilling to always go against his wishes.
It was a very grand wedding, and the following year after the marriage, Svetlana gave birth to a daughter.
However, this political marriage without a basis of love was destined not to last long, and within a few years, she divorced her husband.
Stalin's dissatisfaction with his daughter reached almost to the extreme.
One thing once recorded in Khrushchev's memoirs was that at the 1952 New Year's party, Stalin pulled his daughter's hair and forced her to dance.
But soon Stalin had no strength to interfere in his daughter's affairs any longer.
On March 2, 1953, Svetlana, who had not seen her father for several months, was taken to her father's bed.
Three days later, Stalin died.
Stalin may not have been a good father, but Svetlana knew very well that
She herself was never a good daughter.
In the loneliest time of his father's later years, she brought him not comfort, not help, but endless disappointment and anger...
2
After Stalin's death, Svetlana continued to enjoy the benefits her father had given her, such as buses and villas.
Soon after, however, the campaign against Stalin began, and Svetlana offered to express her reluctance to enjoy these benefits any longer.
Later, she even gave up her father's surname in favor of her mother's surname.
In October 1963, in the hallway of a hospital, Svetlana met an Indian man named Brayesh Singh.
The drama of love at first sight is staged again.
After the conversation, it was learned that Blayesh was from a wealthy Indian family and was an Indian Communist Party member.
Svetlana fell in love with the gentle and cultured man.
The two lived a warm and happy life together, and one of Svetlana's children also liked Brayesh very much.
However, the Soviet leader at the time, Kosygin, strongly opposed Svetlana marrying a foreigner. Until Singh's death from illness in 1966, neither of them could get a legal marriage certificate.
After the death of her lover, Svetlana was devastated and asked to return to his hometown with her lover's ashes and scatter them into the Ganges.
For this request, the Soviet leaders did not refuse, but only sent agents to secretly accompany her.
March 6, 1967, the day before Svetlana returned to the Soviet Union,
Avoiding agents and greeting no one, she suddenly appeared at the U.S. Embassy in India and asked for political asylum.
At first, the U.S. embassy staff thought she was joking.
At that time, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were gradually improving, and the U.S. government was worried that the hasty admission of Svetlana would damage diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Still, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson eventually acceded to Svetlana's request.
In order not to cause too much controversy, the U.S. government first sent someone to take her to Switzerland, and Svetlana left for New York after 6 weeks of living in Switzerland.
Before boarding the plane, Svetlana told reporters:
I will never regret it!
Stalin's daughter arrived in New York in 1967
When Svetlana arrived in New York in April 1967, she immediately held a media conference declaring that she would never return to the Soviet Union.
Stalin's daughter fled to the United States for protection, and the explosive news soon spread around the world.
In the days that followed, Svetlana gave high-profile speeches, publicly denouncing the Soviet authorities.
She accused her father Stalin of being a moral and spiritual demon, of the deep corruption of the Soviet system, and even of claiming that the Bolshevik Revolution was a tragic mistake.
Svetlana's "defection" and wanton rhetoric infuriated the leaders of the Soviet government.
Soviet leader Kosygin scolded her for being "sick," and Khrushchev thought she had made the Soviet Union a laughingstock in the eyes of its enemies.
According to relevant information, at that time, the Soviet secret service once wanted to get rid of Svetlana.
In fact, Svetlana didn't think about it that much.
She was like a spoiled child, who regarded the exodus as very simple, and in her eyes, she just wanted to get rid of her father's shadow and just wanted to live a free and untethered life.
Of course, there may also be reasons for Brayesh Singh, who believes that he was abused by the Soviet government during his lifetime, and that the sons of senior Soviet government officials who went to the United States at that time, such as Khrushchev's son, Svetlana wanted to emulate them.
Whatever the reason,
Svetlana chose the most extreme way, betraying her homeland and abandoning the children born to her first two husbands.
Both of these points are unforgivable.
In 1967, Svetlana was interviewed in New York
3
In the United States, Svetlana fell in love again.
This time, she fell in love with an American architect, Wright, whose father-in-law was the famous American architect Wright.
Peters inherited his father-in-law's business, and unfortunately his wife was tragically killed in a traffic accident many years ago.
Peters's mother-in-law was also a Russian, and coincidentally, Peters' deceased wife was also named Svetlana.
When her mother-in-law saw Svetlana on the news coming to the United States, she immediately invited the other party to her own dinner.
At the party, Svetlana fell in love with Wiesler at first sight.
Just three weeks later, they were married, and Svetlana changed her name to Lana Peters.
That same year, Svetlana, 44, gave birth to her second daughter, Olga.
Leaving her hometown, she gained love and the "freedom" she dreamed of, but Svetlana still felt that life was not satisfactory. Peters listened to her former mother-in-law's advice in everything, which made her very unhappy.
In 1973, Svetlana and Peters divorced.
Looking at Svetlana's three marriages, it can be seen that each of her marriages lasted a short time.
Capriciousness is perhaps a very obvious feature of her personality, and it's not just about her marriage.
According to Svetlana's friend, she changes her address frequently and has never lived in one place for more than 2 years.
Svetlana didn't want people to know that she was Stalin's daughter, but on the other hand, she used her status as "Stalin's daughter" to write one best-selling book after another, and these books brought her at least $2.5 million.
By the way, after arriving in the United States, did Svetlana really get the freedom she wanted?
The answer is no.
The longer she stayed in the United States, the more complicated her views on the United States became.
At first, she said that life in the United States was free and colorful, but later, she felt that American society was out of order and felt very uncomfortable.
She was extremely disgusted by the harassment of the media and felt that she had no privacy. But on the other hand, she felt extremely lonely.
Although accompanied by her youngest daughter Olga, she could no longer suppress her longing for the pair of children who had been left in the Soviet Union, and the older she got, the more she felt sorry for the two children.
All Svetlana knew was that her son Joseph had married a second wife after his divorce and was now a doctor, and her daughter Katya was a geophysicist who lived in Kamchatka.
In 1984, Svetlana, who had threatened never to return to the Soviet Union, ate the "turning back grass".
She wrote to the Soviet Embassy, asking the state for permission to return to Moscow.
At this time, she reversed the remarks of that year, and openly affirmed the Soviet system, crying that she had never been truly free in the United States, saying
I was deceived.
She also withdrew her condemnation of her father and said
"If my father knew what I had done, he might have shot me!"
Subsequently, Svetlana and her daughter were re-admitted to Soviet citizenship.
In 1985, the world-famous Soviet exile returned to his homeland.
When Svetlana arrived in Moscow by plane with her young daughter, she was greeted only by a lady sent by the government.
Later, she saw her 39-year-old son in the hotel, who looked extremely vicissitudes due to his drunkenness, like a little old man.
And the daughter Katya did not appear at all.
Eight months later, Svetlana received a letter from her daughter, and when she opened it with great excitement, she saw only a small piece of paper with a few lines written on it.
When she saw the words "I don't forgive you," Svetlana's heart was deeply pierced.
Katya made it clear in her letter that she did not want to see her mother, nor did she want her mother to see herself through other means, let alone her mother interfering in her life.
Katya was never able to forgive her mother for her abandonment and betrayal, and Svetlana never saw her daughter until her death.
Originally, Svetlana returned to the Soviet Union to find affection, but she was faced with a cold son and a daughter who did not want to see her.
Svetlana deeply felt the pain of losing her affection.
In 1986, Svetlana, aware that she was still under the surveillance of the Soviet government, left the Soviet Union again with her daughter and went to the United States.
4
In her later years, Svetlana lived alone in a nursing home, her eldest son Joseph died in 2008, and her daughter Olga was far away in Poland.
Svetlana has always been poor at managing money, so she lived a very difficult life in her later years.
In 2010, Svetlana was interviewed for the last time.
When asked if her father Stalin loved her, she replied: "Yes, father loves me... However, I still can't forgive him, he ruined my life. ”
She paused and said again, "He ruined my life."
Svetlana's love and hatred for her father was equally strong, and she had sung and cursed him countless times.
She could not escape the brand of Stalin's daughter for the rest of her life. Wherever she went, she was always a political prisoner with her father's surname.
"My life is too heavy."
In 2011, Svetlana died of colon cancer, and on her deathbed, not a single child was with her.
It wasn't until a week later that the news of her death was released to the media by her daughter Olga via email.
To this day, when Svetlana is mentioned, people still refer to her as a "fugitive.".
Svetlana's life was a tragedy, but was it really only because her father was Stalin?
Not necessarily.
Stalin was undoubtedly a stern father, but Svetlana's willfulness and capriciousness were the most crucial reasons for her life's upheaval and death.
"It turns out that the two superpowers are so similar in terms of good and bad."
Svetlana didn't understand this years ago, and by the time she did, it was too late.
No country has ever been perfect, and people love their country not because of how good it is, but because they want to make it change for the better.
Loving your country is more important than anything else.
bibliography:
[1] By Marta Sade, Wang Qingyan. Stalin's Daughter: The Life of Svetlana Aliluyeva[M]. Oriental Publishing House, 2008.
Yuan Xi. Living Like Ordinary People: Reading Three Books by Svetlana Aliluyeva[J]. Books&B, 1999(12):2.