Stalin was the longest-ruling leader in Soviet history, and under his leadership, the Soviet Union industrialized, won the Great Patriotic War, and became the only superpower in the world that could compete with the United States. However, Stalin also brought endless suffering to the Soviets, and he blindly launched a purge campaign, imprisoning countless innocent Soviets in labor camps in the Gulag. After Stalin's death, his successor, Khrushchev, began to completely repudiate Stalin's political line, and his family suffered with it.
Stalin's eldest son, Yakov, died in a German concentration camp during the Great Patriotic War, and his youngest son Vasily and daughter Svetlana became his heart. However, the two brothers and sisters were not angry, and always caused trouble for Stalin, especially his youngest son Vasily. As early as stalin, Vasily had been dismissed from his post for leaving his post without permission. By Khrushchev's time, Vasily's life was left with only women and alcohol. Khrushchev couldn't stand him, found a reason to embezzle public funds, and imprisoned Vasily in a labor camp in Kazan. Later, Vasily died in exile.
Compared to her brother Vasily, Svetlana was a little better, but the Soviet princess had a chaotic emotional life and failed to maintain a marriage with Danov's son according to Stalin's wishes. During Khrushchev's time, Svetlana was not treated badly, but she had to live under KGB surveillance. What made her even more unbearable was the overwhelming criticism of his father. In the eyes of this uninhabited princess, his father Stalin was not an unforgivable sinner. Yet mainstream Soviet rhetoric tormented her.
After Khrushchev's downfall, Brezhnev revived some of stalin's policies and changed the denial of Stalin during the Khrushchev period, but the KGB's supervision of Svetlana became stricter. Eventually, the death of Svetlana's third husband, Singh, an Indian, prompted her defection. On March 6, 1967, Svetlana sought political asylum at the U.S. Embassy in India and soon after emigrated to the United States.
The defection of Stalin's daughter caused an uproar. In the eyes of the Soviet Union, this was undoubtedly a great shame, and the kgB chairman at the time, Shemichasne, was dismissed from his post. In the eyes of the United States, this is a godsend, as long as the Soviet princess is controlled, it can attack the Soviet Union in public opinion without fear.
On April 22, when Svetlana arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport in the United States, she was warmly followed by American public opinion. The American media portrayed her as an energetic lady, kind and sincere. At that time, Svetlana had a manuscript called "Twenty Letters to a Friend", and as soon as she arrived in the United States, The largest publisher in the United States, Harper & Rowe Press, bought the publishing rights to the book for $1 million and claimed to release it in multiple languages, and the expected time of listing was set for the eve of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.
The news soon reached the Soviet Union, and Andropov, then chairman of the KGB, immediately took urgent measures. Andropov first obtained the manuscript from Svetlana's friend. Upon closer examination, he found that Svetlana's books, though interesting, were trivialities of life, and that she was only trying to defend her father, Stalin, and blamed Beria on all those dirty things.
Andropov believes that even if the book is published, it will not make any waves, but it must not let the Americans take the lead. So he immediately contacted a West German publisher and preemptively published the Russian edition of Twenty Letters to a Friend. As a result, the English version to be released by the United States was completely unattractive, and the public thought that there would be a lot of unknown Soviet insider information, but it turned out to be only a gimmick of Stalin's daughter. In the end, the book that was originally priced at $10 by Harper and Rowe Fell to 50 cents and no one bought it.
After such a fuss, the Americans also found that the so-called Soviet princess, although she had a distinguished and special status, seemed to know nothing about Soviet politics, let alone the appetizing insiders and scandals, which Svetlana could not have known. As a result, the U.S. government lost interest in Svetlana.
The U.S. government did not want to see the Soviet princess, and the American people no longer pursued her. Soon after, the news that Svetlana had abandoned her children and moved to the United States alone also began to be well known to the American public. This former chaser of liberal democracy has instantly become an irresponsible woman who abandons her family. However, her country, the Soviet Union, no longer welcomed her. In this way, Svetlana spent the rest of her life in the cold eyes of a foreign country.