Stalin was called a loving father during his lifetime, and after his death he suffered many criticisms, including whether he could be called a loving father of the Soviet Union. The debate on this issue is fierce, but there is one thing that everyone agrees with about the term "loving father". Stalin was by no means a "loving father" before his sons and daughters.
His only daughter, Svetlana, tried to rebel against him several times through marriage, and the father-daughter conflict was fraught, and after his death, her daughter defected to the United States, publicly published a book diss stalinist Soviet Union, and returned to the motherland after Andropov took charge of the Soviet Union. But less than a year later she ran away again.
In order to escape the shadow of her father, Svetlana defected to the motherland twice, why did Stalin's education fail, and what was the final outcome of Svetlana?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="51" > Stalin spoiled his daughter</h1>
On February 28, 1926, Stalin's second wife, Aliluyeva, gave birth to a daughter. Stalin already had two sons, the eldest son Yakov was the son of his wife, and the second son Vasily was born five years ago. At this time, Stalin was nearly fifty years old, and of course his daughter was so happy that he could not close his mouth. He gave his daughter a beautiful allegory name— Svetlana — which means "light and shadow."
At that time, the Soviet Union was still not long after its establishment, and the people still liked to use the term "October Revolution" to name their children, just as our country loved to use "founding the country" and "National Day". The poetic name Svetlana quickly spread among the people, and with her birth, the Soviet Union produced thousands of more "Svetlanas" overnight.
Svetlana's special status in the hearts of the Soviets can also be seen. Although she does not have the title of princess, as the daughter of the supreme leader, she has been ridiculed as the "Red Princess".
It's no wonder that outsiders are making such jokes. Stalin was indeed an out-and-out daughter slave. He and his wife regarded Svetlana as a jewel in the palm of their hand, and it was difficult to see his stern side outside in front of their daughter. He would even play a special family with his daughter, with Svetlana playing the role of "hostess" and himself as "first secretary", and Svetlana as the "hostess" could give orders to Stalin at will, and Stalin had to complete her orders.
Young Svetlana didn't understand what it meant to send Stalin, but the game, spearheaded by Stalin, made the little girl feel like she was in control, even her father. But we all know that Stalin was actually a very controlling man, and his indulgence to his daughter was only because of pampering.
Perhaps it was then that the seeds of tragedy were sown.
In 1932, Svetlana's mother, Nadezhda, shot herself in her room after a dinner party.
Stalin's feelings with Nadezhda were harmonious, and he could not figure out why his wife was looking for death. He conceals the true cause of his wife's death from Svetlana, telling her that Nadezhda died of illness.
Little Svetlana had no doubts. With only her father left in the family, she became more dependent on Stalin, who responded to her needs. He would accompany his daughter to watch American movies, and when he was away on business, he would spend energy writing letters to his daughter in neat prints.
Svetlana grew up in such an environment. During her childhood, she was well protected, ignorant of the misfortunes of her family and the hardships of the country.
Because of this, when she first learned the truth of these things, Svetlana felt that the sky had fallen.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="49" > Svetlana accidentally learned the truth and began to rebel against Stalin's authority</h1>
In 1941, at the age of 15, Svetlana was flipping through a foreign magazine when she found an article documenting the true cause of her mother's death. Svetlana couldn't believe it, and after asking the people around her for confirmation, she couldn't believe that she had been protected by lies. To Svetlana's confusion, the official Soviet narrative was that Nadezhda was mentally ill, but foreign newspapers described her as committing suicide because she could not stand Stalin's dictatorship. In Svetlana's impression, her mother was a peaceful woman, and she had nothing to do with mental illness. Her faith in her father's authority was greatly shaken.
In her memoirs, she described her mood this way: "It destroyed my absolute obedience to every word of my father. ”
She was no longer as dependent on her father as before, but wanted to live a life different from Stalin's by her own will.
At the same time, Stalin still treated his adolescent daughter as before, wanting to interfere in her every decision, and even had strict requirements for her dress, forbidding her to wear short sleeves and skirts. Maybe you think, isn't that all fathers like this, what father would like his daughter to wear revealing clothes?
The following examples illustrate Stalin's desire to control beyond borders. When Svetlana attended the Young Pioneers summer camp, she took a picture in a short skirt, which she sent to Stalin, which was nothing more than a little vanity of the adolescent girl's appearance. But Stalin was furious, drawing a large cross with a red pen on the photograph, and then criticizing on the back: "Whore! ”
The photograph was sent back to his daughter by him, and one can imagine how sad Svetlana was when she received it.
It was also in this year that the Soviet Union entered World War II. The following winter, Stalin, who was fretting about the war, suddenly received a report that Svetlana and the married film director Alexei were in love. Stalin, of course, could not tolerate this deviant relationship, and he intervened very strongly, ordering Svetlana and Alexei to break up immediately. In anger, he even slapped his daughter twice, scolding her: "Now that there is a war, what are you thinking!" In front of Svetlana, he tore up Alexei's love letters, photographs, and manuscripts. This quarrel was undoubtedly the beginning of the breakdown of their relationship. Soon after, Alexei was exiled to the Arctic Circle on charges of "British espionage."
The relationship between father and daughter deteriorated rapidly within a few years.
But Svetlana soon realized that Stalin's authority as the supreme ruler of the country could not be challenged, even if she was his daughter.
In 1943, Stalin's eldest son, Yakov, was captured by the German Nazis, and Stalin refused their demand to exchange hostages. In April, the Soviet Union received news that Yakov was dead. The cause of Yaakov's death has always been a mystery, some say he was tortured by the Germans and some say he thought he was abandoned and committed suicide in despair. Yakov's relationship with Stalin was also not harmonious, and he felt more affection from his stepmother than his biological father. After Nadezhda's death, Yakov lived independently early.
Yakov's death shook Svetlana once again.
In this year, Svetlana graduated from secondary school, and she wanted to apply for the literature department of Moscow University according to her preferences, but Stalin once again stopped her, and he commented in front of his daughter that literary scholars are unlearned and unskilled, and he did not allow her daughter to become such a person.
Svetlana reluctantly succumbed and chose the Department of History according to Stalin's will.
After being swayed by Stalin's life choices again and again, Svetlana fell into antagonism with her father. She always wanted to do something to rebel against Stalin.
The chip she chose was marriage. Shortly after entering the university, the 18-year-old Svetlana married a college classmate, Morozov. Morozov was Jewish, and in Stalin's eyes this marriage was as ridiculous as the previous affair.
He refused to meet with Morozov. This unblessed marriage did not last long, and Svetlana hastily divorced Morozov after giving birth to a boy.
A few years later, Stalin arranged for Svetlana to meet with his right-hand man's son, Yuri Zhdanov, and tried to match the two. This time Svetlana did not rebel against him, but she did not actually like Yuri, and Yuri was asked by the family to marry.
The two had no emotional basis, and they reunited less and more, and in less than three years, Svetlana's second marriage ended in a rupture.
After one failed love after another, Svetlana became dependent on Stalin again. She often wrote to Stalin and told him her thoughts.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > Stalin's death and Svetlana defected to the United States</h1>
But this change came too late, and in 1953 Stalin died, and Khrushchev came to power and began to liquidate Stalinism.
Svetlana was mentally shocked by this upheaval. The various stories revealed were indictments of Stalin's despotism and impersonality, but thinking back to Stalin in her family, Svetlana had to admit that "this seems to be true..."
For the next decade, Stalin's daughter ceased to be an aura, but a mental torture. Svetlana was constantly exposed to the strange eyes of those around her, and the Soviet high command was closely monitoring her. Svetlana changed her last name to her mother's name. She again had the idea of resisting, but this time again against the Soviet Union.
In 1963, Svetlana, who had already given birth to a son and a daughter, fell in love with Singh, an Indian Communist, and wanted to marry him. The marriage was opposed by the Soviet leadership, the two did not succeed, and Singh died of illness the following year.
A grieving Svetlana wrote to Bonezhilev, asking him to agree to go to India and bring Singh's ashes back to his hometown. She was finally allowed to leave the Soviet Union. After sprinkling her lover's ashes on the Ganges, Svetlana turned and walked into the U.S. Embassy in India, identifying them and applying for political asylum.
The news of Stalin's daughter's defection to the Soviet Union caused a sensation in the Western world, and she was soon taken to the United States. With the encouragement of the American side, she decided to publish her own letters to friends, which recorded some of her criticisms of her father and the Soviet Union. In 1969, she published another book documenting her life during the year of her escape. These two books were heavily publicized by the Western world as weapons against the Soviet Union.
Svetlana began to feel that such a life was no different from that in the Soviet Union. She still can't get rid of her father's shadow, and everyone wants to use her origins to make a fuss.
She experienced yet another failed marriage in the United States. In 1984, she applied to return to the Soviet Union. At this time, the ruler of the Soviet Union was Andropov, who was tolerant of Svetlana and warmly accepted her.
Svetlana's return was seen as a victory for the Soviet bloc. However, after the death of the short-lived Andropov, Svetlana was once again invisibly excluded. In 1985, she decided to leave the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev did not stop her.
She changed her name and lived a life of seclusion after returning to the United States. In 2011, Svetlana died at the age of 85.
However, in her opinion, the high life expectancy is not lucky, and before she died, she said: My life is too heavy. All her life, she was seen as the daughter of Stalin, and her fate kept going up and down. She once lamented that the United States or the Soviet Union are the same. She left the Soviet Union twice, wandered in the West, and perhaps in the end she could not find a place that could reassure her.
Do you think Svetlana made the right choice to flee the SOVIET UNION?
Leave your comments now. If you like the content of this issue, remember to pay attention to likes and retweets. We'll see you next time.