Stalin's Daughter Lana Peters Dies at 85

[BC]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57332324/josef-stalins-daughter-lana-peters-dies-at-85/

Interesting.. I did not know she defected.

[mendeleyev]

Sorry to hear. She just celebrated her 85 th back in February of 2011.

May God grant her eternal memory.

Here is our report from the Mendeleyev Journal:

US authorities announced today that Lana Peters, known in Russia as Светлана Иосифовна Аллилуева (Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva) and the daughter of Soviet dictator Iosef Stalin, died from colon cancer at a nursing home in her adopted hometown of Richland, Wisconsin.


Stalin's daughter Svetlana, known in the West as Lana Peters.


Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) on 28 February 1926 she received the name of her father but after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, she took the surname of the mother Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967 she fled to India and lived for a time in Switzerland before asking the United States for asylum in 1970. After her arrival in the U.S. she was married and lived under the name Lana Peters.


Her publication of "Twenty Letters to a Friend" (1963), a work about her father and about life in the Kremlin, caused a worldwide sensation. Then in 2008 she appeared in a 45-minute documentary film "Svetlana about Svetlana".


In her childhood Stalin often referred to her as his "beloved" but in his well he left her 30 rubles as an inheritance (roughly about a dollar today).


Stalin called daughter Svetlana, his "beloved."


In the US she became friends of the wife of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright and married one of his friends, architect William Peters. That marriage ended in divorce but they had one daughter.

 
Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva (Peters).


Under the openness of the 1980s she returned to the Soviet Union to be near her other children. Her son her first marriage, Joseph, lived in the Soviet Union until his death (1945-2008). Her first marriage was ordered dissolved by Stalin and later she gave birth to a daughter, Yekaterina, in a 2nd marriage. Both children were baptized in a Moscow church in 1962. However on her return to the Soviet Union both Joseph and Yekaterina rejected her attempts at reconciliation, feeling betrayed.


The Soviet government issued her a nice apartment and private car and driver in Georgia to be near the birthplace of her father. However youngest daughter Olga struggled to learn Russian and both felt restricted with Soviet life so eventually she returned to America in 1986. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev allowed her return to the United States as she held dual citizenship in the USSR and the USA.


Later for a short time in the 1990s she lived in the monastery of St. John in Switzerland and then in a nursing home in England. The USA granted her a small pension making it possible for her to move to a nursing home in Wisconsin to be close to her youngest daughter, Olga.

 
The funeral arrangements are private. She is survived in the USA by her daughter Olga from Portland, Oregon, USA.

[Muzh]

There is a lullaby based on her, right?

[mendeleyev]

I was confused yesterday on one point: were her memoirs published in 1963 or in 1967? CBS (with whom I must reveal a relationship for purposes of transparency) originally had 1963 in the obit files while other sources had 1967.

Clear now: CBS had it right in that she wrote those letters in 1963 but they could not be published in the CCCP and it was in 1967 when she arrived in the USA that they were published.

Note: Regarding  obit files--every major news organization compiles and keeps obiturary files on major personalities around the world. When someone dies, most deaths usually come unexpectedly and at that time it is too late to do extensive research and verification on a person's life. That work is something a foreign journalist is working on all the time, and in fact upon arrival at a new post one of the first things a journalist does is to begin updating the obit files of the important personalities in the country where he/she has been posted. When a person of national interest does something of note or speaks a memorable quote, those things are added to the obit files.

There were several issues at play over the past couple of days: Ms. Peters was no longer considered a person of interest in Russia, and for all intents she had dropped off the radar with frequent moves from England-Switerland-USA, etc, etc. So when her death was announced (almost a week late) there was a scramble to have her files updated. Such a scramble makes it difficult to verify properly.

[mendeleyev]

There is a lullaby based on her, right?

Тихон Николаевич Хренников (Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov) is credited with writing the lullaby. Khrennikov was appointed by Stalin as the leader of the Union of Soviet Composers. Amazingly, he lasted in that position until 1991, ome of the rare survivors of the purges.










There was also a poem by the Jewish poet Sergei Mikhalkov who submitted it for approval and then advised by a member of the writers union to name the poem "Svetlana" after Stalin's daughter. I don't know if the his poem ended up as the lyrics to Khrennikov's lullaby. Perhaps one of our other readers will know?

[OlgaH]

There was also a poem by the Jewish poet Sergei Mikhalkov who submitted it for approval and then advised by a member of the writers union to name the poem "Svetlana" after Stalin's daughter. I don't know if the his poem ended up as the lyrics to Khrennikov's lullaby. Perhaps one of our other readers will know?

According to Sergei Michalkov he wrote the poem "Svetlana" for one of female students of the same year at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute and after... suddenly he was invited to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Khrennikov wrote music for "Svetlana" for screen version of a play "Long long ago" (1941) by Alexander Gladkov who was awarded the State Stalin Prize for the play. The poem "lullaby for Svetlana" was also written by  Gladkov.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussar_Ballad

[OlgaH]

Larisa Golubkina, she played Shurochka Azarova in the Hussar Ballad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larisa_Golubkina
 
 Lyrics by Alexander Gladkov, music by Tikhon Khrennikov
 
 

 
 
 
 

[Ranetka]

Тихон Николаевич Хренников (Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov) is credited with writing the lullaby. Khrennikov was appointed by Stalin as the leader of the Union of Soviet Composers. Amazingly, he lasted in that position until 1991, ome of the rare survivors of the purges.










There was also a poem by the Jewish poet Sergei Mikhalkov who submitted it for approval and then advised by a member of the writers union to name the poem "Svetlana" after Stalin's daughter. I don't know if the his poem ended up as the lyrics to Khrennikov's lullaby. Perhaps one of our other readers will know?

 
Jewish?  Not if this is of any real importance but I always thought they are from old Russian aristocracy and their family is known from 15th century or something? 

[OlgaH]

 
Jewish?  Not if this is of any real importance but I always thought they are from old Russian aristocracy and their family is known from 15th century or something?

According to his own biography their Russian noble Mickalkov Family came from Lithuania.

"…Не стану лукавить и скажу прямо: горжусь своими предками. Документы свидетельствуют: Михалковы — древний русский род. Старинное предание указывает, что «пошел» он из Литвы. Как известно, в свое время западные русские земли оказались под властью Великого княжества Литовского. В XV веке многие русские жители этого края, чтобы избежать притеснений со стороны литовских феодалов и не желая переходить в католичество, растворяться в чужой им этнической среде, терять свою принадлежность к русскому народу, переселялись на Русь — в Москву, Тверь и другие города."

[mendeleyev]

Thank you, Olga!


Ranetka, you may be correct, and if so, thank you.

Being Jewish however would not disqualify someone from being in Russia for generations. While there was plenty of antisemite discrimination to go around, Peter the Great had his Vice-Regent as Пётр Павлович Шафиров, a prominent Jew of Russian nobility.

[OlgaH]

Being Jewish however would not disqualify someone from being in Russia for generations. While there was plenty of antisemite discrimination to go around, Peter the Great had his Vice-Regent as Пётр Павлович Шафиров, a prominent Jew of Russian nobility.

mendeleyev, you are welcome

 To be more correct Peter Pavlovich Shafirov was born in the family of Polish Jewish extraction. 

[mendeleyev]

Thank you, Olga.