Svetlana Alliluyeva's Flight to the West / Stalin's Daughter Lana Peters

[jone]

On March 9th, 1967, Svetlana Alliluyeva —  Joseph Stalin’s only daughter — walked into the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and requested political asylum. No one knew she was even in India. (She had traveled there in 1966 in order to place the ashes of her boyfriend, an Indian Communist she had met in Moscow, in the Ganges; she then stayed at his family’s home.) After several countries refused to allow her to stay permanently, she finally was allowed to come to the U.S. Upon her arrival in New York in April, she held a press conference in which she denounced her father’s regime and the USSR. She later lectured and wrote at Princeton before moving to Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona at the behest of Frank Lloyd Wright’s widow. She died in 2011. Ambassador Chester Bowles served as Governor of Connecticut and Ambassador to India under Truman and again under Kennedy.

Here is the oral history of the Ambassador who enabled her flight to freedom, as transcribed in the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training:

http://adst.org/2013/02/the-day-stalins-daughter-asked-for-asylum-in-the-u-s/

I was always confused of Ms. Peter's motives from coming to the US or of refuting Stalin's Russia.  But I am interested in her flight to the West and therefore, the above article sheds some light on the actual defection.

It's a good short read.

-j

[mendeleyev]

Excellent, jone.