People of the Revolution and the USSR

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People of the Soviet Union

The old regime and its challengers1905–1917 1 People of the Stalin era1929–1953 1 The last generation1985–1991 1

People of the wider world

The age of the Internationals and empires1820–1917 3 The revolutionary wave and the world war1917–1945 32 The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 56 Scholars of this history1892–현재 62
Citizenship: United States People of the Stalin era 1929–1953 Clear all

Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva

Светлана Иосифовна Аллилуева
United States Russian 1926–2011 ○ Colon cancer

Stalin's only daughter and the Kremlin's first insider witness to defect to the West

In a 2010 interview she said of her father: "He broke my life" — when he refused to let her study literature and when he had Aleksei Kapler arrested.

The only daughter of Joseph Stalin, she defected to the United States via India in 1967 and caused an international sensation with the first insider memoir of Kremlin life. Twenty Letters to a Friend (1967) exposed her father's private character and the world of the Soviet ruling elite; she returned to the USSR in 1984, left again in 1986, and spent her life unable to escape Stalin's shadow.

Career timeline
  • 1949Graduated History Faculty, Moscow State University
  • 1954Awarded Candidate of Philological Sciences degree
  • 1956–1967Researcher and translator, Institute of World Literature
  • 1967Defected to the US via India; published Twenty Letters to a Friend
  • 1978Naturalized US citizen as Lana Peters
  • 1984–1986Returned to the USSR, then left again for the United States