Svetlana Alliluyeva

Svetlana Alliluyeva

Birth : 1926-02-28, Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

Death : 2011-11-22

History

Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva, later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife. In 1967, she caused an international furore when she defected and became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Upon her arrival in New York City in April 1967, she gave a press conference denouncing her father's legacy and the Soviet government. Svetlana Alliluyeva became the talk of the town and was introduced into the New York hip crowd by Mary Hayward Weir, Jerzy Kosinski and Anita Goldstein among other. In 1984, she returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship returned.

Profile

Svetlana Alliluyeva

Movies

Stalin's Daughter
Self
A shock wave started as Stalin's daughter Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva fled to the West. During her childhood, she remained at the center of power and was her father's favorite child. However, her life was overshadowed by death and violence. Her mother and brother died, family members were murdered, and her partner was exiled by Stalin. The Iron Curtain was an obstacle in her family dream. This documentary shows for the first time interviews with friends and relatives, exclusive photos and documentation, as well as the last and never broadcast interview with Alliloejeva.
Svetlana About Svetlana
Writer
Svetlana Parshina was deeply moved by her childhood reading of Twenty Letters to a Friend by Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin's daughter. Years later, learning that the now 82-year-old was living incognito in a Madison, Wisconsin retirement home, Parshina phones and requests an interview. After repeated denials, and only after insisting upon certain conditions, the now-82-year-old Alliluyeva finally consents to a rare filmed interview in which she discusses her education, marriages, her children, the development of her own humanistic philosophy, her CIA-assisted defection to the U.S., and her skeptical views on the competing Cold War ideologies. In more intimate moments, she discusses her childhood, her nanny, the suicide of her mother, her brothers Vasily and Yakov (who died in a Nazi concentration camp) and, of course, her famous father, who most Soviets saw as "a living God."
Svetlana About Svetlana
Stalin's daughter
Svetlana Parshina was deeply moved by her childhood reading of Twenty Letters to a Friend by Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin's daughter. Years later, learning that the now 82-year-old was living incognito in a Madison, Wisconsin retirement home, Parshina phones and requests an interview. After repeated denials, and only after insisting upon certain conditions, the now-82-year-old Alliluyeva finally consents to a rare filmed interview in which she discusses her education, marriages, her children, the development of her own humanistic philosophy, her CIA-assisted defection to the U.S., and her skeptical views on the competing Cold War ideologies. In more intimate moments, she discusses her childhood, her nanny, the suicide of her mother, her brothers Vasily and Yakov (who died in a Nazi concentration camp) and, of course, her famous father, who most Soviets saw as "a living God."