Svetlana Stalina’s two brothers both died before her: the first in a Nazi concentration camp, and the second from alcoholism at the age of 40. With her 13-year old daughter from the marriage to William Peters, she abruptly moved to Moscow denouncing the west asking to be taken back. On this day in 1967 she entered the U.S. embassy in New Delhi in order to defect to the USA. She fell in love with an Indian communist, Brajesh Singh, who was on a visit to Moscow.
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Settled in the U.S., Svetlana married for the final time, to William Wesley Peters, who had been chief apprentice to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
1967: Stalin’s Daughter Defects to the USA. The only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has died in the US, aged 85.
When the dictator’s daughter defects, causing an uproar, she becomes a US citizen and media star, but still can't escape her father’s bloody shadow.
It was on a trip to India with his Ashes that Svetlana Alliluyeva, now with her mother’s last name, decided to defect to the U.S.On this day, April 21, in 1967 Svetlana Alliluyeva walked in to the American embassy in New Delhi and asked for asylum.
Svetlana Alliluyeva was born on 28 February 1926. His second wife was called Nadezhda Alliluyeva and he married her after the revolution. They became very close, but he soon died from his disease. She married an American and took the name Lana Peters (Lana is short for Svetlana, while Peters was her husband’s surname). Stalin’s daughter defects to U.S. by gary_satanovsky.
That marriage lasted two years before the couple separated. Her name was not as remarkable as that of her father, the architect of the Soviet empire and the man who brutally snuffed out countless lives to build it, but her life was in every way as remarkable. Documentary. His first wife died early, aged only 22, some 10 years before the October Revolution.
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Yet even then she could not find happiness. As her mother was interested in pursuing a professional career, a nanny, Alexandra Bychokova, was hired to look after Alliluyeva and her older brother Vasily (born 1921). There Svetlana denounced her father Stalin and the Soviet government. 6. STARRING. Alliluyeva and Bychokova became quite close, and remained friends for 30 years, until Bychokova died in 1956. Story Highlights. Alliluyeva changed her name to Lana Peters after her defection and marriage to William Wesley Peters in 1970. 54 min. Lana Peters, as she was now known, began reaching out to her children in Russia. “I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia” she said.
Lana Peters, the only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, dies of colon cancer at a care home in the US state of Wisconsin, aged 85.
Jobst Knigge.
Joseph Stalin. Image caption Svetlana was Josef Stalin's only daughter .
In an interesting coincidence, Lenin’s wife was also called Nadezhda. She was allowed to take his ashes to his native India, so that it can be thrown into the Ganges.And indeed, the Americans granted her political asylum and immediately transferred her to the USA (through Europe).