From Moscow to Princeton

‘I invited her home for lunch, and she accepted readily.’ An Indian recalls hosting Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva in the U.S.

August 05, 2017 04:57 pm | Updated 04:57 pm IST

Svetlana with Joseph Stalin in 1935

Svetlana with Joseph Stalin in 1935

It is exactly 50 years since Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva made international news by defecting from Russia to the U.S. I happened to be spending a year in the U.S. at the same time, and got to meet her, and those extraordinary memories are still fresh in my mind.

This was 1967-68, the height of the Cold War between the world’s two superpowers. Russian dictator Stalin’s name spelt terror worldwide; he had sent hundreds of people, including some of his close relatives, party colleagues and friends, into exile or had them eliminated for harbouring what he decided were ‘unpatriotic’ ideas. His wife had committed suicide, and his son was among those ‘punished’. Svetlana’s was a difficult childhood and adolescence, her every move and activity dictated by her despotic father and the ‘party bosses’ (who towed his line in the minutest moves including who she made friends with, where she went, how she lived). Under the circumstances, for Svetlana to seek asylum in the U.S., the ‘enemy’ country, of all places, was an incredible move, and so when, soon after my arrival in Princeton, a friend phoned to say that she was taking me out to lunch ‘to meet Svetlana’, I was agog with excitement.

Lunch with Svetlana

Gaby, our hostess, picked me up, along with a visiting Japanese professor’s wife and Svetlana, and we drove to a quiet, small restaurant on the outskirts of the town. Introductions were made and we started chatting. She had come to the U.S. from India, where she had gone to immerse the ashes of her late husband Brijesh Singh (nephew of politician Dinesh Singh, who was a cabinet minister with Indira Gandhi). After immersing the ashes in Kalakankar, the native place of the Singh family on the banks of the Ganga, she returned to Delhi a day before she was to return to Moscow and, on a daring impulse, sought asylum in the American embassy as she did not want to return to her shackled life in Russia. This was an incredible ‘scoop’ for the Americans, getting not just any Russian but Stalin’s daughter, no less, to ask for U.S. assistance, and of course they facilitated the defection, and she settled down in Princeton, a quiet, wooded small town away from the floodlights of New York and Washington, D.C.

Gaby became a friend; George Kennan, another Princeton resident and an expert on Soviet matters, became another friend, and Gaby was helping Svetlana widen her circle of acquaintances, and so here we were. I, from India, Gaby decided, would interest Svetlana, given her close associations with my country.

A 1969 picture shows Svetlana on the right, with Gaby and a Japanese friend.

A 1969 picture shows Svetlana on the right, with Gaby and a Japanese friend.

Loving it spicy

I invited her home for lunch, and she accepted readily. I was not sure what to cook, and had put together a bland meal of rice, dal, vegetables, yoghurt, and kheer, taking care to warn foreigner guests as usual about hot spicy dishes, but Svetlana immediately put me at ease by saying, “Oh , aachaar , I know it is hot, but I love it,” and helped herself to a generous spoonful of red chilli pickle. It was a pleasant, relaxed afternoon. We discussed Indian politics and customs, her interactions with Brijesh Singh’s relatives during her stay at Kalakankar, and about her love for the Ganga.

We continued to correspond after my return to India. She sent me a copy of her book Only One Year , which describes her growing up in Moscow as Stalin’s daughter.

Life in the U.S., however, was a stressful and unhappy one for someone who was independent and academically oriented. It explained the haunted look she wore, especially in the months after she defected to the U.S. The media hounded her constantly, they snooped and followed her everywhere. She wanted to be left alone, but had to face interviews and press conferences, give statements—all of which she hated. Svetlana had left behind her two children in Russia. There was no escaping the political perspectives the media constantly added to everything she said, even trying to get her son to call her with messages that she knew reflected the leadership’s stance rather than her son’s.

She was, in those months, one of the saddest human beings. She craved friendship, a normal life, but that was difficult if one was Stalin’s daughter. What kind of mother are you, she was chided, leaving behind a daughter and son to fend for themselves?

Moscow no more

It was clear that she could never go back to Moscow—she did not want to—and equally clear that her children would never be allowed to join her in the U.S. “I now enjoy being alive,” she said, of her life after defection. “It is as if I have stepped out of an underground tunnel into cool fresh air.”

Her brother Jacob, she recalled, died by throwing himself on an electrified barbed wire because Stalin called him a ‘traitor’ for having been captured during the war.

Yet, Stalin ‘loved’ his children in his own way, as Svetlana conceded! Here is matter for research into the psychological workings of ‘great political minds’.

She was six when her mother killed herself. The suicide was also a kind of protest against Stalin’s dictatorial style, which she could not accept. Svetlana fell in love at 17, only to see her boyfriend arrested on her father’s orders and sent to a concentration camp on charges of ‘spying’, because her friendship enraged her father (although it was ‘an innocent enough romance’ as she put it. Two aunts were likewise arrested, one for ‘marrying a Jew’). Her mother’s sister went mad in prison. One aunt spent six years in solitary confinement on false charges. Her marriage with Brijesh Singh was likewise ‘disapproved of’, but here was a strong woman who mustered the courage to defy the mighty Soviet state and do what she wanted. She wanted to be “an ordinary citizen, not government property”, as she put it. That was a tall order for Stalin’s daughter.

Brijesh wanted to die in India but passed away in Russia after a prolonged illness. Through him, Svetlana introduced herself to Indian culture, perspectives and history. She passed away in the U.S. in 2011.

An award-winning writer and trained classical vocalist, the author turned to journalism for therapy when she couldn’t pursue her music.

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