Svetlana Alliluyeva: 79 today

[Fenris]

Svetlana Alliluyeva was once known as Svetlana Josifovna Stalina, the youngest child and only daughter of Josif Stalin and Nadya Alliluyeva. Quite an interesting life she has led. She's currently in a nursing home in Wisconsin.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alliluyeva">Wikipedia (a dubious source, yes, but useful at times):

Svetlana fell in love at age 16 with a Jewish filmmaker, Alexei Kapler. Stalin vehemently disapproved of the romance, and found a pretense to sentence Kapler to ten years in the labor camp of Vorkuta in Siberia.

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After her father's death in 1953, Svetlana adopted her mother's maiden name and worked as a teacher and translator in Moscow. In 1963 she met an Indian communist visiting Moscow, Brajesh Singh. He returned to Moscow in 1965, to work as a translator, but they were not allowed to marry. Singh died in 1966 and Svetlana was allowed to travel to India to take his ashes back, for his family to pour them into the Ganges. She stayed there for two months and became immersed in local customs.

On March 6, 1967, after first having visited the Soviet embassy in New Delhi, Alliluyeva went to the U.S. embassy and formally petitioned Ambassador Chester Bowles for political asylum. This was granted; however, owing to concerns that the Indian government might suffer from possible ill feeling from the Soviet Union, it was arranged for her to leave India immediately for Switzerland, via Rome. She stayed in Switzerland for 6 weeks before proceeding to the United States.

Upon her arrival in April 1967, Alliluyeva gave a press conference denouncing her father's regime and the Soviet government. Her intention to publish her autobiographical Twenty Letters To A Friend on the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet revolution caused a furor in the USSR, and the government there threatened to release an unauthorized version; the publication in the west was therefore moved to an earlier date, and that particular diplomatic problem defused.

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[Igel]

1. S dnem rozhdeniya, Sveta.

Her "Only one year" (Tol'ko odin god) was one of the first books I read in Russian that wasn't required for class.

Making it, indeed, one of the first books I ever read in Russian. I guess Andrei Amal'rik's "Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?" was the first. But it's a little thing.

[flamingyouth]

2. Happy Birthday, Svetlana!

:party:

So, how's the book coming? :hi:

[Fenris]

3. The war is going poorly for Josif Vissarionovich

Bad commanders and bad policies for supposed "deserters" and "fear-mongers" in the ranks.