Svetlana Alliluyeva, sometimes known as Lana Peters, was Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin’s only daughter and favorite child. She was born in Moscow to his second wife, Nedezhda Alliluyeva. Her father’s reign began shortly after her birth, and he went on to become the Soviet Union’s Premier for decades. Svetlana was a free spirit, cherished and nurtured by her father, who was known to the rest of the world as a ruthless and dangerous tyrant, accused of several mass murders and other dictatorial atrocities. Several biographies have been written on her tumultuous life. She was never satisfied with her life, had various affairs, and married numerous times during her life in order to achieve the inner stability that she lacked.
Childhood and Adolescence
Svetlana Stalin was born on February 28, 1926, in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, to Joseph Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. She spent her childhood missing her parents. She rarely saw her parents and was largely cared for by a nanny, as was customary in high-ranking Russian families. Loneliness would creep up on her and eventually take up residence in her consciousness for the rest of her life. She had no idea what other people thought of her father when she was a child.
She adored her father, as any daughter would, and Stalin adored her as well. When they met, he would lavish her with gifts, and she tried to find some time with her father alone, but he couldn’t because he was the ruler of the Soviet Union. Her mother, on the other hand, was dealing with her own problems. Stalin cared for her as if she were his own child, and he met with her whenever he had the opportunity. He may have been one of the world’s cruelest men to the rest of the world, but to his lonely daughter, he was just a father that she sorely missed.
Svetlana’s mother committed herself when she was six years old. Many stories circulated about her death, including that she was murdered by Stalin personally, but Svetlana was told that she died of appendix issues.
Her mother was depressed and had publicly argued with Stalin several times, therefore her death was assumed to be the consequence of suicide. Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, visited Russia in August 1942 and met Svetlana. He discovered her to be a thing of beauty and a lovely young lady.
Relationships & Adulthood
Svetlana Alliluyeva was deeply devastated by her mother’s death, and as she grew older, her relationship with her father grew increasingly strained. She fell in love with Aleksei Kapler, a director who was more than twice her age, when she was 17 years old. When Stalin learned of the romance, he became enraged and rejected Svetlana’s desire to marry him. Svetlana had no choice but to accept her fate after Stalin imprisoned the director, and she had finally recognized that her father was not a “very kind man.”
She couldn’t bear hating her father for long, and as a naive adolescent, she reasoned that it was for the best. Svetlana found another love when Grigory Morozov, a student at Moscow University, fell in love with her and proposed to her. Svetlana loved him as much, and her father, despite his disapproval of the match, agreed to the marriage, and Svetlana married her boyfriend at the age of 17. The couple divorced after two years of marriage, however they remained friends for a long period after that.
This was an excellent opportunity for Stalin to marry her to a man of his choosing, and he planned her marriage with Yuri Zhdanov, the son of Stalin’s right-hand man. Svetlana married him in 1949 and gave birth to a daughter before filing for divorce.
She, like her mother, was a largely unstable lady. She couldn’t seem to find a man she could truly love, and even though she was married, she had affairs with a number of men.
In 1962, she married her cousin Ivan Svanidze, whom she divorced a year later. Her third marriage, to William Wesley Peters, ended in divorce in 1973 after three years.
However, one of her love encounters that received a lot of attention was with Brajesh Singh, an Indian communist political leader. She met him in Moscow in 1963 and fell in love right away, but they were not allowed to marry. Regardless, they lived together whenever Brajesh visited Russia, and when he died of sickness in 1966, Svetlana traveled to India and resided at his Kalakankar residence.
She was so influenced by the man that she converted to Hinduism despite having been an atheist for most of her life. Svetlana later remarked in a later interview that she always loved and appreciated Brajesh as a spouse, and that she assumed they were married even if they weren’t. It took her a long time to recover from Brajesh’s death, since she was on the edge of having a nervous breakdown, but she handled herself admirably and went on to live in the United States.
Uncertainty in Life
During the 1960s, America and the USSR were not exactly buddies, so when Svetlana applied for US citizenship, it caused a stir in her home country, and she was forced to return to the USSR in 1984 after nearly 15 years in the US. She returned to the United States in 1986 after a second stint in Russia. Most Russian high-ranking officials disapproved, but she didn’t care since she was hell-bent on living the life she desired, not the one that everyone expected of her.
She spent the majority of her latter life going back and forth between the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and the United States, eventually obtaining UK citizenship in the 1990s.
She was also known to be critical of her father’s ways, referring to him as a “moral and spiritual monster.” She finally went on to enjoy a life filled with unforeseen events. She wrote multiple novels, sold well, and made millions of dollars, only to lose them all again, and she continued to have romantic affairs with men in an attempt to fill her psychological void, but it was in vain. She was a difficult woman who was only looked after by her daughter Olga, who accompanied her on the majority of her journeys.
Death & Later Life
Svetlana was a well-known author who wrote a number of popular books, including ‘Twenty Letters to a Friend,’ ‘Only One Year,’ and ‘Faraway Music.’ Despite being the daughter of one of the world’s most powerful men at one point, her writings were packed with personal themes and gave a peek of the gloomy life she had lived.
Despite her poor mental health, she had a long and physically robust life, spending the last two years of her life in Wisconsin when she was diagnosed with colon cancer.
Svetlana drew her final breath on November 22, 2011, in Richland Centre, Wisconsin, at the age of 85, and finally found eternal rest after a life of severe upheaval.
In a biographical account of her life, Rosemary Sullivan said, “She was a very brave woman who could never escape her father’s faults.”
Svetlana Alliluyeva’s Net Worth
Svetlana Alliluyeva’s net worth was estimated to be between $1 and $5 million when she died, according to Wikipedia, Forbes, IMDb, and other online sources. As a Professional Politician, she was able to make money. She is a Russian woman.