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Kremlin Years
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Kremlin Years
During this time Svetlana Aliliuyeva spent her years at the Kremlin. She spent time with her family but mostly spent time with her mother Nadya. Nadya suffered from multiple ailments, had several abortions which resulted in gynaecological problems. She had what was called hereditary depression or borderline personality or what Svetlana called "schizophrenia." Svetlana was the only one who could calm Staling down and Nadya would always have to assert herself infront of him. -
The Birth Of Svetlana Aliluyeva
Svetlana Aliluyeva was born on February 28, 1926. She was the second child of Joseph and Nadezhda Stalin. When she was born she entered an already crowded household with her older brother Vasili and her step brother Yakov. -
Nadya's (Nadezhda) Death
Nadya shot herself in the heart with a little mauser pistol with tiny bullets while she was in the Kremlin apartment. It happened early in the morning and nobody heard the shot-certainly not the children and none of the servants. Back then the guard stood outside the gate and if Stalin -
Model School No.25
This school is where the big shot children goes. Svetlana was put in this school when she was only nine years old. It was not an ordinary school and it was considered to be one of the best in the country's. When the school got more money to renovate and upgrade it was meant to be better than the american schools. The school had photography, airplane and automobile modeling, electrotechnology, parachute jumping etc. Everything in this school had standards and cleanliness up to American schools. -
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Mass Arrest Pt1
Sergei Kirov was a secretary of the Leningrad party organization and was assassinated in the corridor of his office the Smolny institute. His assassination provided a necessary and important beginning to the Great terror. In 1935-1936 the mass arrest were underway and a collective hysteria took over. At the height of the Great terror, during the seventeen months in 1937-1938 more than 1.7 million people were arrested, 700,000 were shot and the other 300,000-400,000 were sent to exile in Siberia -
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Mass Arrest Pt2
By 1938, as the result of the repression carried out eh NKVD, the Gulag prison population has gone up by 2 million. As an 11 year old, Svetlana could not understand what was happening, but she felt the impact of the climate of terror when she returned from her vacation in Sochi at the end of the summer in 1937. In the Svetlana's side of the family, most of them were taken away and sent into prisons or sent into exile. -
Mass Arrest
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Breaking the Nonaggression
World War II came suddenly, though not without warning to the Soviet Union. At 4:00 am., Stalin, asleep on his couch was awakened by a phone call from his chief of staff informing him that German planes were bombing Kiev, Vilnius, Sebastopol, Odessa, and other cities. A total of 147 German divisions had crossed the border. In 1939 Hitler and Stalin signed a nonaggression and the USSR could not provoke a war against the Germans. Hitler had outmaneuvered Stalin. -
Life In The Soviet Union After Stalin
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Life in The Soviet Union After Stalin Pt1
After Stalin' s death, people from the Gulag began to emerge and it was like many people who have comeback have managed to survive somehow. As more people got out from the Gulag, Svetlana's cousins, aunts and family have came back from their life in prison. Some of her family members can barely talk because they have not talked for years since they have been put in solitary confinement up to ten years. -
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Life In the Soviet Union After Stalin Pt2
Most of Svetlana's family member came back at different times and some of them just got put into the psych ward for being stuck in solitary confinement for six years. After Stalin's death Svetlana felt as if his ghost wan't only stuck to her but to the whole country. Svetlana couldn't handle the time being spent here so she tried to leave the country several times but it resulting in no country taking her in because she is Stalin's daughter. -
Defection From The Soviet Union Pt3
South Africa was the only country willing to take her in, but given its history of apartheid, Svetlana refused to consider it. Svetlana told Rayle that her had been an impulsive act taken in rage and frustration. -
Defection From the Soviet Union Pt1
As Bob Rayle and Svetlana stepped off the Qantas flight in Rome at six a.m. on March 7, Rayle was convinced that this was just a stopover and they would proceed immediately to the United States. The deputy chief of his office in Rome met them in the arrival gate with the bad news. They refused to allow Svetlana to proceed to the United Staes. When Admiral Henke informed Fanfani that morning when Svetlana had landed in Italy, Fanfani exploded. -
Defection From The Soviet Union Pt2
Fanfani wanted them out of the country immediately and remove all the evidence that they are actually in the country. Admiral Henke said that the international Transit at the airport in Rome is extended to include the international apartment where they are temporarily housed, Svetlana and Rayle would never be legally be in Italy. During the next few days, the state department contacted the governments of Australia and New Zealand, but both refused Svetlana to enter. -
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Life In America Pt2
Svetlana has came to the United States to seek for self-expression so long denied her in her own country. Greenbaum had scheduled Svetlana's first press conference for April 26. The day before her conference Greenbaum rehearsed her on likely questions and reported to George Kennan that he was "optimistic about Svetlana's conduct in a press conference." He asked her about the more sensitive aspects about her life. She spoke about her children and they were not guilty and shouldn't be punished. -
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Life In America Pt1
On Friday, April 21, Svetlana and Schwartz, using their accused names managed to slip into the Swissair DC-8 jet bound for New York. Her presence wasn't noticed onboard until an hour after takeoff. When the plane arrived in the airport, six representatives of the Fidelity Detective Bureau were on tarmac to greet her. Svetlana's arrival was a sensation, there were more people waiting to greet her than there had been for the Beatles in 1964. -
20 Letters To A Friend Pt1
This book that Svetlana wrote was her second book. She wrote this book on how her life in Russia went. She explained how the death of Stalin affected her life and included a picture of him with a caption of "monster." Over the next few days, for twelve issues, she read the distressing subtitles: "How My Mother Killed Herself," "My Love Affair with Kepler," "Two Marriages En in Failure," etc. In late September she moved to the home of her publisher in Bedford Village. -
20 Letters To A Friend Pt2
Bedford village is where Svetlana got her first copy of Twenty Letters To A Friend. The book she wrote was a consolation after the serialization and it was considered to be pristine. She had ended the book with an epilogue addressing that future generations would look back at the country's history with the feelings of pain, contrition and bewilderment. -
Life In America
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Back To The USSR
Svetlana and Olga left England, slipping away unnoticed their flight to the USSR was unpredictable. Svetlana constructed a fantasy about how things would go when she sees her family. Svetlana had came back to the USSR at a shaky moment. The soviet population was still divided because of Stalin Some people remembered the purges and the price paid with human life. Svetlana's return was and public contrition was invaluable to the party
