Stalin's Daughter (80 page)

In 2010, the journalist David Jones, who had interviewed her in remote Cornwall fourteen years before, tracked her down again to Richland Center, where, as he wrote, “Lana Peters, or Svetlana Stalin, as she was known before marriage removed the stain of her surname,” was “hiding.” Jones was shocked by the change in her appearance. Bent with scoliosis and wearing
a gray tracksuit and pink blouse, she looked “every inch the American retiree.” When he remarked on this, she asked, “Why not?” She’d been in America so long, she felt American. She liked hamburgers, American films, and speaking English. He wanted to know if she’d forgiven her father, a question that sparked “her legendary temper.” “I don’t forgive anything or anybody! If he could kill so many people, including my uncles and auntie, I will never forgive him. Never! … He broke my life. I want to explain to you, he broke my life!”
³³
This would turn out to be her last interview.

Yet Olga believed that somehow, in the last two years of her life, her mother reached an unexpected peace. “She suddenly took things in stride…. When things happened that, before, would have knocked her for six, she would be able to laugh herself out of anger.” Olga would say to herself,
Who are you and what have you done with my mother?
“We just got back our really joyous happy days. It was fun.”
³⁴

Perhaps one of the things that consoled Svetlana was that a new friend, the author Nicholas Thompson, had been kind enough to contact the Washington copyright office regarding
Twenty Letters to a Friend
, and secured the copyright of her book under her own name. Priscilla Johnson McMillan also generously allowed her rights to the English translation to revert to Svetlana.
³⁵
She could now leave her book to her daughter.

Svetlana seemed to have reached the kind of resolution she’d written about to her friend Linda Kelly: “I came to the conclusion that the most important thing in life is NOT ‘Achievements,’ but that humble, yet very difficult—ability to remain myself.”
³⁶

In 2011 Svetlana was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She wrote to Mary Burkett that May: “I’m falling apart.”
³⁷
And to Philippa Hill she said, “I am slowly preparing to leave this world.”
³⁸
She often talked with Kathy Rossing about death.
To console her, Kathy told her about her own brother’s dying. He’d been sent home from the hospital. She’d come into his room—it was just twenty-four hours before he died—and he had said to her, “Shush. Mother’s here to get me.” She told Svetlana, “You’re going to see all those people who have passed before you, your nanny, your mom, and your grandma,” but Svetlana just looked at her and said, “What about the people I don’t want to see?” Kathy could tell from the look on her face whom she meant. “I didn’t know how to answer her…. Certainly I think she was fearful of death for a while, but then, I don’t know how, she resolved it within herself, and she seemed to be OK with going.”

Svetlana wanted to be cremated and initially asked Kathy to ensure that her ashes were spread at Orion Boat Landing on the Wisconsin River. But then she said, “We can’t do that because when people find out my ashes are in there, they’ll think I polluted their river.” No matter how much Kathy reassured her that this could be done in secret—“We have a canoe. No one needs to know”—Svetlana remained adamant. Someone would find out. She also prepared a legal document. Mr. Stafford at the funeral home had instructions to collect her body at the hospital, take it immediately to the crematorium, and get her ashes to Olga—“done and shipped before anyone had a chance to do anything else with them.”
³⁹

She gave Kathy a photograph that she wanted displayed at her memorial service. Kathy found it absolutely hilarious. It was an image of a wide and empty sea under a full moon, broken only by a whale’s tail breaching the surface and about to fall back down. Svetlana had written on the back: “Good-bye to you all from your Fish. (put the date: ____).”
⁴⁰

In November, Svetlana took a sudden turn for the worse and was transported to the Pine Valley hospital. She specifically instructed the hospital staff not to call Olga. She didn’t want her
daughter to see her dead body. She had seen her own mother’s corpse and had backed away in terror on that long-ago morning in the GUM building in Moscow. Ever after, she carried that last image of her mother in her mind. Kathy believed Svetlana wanted to spare her daughter. “I don’t think she realized the hurt it would cause her by shutting her out when she would have wanted to be the one there.” The doctors finally persuaded Svetlana to call Olga. They said, “Your daughter deserves to know.”

Her decline had been so sudden that Olga didn’t know her mother was dying. She’d just spent the previous month with her, and they’d talked of Olga’s coming back for Christmas. Olga immediately booked a flight. When she arrived too late, the doctors told her it wouldn’t have mattered. They had instructions not to admit her to her mother’s hospital room. Olga was angry with her mother and hurt—her mother was still protecting her after all these years. She’d missed her father’s dying; she had wanted to be there for her mother.

Kathy Rossing was with Svetlana at the end. Svetlana couldn’t speak but knew Kathy was there. She squeezed Kathy’s hand and stared at her with a strange look in her eyes. Kathy wrapped Svetlana’s hand around the scapular medal she always wore, yet it seemed “she wasn’t ready to go.” Kathy asked a nurse to call a local clergyman. When he came, he gave Svetlana words of peace to comfort her, and “it wasn’t but a matter of minutes and then she was gone. I think it was more than a coincidence. Once he said some words over her, she passed peacefully.”
⁴¹
Unlike her father to the end, she didn’t struggle. “Her breathing just got shallower and shallower.” How difficult it is to
perform
one’s death. She did it gracefully.

Svetlana died on November 22, 2011, in the month of misery at the age of eighty-five, as she had predicted she would,
and a little more than two weeks after the anniversary of her own mother’s death seventy-nine years earlier.

She left her last words for her daughter in a typed letter. She spoke as if she were writing not before her death, but after it.

I am always with you, in loving ways. Remember that. We, who are now without bodily traits, only spirits, we love you on Earth nevertheless. Therefore, do not cry about us. Never, never cry about us. Because your cries only disturb us here. We cannot do anything about it. But we, the spirits now, always love you. We can feel sometimes….
You
can feel sometimes … a warm wind or breath touching your skin. That is us. That
are
us. I know that, since I am now, too, only a spirit, only a soul …
only
? Oh, we can do a lot from here. We can protect you from a disaster, we can embrace you, there … like a warm cocoon. We can heal all your self-inflicted troubles because from here, high above Earth, we can see very well. And we can always help you out. But never, never cry about us, rather, think about us always with a smile. We love you forever and ever. I say
WE
… because we are many here, loving souls. Even my own so-perplexed mother; she finally got rid of those confusing earthly worries, and here she is a beautiful soul like she had been, indeed. We all love you. Do not cry about us. We love you. Your Mom. Sorry for bad typing, alas, I did not improve even here!
⁴²

Olga collected her mother’s ashes and scattered them in the Pacific Ocean. She had lost the person who loved her most deeply, and her mourning would be long.

*
On the eve of the 2000 presidential elections in Russia, Borovik died in a plane crash just before the publication of his investigation into an apartment bombing in Moscow and his article about Vladimir Putin’s childhood.

Acknowledgments

W
riting
Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
presented challenges that were both exciting and daunting. I would like to thank those who helped me on a journey that took me from Toronto to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tbilisi, Gori, London, the Lake District, Washington, Princeton, New York, Portland, and elsewhere, during which I met remarkable people.

First and foremost I would like to thank Svetlana Alliluyeva’s daughter Chrese Evans. Her remarkable openness in our long hours of conversation and correspondence and her permission to quote from her mother’s unpublished works and letters have made it possible for Alliluyeva’s voice to surface in this book. Sim Smiley was indispensable as I undertook research in the labyrinth of intelligence archives. My research assistant, Anastassia Kostrioukova, stayed with me throughout the project; her help in archival research, interviews, and much else was invaluable.

There are many people to thank: Olga Alliloueva, who introduced me to her Moscow family; Alexander Alliluyev, Leonid and Galina Alliluyev, and Alexander Burdonsky, whose shrewd readings of their relative Stalin and of his daughter are fascinating; Stepan Mikoyan for his courtesy and thoughtfulness; Alexander Ushakov for his candor; and Yelena Khanga for her esprit. Professor Marina Kaul of the
Russian State University of the Humanities helped me with visas and contacts. Jeff Parker encouraged me at the beginning of the project, and assisted me through the maze of Russia. I would like to thank Simon Sebag Montefiore for introducing me to the journalist Nestan Charkviani, whose Georgian warmth opened doors in Tbilisi; and Omari Tushurashvili at the Archive of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs for his hospitality.

Of those in England, I want to thank Linda Kelly, who was so helpful in connecting me with Svetlana’s British friends, and her husband, Laurence, for his amusing anecdotes about Stalin; Vanessa Thomas, who drove me through the sites of Svetlana’s past and gave me access to invaluable documents; Philippa Hill, who offered me Svetlana’s original letters; Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky for her insights; David and Clarissa Pryce-Jones, who made time for me; and the remarkable Mary Burkett, who hosted my stay in the Lake District. Rosamond Richardson was invariably generous with her time and her collection of Alliluyeva interview tapes and memorabilia.

Of those in the United States, I would like to single out Joan Kennan, who has been so generous in her replies to my endless queries; Robert and Ramona Rayle, who hosted my stay in Ashburn, Virginia, and helped shape my perspective of Svetlana; Kathy Rossing for her patience and for confirming my subject’s sense of humor; Thomas Miller and Margaret Jameson, who generously offered me copies of letters; Rosa Shand, whose moving portrait of Svetlana Alliluyeva in her own writing is inspiring; Priscilla Johnson McMillan, so helpful in pursuing the mysteries of Svetlana’s copyright; and Meryle Secrest, who generously offered me permission to quote from her fifty hours of taped interviews with Svetlana.

In writing this book I have had the help of specialists in Russian history. I would like particularly to thank Professor
Lynne Viola of the University of Toronto, who generously read my manuscript to correct any historical errors; Stephen Cohen, who provided me with contacts and whose work on Nikolai Bukharin and on the Gulag is an invaluable source; and Alan Barenberg, who allowed me to read the manuscript of his book
Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta
before it was published, illuminating the mysteries of the Gulag administration.

I would like to thank my numerous research assistants and translators who helped me along the way, including Liza Kobrinsky, Andreas Vatiliotou, Andrei Osadchy, Nadia Ragbar, Oleksandr Melnyk, Andrey Gornostaev, and Liuba Turlova. I would also like to thank Elena Romanova and Brendan Sheehan.

Archivists are invaluable in the research process. I would like to thank Charlaine McCauley at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; Anne Marie Menta and Natalia Sciarini at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Amanda Pike and Adriane Hanson at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton; Jonathan Eaker at the Library of Congress; Jim Sam and Carol Leadenham at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University; Keith Call at the Wheaton College Archives and Special Collections; Anna Evgen’evna Tsar’kova at the Alliluev Apartment-Museum; Dasha Kondrashina at the Model School No. 25 museum; and Aliona Gennadi’evna Kozlova at the Archive of the Memorial Society International. I would also like to thank Henry Hardy of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust, Wolfson College, Oxford.

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation honored me with a three-year fellowship, which proved invaluable in the pursuit of my research.

Last, I must thank the most important person, my editor, Claire Wachtel at HarperCollins USA. It was in our conversations
that the idea for this book first surfaced. To put it simply, she is brilliant, courageous, and infinitely supportive. I must also thank the remarkably inventive and efficient Hannah Wood, associate editor, Harper/Perennial, and Jane Beirn, senior director of publicity, for the care and enthusiasm she has shown my book. I want to thank my Canadian editor, the inspiring Iris Tupholme of HarperCollins Canada, who has supported me throughout my career; her assistant, Doug Richmond, who was always generous with his time and insights; Maria Golikova, who read the manuscript so sympathetically and carefully; Miranda Snyder, for her organizational skills and kindness; and my British editor, Clare Reihill of HarperCollins UK, for her hospitality and enthusiasm, as well as her assistant, Emmanuella Kwenortey, whose patience in photo documentation was invaluable. I would like to thank my agent, Jackie Kaiser, who offers her time, insight, and enthusiasm so generously and can always be counted on. Finally I owe deepest gratitude to my husband, Juan Opitz, who maintained his patience and support through the long research and writing process; he is always my most impassioned advocate.