Story: the strange destiny of Stalin's daughter, "little princess of the Kremlin" and Soviet dissident

Svetlana Allilouïeva descends the gateway to a swissair plane, at John-F airport.-Kennedy from New York.She is 41 years old and wears an elegant crossed white jacket." Hello everyone !she launches to journalists who are waiting for her on the tarmac.I am very happy to be here.»We are April 21, 1967.And Svetlana Allilouïeva is the daughter of Joseph Staline.She immediately became the most famous Soviet dissident of the Cold War.

The only child still alive in Stalin, who died in March 1953, she was nicknamed "the little princess of the Kremlin".She left the USSR for the first time a few months earlier and, at JFK airport, she talks about the freedom and the chances she intends to seize in America.Seductive and fun, she speaks commonly English.The New York Times published a good dozen articles on his arrival and the first CIA official to have interrogated it says: "Our preconceived ideas about Stalin's daughter do not correspond to reality at all: that isA kind of mother of middle age, friendly, pleasant and attractive."Svetlana will write later:" The first thing that marked me in America is the long and magnificent roads that travel Long Island."After a half-life of communism, she says she feels" capable of flying, free, like a bird ".A few days later, she gave a press conference at the Plaza.A journalist asks if she will take American nationality."Before marriage, love!If I love this country and if he loves me, then we will get married.»»

Ambassador in Moscow in the early 1950s, George F.Kennan is one of the most popular Soviet Union specialists in the United States.He helped Svetlana to go to the west.In the fall of 1967, he helped him publish twenty letters to a friend.The book, written a few years earlier, tells the story of her family through letters she exchanged with a physicist, Feodor Wolkenstein.And suggests that being part of Stalin's family was almost as terrible as being one of his subjects.Two years later, Svetlana recounts, in a year, the months that surrounded her decision to flee the Soviet Union. Dans The New Yorker, Edmund Wilson s’enthousiasme pour un récit qui a « l’audace et la passion du Docteur Jivago»».The two books sell well and make their author rich.KGB nicknames it Kukushka, cuckoo.

Récit : L'étrange destin de la fille de Staline, « petite princesse du Kremlin»» et dissidente soviétique

But public fascination does not last.Svetlana refuses the interviews and the press ceases to be interested in her.His passage to the west was a good story;His life in the west is not a.She continues to write but no longer attracts American publishers.His daily life seems to have become lonely and boring.In 1985, Time published an article which describes it isolated, large, vindictive, authoritarian and violent.The journalist writes: "She ended up looking like her father.»» Lorsque la guerre froide se termine, le public l’a perdue de vue et, au cours des vingt années suivantes, le New York Times ne lui consacre que quelques lignes, reprises du quotidien britannique Evening Standard – Svetlana est alors à Londres – pour annoncer qu’elle « vit dans l’obscurité dans un charity hostel»», un appartement thérapeutique pour « les personnes souffrant des problèmes émotionnels graves»».

In 2006, to prepare a book on Kennan and the Cold War, I write to Svetlana Allilouïeva.Wikipedia tells me that she lives in the Wisconsin.A research in the administrative archives of the State confirms the existence of a person of this name in Spring Green, a village of 1,600 inhabitants.I doubt that my letter reaches her or that she will answer it. Une semaine plus tard arrive pourtant une épaisse enveloppe et six pages soigneusement pliées et marquées « personnel et confidentiel»».