History (2000–…): Season 16, Episode 14 - Stalins Tochter - full transcript
Stalin's daughter.
Moscow, during the Cold War.
It was '67.
It was the time of the beginning
of all these Brezhnev frost.
On the evening
of the 6th of March,
a Russian woman walks into
the American Embassy
in New Delhi
and asks for political asylum.
There was nobody who really
spoke Russian in the Embassy
and she said
she wanted to defect
and she was Stalin's daughter.
But they weren't sure
she really was
Stalin's daughter.
I mean she could be a fake
"Stalin's daughter".
It really is
Svetlana Alliluyeva.
She was flown out,
escorted by an agent
from the CIA.
For the Soviet authorities,
it is an embarrassing setback
in the propaganda war
with the USA.
We tried to do everything
to prevent this with London.
One of the possibilities
was to kill her.
The arrival of Stalin's daughter
in New York is a sensation.
They saw it as a victory.
Here she comes, her freedom and
freedom to be herself.
Svetlana, the Kremlin Princess.
How did the favorite child
of the Red Tzar
become the most famous
defector of the Cold War?
She didn't want to
live under this shade of an
umbrella,
this monstrous... history.
The Empire of the Red Tzar...
Joseph Stalin,
worshipped by many,
feared by even more.
Responsible for the death
of millions.
He is the father of two sons
and one daughter, Svetlana.
Here, the human face
of the bloody dictator
is revealed...
as the proud father
of his beloved daughter,
Svetlana.
The people of the Soviet Union
call the bloody dictator
who rules them "Father Stalin".
The personality cult surrounding
him knows no limits.
Joseph Jughashvili
is born in Georgia.
The son of a shoemaker.
As Joseph Stalin, the Steel One,
he rises to become a member
of the Inner Circle
of Marx's Revolutionaries.
He is not among
the most prominent of them.
But that will change.
In January 1924,
the leader of
the Russian Revolution,
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,
is carried to his grave.
Only a short time before,
he had warned
about Stalin's ambitions.
The potential successors
gather around the coffin.
The struggle for Lenin's legacy
has begun.
Stalin's rise to the position
of Undisputed Head
of the Kremlin
is partly due
to Svetlana's mother.
Stalin's second wife,
Nadezhda Alliluyeva,
was a close confidant of Lenin's
as well as his secretary.
Svetlana's mother, Nadezhda,
is only 16 years old when
she falls in love with Stalin...
more than 20 years her senior.
He is a friend of the family.
In 1921 their son,
Vasili, was born.
Then in 1926, Svetlana.
In one of her first interviews
in the USA, she remembers...
He was the same
person who was merciless
to his political enemies.
He could be at the same time
rather kind and tender
with his favorite child.
Everything was there.
Cruelty was there and...
and sending fruits and writing
tender letters to his daughter
was also there.
In Moscow's Central Archives,
the blueprints
of unknown letters
from Joseph Stalin
to Svetlana
have come to light.
They indicate that
the relationship between father
and daughter was tender.
In 1931, for example...
in Order Number 3, Svetlana,
then five years old,
instructs her father
to take her to the movies...
an American comedy.
The dictator
scribbles his reply...
"I obey my lady, Joseph Stalin."
Behind the walls of the Kremlin,
the leaders of the young
Soviet Union
live in close proximity.
Svetlana's mother, Nadezhda,
wants to be more
than Stalin's wife.
After the birth
of their daughter,
she begins to study.
Svetlana's mother intends to be
active in the construction
of the Socialist State.
One of her friends at university
will one day succeed Stalin as
the head of the Communist Party.
Nadezhda introduces
Nikita Khrushchev
to her husband.
My father became
the Party Secretary
so he was supervisor
and she came here
asking advice from him,
what she has to do
and how to behave.
And when he was invited
to the Stalin home,
he found that's she's
a very different person at home.
From 1927 on, Svetlana's father
is the sole ruler
of the Soviet Union
with unlimited power.
Joseph Stalin ruthlessly
pushes forward with the forced
collectivization of agriculture.
Any resistance
is brutally suppressed.
Millions of people
starve to death.
On the 8th of November, 1932,
Soviet dignitaries celebrate
the anniversary
of the Revolution.
Svetlana's mother mingles with
the common people.
It is the last time Nadezhda
is seen alive.
Nadezhda's body
is laid out in the Kremlin.
Ruptured appendix
is the official cause of death
stipulated by Stalin.
At Nadezhda's grave,
Joseph Stalin reveals
his true nature.
Svetlana will be told
that her mother died after
surgery to remove her appendix.
Exactly what Stalin did
that night has never been
fully explained.
Before her death,
Stalin lived a normal,
personal life.
Nadezhda's death...
really...
changed Stalin's nature
for the worse.
Svetlana and Vasili
are left motherless.
They also have
a half-brother, Yakov,
from Stalin's first marriage.
His mother died of typhoid.
From now on,
Joseph Stalin will only be
wedded to power.
Stepan Mikoyan knew Stalin's
children since their childhood
together in the Kremlin.
Later, he makes a career
for himself
in the Soviet Air Force,
together with Vasili.
Life in the Kremlin
is dominated
by fear and uncertainty.
In the mid 1930's,
Stalin's great Purge begins,
and not even the members
of the inner circle are safe.
Svetlana and Vasili
experience all this
at close quarters.
Stalin spends most of his time
in his dacha outside Moscow.
For weeks on end,
the only contact he has
with his daughter is by letter.
The tone of the correspondence
is affectionate.
It appears that his daughter
has forgotten about her father.
He requests further
instructions,
inquiries about her health.
"You are offending your father.
I kiss you and wait
for your letter. Papa."
The granddaughter
of the writer Maxim Gorky
and Stalin's daughter
become the best of friends.
Marfa Peshkova is probably
the only person still alive
who witnessed Joseph Stalin
as an affectionate father
in his private surroundings.
For the first time
the Kremlin princess
has a friend
who is the same age.
Svetlana and Marfa
are in the same class at school.
They often spend
the weekends together
in Stalin's dacha.
Marfa dreads dinners
together with Joseph Stalin.
It is because she has such
a close relationship
with Stalin's daughter...
that Marfa witnesses
the way Svetlana,
as a young girl in Moscow...
discovers the truth
about her mother's death.
Svetlana and her father
never speak about the lie.
Her brother, Vasili,
also suffers from this loss and,
on top of that,
he gets little attention
from their father.
The devoted father
of the Russian people
sacrificing himself for them.
This is the picture
created by the propaganda
around Joseph Stalin.
The new Moscow.
It is all to his credit.
In school children are taught
the superiority of socialism.
I didn't think of Stalin
as a family man.
I mean we knew
he was like a god almost
and in math
we learned the difference
how many days between
Lenin's birthday
and Stalin's birthday,
things like that.
The daughter
of the American diplomat,
George Kennan,
attends a normal school
in Moscow.
She participates
in everyday life
in the Soviet Union.
We went to a restaurant
and they had dancing.
And a Russian army officer
came over and asked me to dance.
And then one of the people
from our Embassy
went up and said,
"This is the daughter
of the American Ambassador,"
and he turned white.
I mean I could see it myself
he was pretty terrified.
In 1937, the terror
of Stalin's Purge reaches
a climax throughout the country.
Millions of people
are exiled or murdered.
Stalin's cruelty
can be turned upon anyone.
Even those closest to him.
In the peak of these purges
my father told that it
was a very dangerous time
because Stalin just...
brought him to the Kremlin
and looked in his eyes...
very straight and told
"You are not Khrushchev."
And my father was really nervous
and he told Comrade Stalin,
"You can ask all my neighbors
in my village of my name,
I am Khrushchev."
And Stalin...
who looks in his eyes
tried to...
fix his reaction of this.
Beria, the head of secret
police, was drunk.
The dictator regards everyone
as a potential spy and traitor.
Even comrades
who fought side by side
with Stalin.
Polina, wife of his
closest associate Molotov,
is banished to the Gulag.
From 1941 the Soviet Union
is at war with Nazi Germany.
Not long after the war begins,
Stalin's first born son Yakov,
is captured by the Germans.
After Stalingrad,
the Nazis offer to exchange him
for Field Marshal Paulus.
Stalin responds,
"I'm not going to exchange
a Private for a Field Marshal."
Svetlana's brother
commits suicide
in the concentration camp.
Yakov flings himself
onto an electrified fence.
Night after night,
there are arrests in Moscow.
Stalin drives Svetlana's uncle
on her mother's side
to his death.
Her aunts and cousins
are seized by the secret police.
Svetlana could no longer
turn a blind eye.
Stalin's oldest grandson,
Svetlana's nephew,
is the Russian Theater Director
Alexander Burdonsky.
He was born in 1941.
The son of Vasili.
Followed two years later
by his sister, Nadezhda.
Neither of them will ever
experience their grandfather
in a family setting.
Vasili and Svetlana
on a journey to the Crimea.
As they grow older,
they have less and less contact
with their father.
Vasili makes a career
for himself in the Air Force.
He rises to the rank of General.
This is one of the rare
public appearances
of Stalin's children.
Svetlana seems almost uneasy
to be paid so much attention.
Vasili's excessive
alcohol consumption has
long been an open secret.
He owes his career
in the Air Force
to the absolute power
of his father.
He was an awful person
because he had no brakes.
When I did something wrong,
my mother told,
"You mustn't do this
or you will be
like Vasili Stalin."
And it was and I told her
I don't want to be like
Vasili Stalin.
Svetlana wants
to study literature
but Joseph Stalin forces her
to study history.
Svetlana yearns
for a normal life.
A group of friends who have
nothing to do with
the intrigues of power.
Her first great love
is a Jewish filmmaker
20 years her senior...
Aleksei Kapler.
Svetlana is in love.
She goes to see her father
in their dacha.
Stalin's reaction
shocks Svetlana.
Joseph Stalin has
his daughter's lover arrested
and banished to a gulag
for ten years.
Svetlana refuses
to be intimidated.
A year later,
she is again in love with a Jew,
Grigory Morozov.
Svetlana's marriage collapses.
But during that brief period,
she becomes a mother
for the first time...
at the age of 19.
After their divorce,
Svetlana's husband
loses his job...
and her father-in-law
is arrested.
Now, Joseph Stalin attempts
to find a husband for Svetlana
who meets with his approval.
Stepan Mikoyan is one of
the candidates on the shortlist.
Svetlana's second marriage
to the son of a Politburo
collapses just as quickly.
She is left with a daughter.
Now Svetlana lives
with her son, Joseph,
and her daughter, Yekaterina,
in an apartment
Stalin has arranged.
The children hardly know
their grandfather.
Joseph Stalin dies on
the 5th of March 1953
from a stroke.
Svetlana is the only member
of the family to be called
to his death bed.
They never spoke
to one another again.
Throughout the country
the funeral is a state occasion.
The Russian people
are in mourning
for father Stalin.
At this time,
Stalin's oldest grandson
is attending a cadet school.
Crowds file past
Stalin's coffin.
Although the relationship
between them was difficult,
Svetlana mourns
her father sincerely.
Joseph Stalin is carried
to his grave.
In 1953, the world is dominated
by the Cold War.
But Svetlana dreams of a life
on the other side
of the Iron Curtain.
Not long after Stalin's death,
his daughter decides to use
her mother's maiden name.
From now on, she calls herself
Svetlana Alliluyeva.
Nikita Khrushchev,
the old friend
of Svetlana's mother
who will later
be her father's successor,
breaks with the legacy
of the Bloody Dictator.
All of us believed that Stalin
was a god
and he was really the person who
tried to do the best
to the people.
After Stalin dies,
Vasili is demoted
and later sentenced
to eight years in prison.
In 1961 he dies, aged just 41,
from the consequences
of his alcoholism.
He is buried in a grave
alongside his mother.
In the late '50s and early '60s,
Svetlana leads a reclusive life
in Moscow with her children.
She secretly writes her memoirs.
The Soviet Union has become
a prison for Stalin's daughter.
During a stay
in hospital in 1963,
Svetlana meets an Indian man,
Brajesh Singh,
and falls in love with him.
Brajesh Singh is seriously ill
with a lung condition.
Svetlana requests an audience
with the Russian Premier,
Alexei Kosygin.
The mission is not granted.
On the 31st of October 1966,
Singh dies in Svetlana's arms.
Svetlana wants to take his ashes
to India in person.
Since 1964, Leonid Brezhnev
has been ruling
the Soviet Union.
By implying her contacts
and her cunning,
Svetlana persuades Brezhnev.
In January 1967,
he allows her
to make the journey.
By now Svetlana is 40 years old.
For the first time,
she is allowed to leave
the Soviet Union.
Stalin's daughter
travels to India.
Her children,
almost grown up by now,
remain behind.
It is the peak of the Cold War.
In 1967, the Americans
are fighting in Vietnam
to halt the spread
of Communist regimes.
And the Soviet Union
is busy rattling savers.
In India, Svetlana blossoms.
She would very much like
to remain with the Singh family,
but the Indian government
won't allow this.
After almost two months,
the KGB tries
to force her to return.
But Stalin's daughter decides
to make her escape.
She said she wanted to defect
and she was Stalin's daughter
but they weren't sure
she really was
Stalin's daughter.
That's when the State Department
decided that they had to have
somebody who could
authenticate her.
And they picked my father.
That very same night,
accompanied by a CIA agent,
Svetlana is flown
out of the country.
She is to meet with
George Kennan
in neutral Switzerland.
He was quite impressed.
First of all, it was definitely
Stalin's daughter.
That was not even a question.
The soviet leadership
is informed
in a secret telegram.
At this point,
Svetlana's children
also discover that she has fled.
At the time,
Joseph is 21 years old
and Yekaterina is 17.
She will never forgive
her mother for abandoning her.
The Kremlin sets it's
propaganda machine in motion.
It is claimed that
Stalin's daughter went insane
and was kidnapped by the CIA.
Worse things are planned.
One of these possibilities
was to kill her.
I don't know?
Did they receive
the order to kill her
because they could not kill her
without Brezhnev's approval.
On the 12th of April 1967,
Svetlana lands in New York.
I was there at the airport.
My sister, Joan, and I were up
in a... we were up high
and looking down
and we could see
snipers on the roof.
We'd never seen
snipers on the roof.
Um, you know,
there was tremendous excitement
when she defected.
A woman once known as
"the little princess
of the Kremlin"
arrives in America
from Switzerland.
Svetlana, the 42 year old
daughter of Soviet dictator
Joseph Stalin,
sought asylum here,
where one can feel...
Even before her arrival,
Svetlana had sold her memoirs
for a record sum
of three million dollars.
Dogma has lost its significance.
It's impossible...
The daughter of the
Red Tzar has become a propaganda
tool for western capitalism.
If you defected, it was clear
that you will become...
manipulated by CIA
and it became part of
the big political game.
At first,
Svetlana is hidden on a farm
belonging to George Kennan.
His daughter, Grace,
looks after her there.
He made me feel
like we had Trotsky there.
You know, that she could be
any time kidnapped
or assassinated.
The State Department
offered her security
and she turned it down.
She, I remember her
telling me about it
and she was twirling around.
She was very
physically exuberant.
She was kind of twirling
and saying "I'm free! I'm free!"
And I was thinking
"Yeah, you're free
and I'm worried."
Because I was worried.
Svetlana receives
the international press
in a luxury New York hotel
and talks about her future
in the USA.
Well uh...
I think that the,
before the marriage
it should be love.
So, if I will love this country
and this country will love me,
then the marriage
will be settled
but I cannot say now.
The public is surprised
by her good English.
The sale of rights to her book
make Svetlana rich.
Stalin's daughter is treated
as a media star
proclaiming the joys of freedom.
I am dreaming about
the time when...
two countries,
two great countries,
Russia and the United States,
could become really friendly
and people could have
free contacts
and travel here and there.
Now Svetlana
is invited everywhere.
One of these invitations
takes her to Taliesin.
This artist's colony,
set in the hilly
Wisconsin countryside,
reminds her of Georgia,
her father's homeland.
It is here that she will find
new love.
Only a few weeks
after her arrival,
she marries Wesley Peters,
the closest assistant
of the brilliant architect,
Frank Lloyd Wright.
Svetlana is already 44 years old
when their daughter,
Olga, is born.
It looks as though
her happiness is perfect.
But the reporters
who come to talk to her
only ever want to talk
about one thing...
Joseph Stalin.
It's ironic,
but the granddaughter
of Joseph Stalin is born
a capitalistic
of the United States.
No I don't know.
First of all,
I don't see any irony
about myself
living in this country.
I feel very much at home here.
Her happiness with
her new husband is,
once again, short lived.
Svetlana feels restricted
by the strict regulations
in the artist's commune.
Though this is the framework
of Wesley Peters' life...
she buys a nearby ranch
for her husband's son.
But not even this step
can rescue her marriage.
She almost always
made poor decisions.
She was just...
I mean, lots of people told her
not to give her money away,
not to invest in,
as we were told,
it was in the ranch
of her husband's son.
She always did exactly
what she wanted to do.
And that was a little bit,
maybe the princess element,
I'm referring to.
Svetlana moves to Princeton.
She lived there
before this marriage.
But her dream
of teaching literature
at the University
comes to nothing.
She still has money there.
A second book about
her first year in the USA
is also a financial success.
Back in Moscow,
Svetlana has arranged
to be baptized.
Now in Princeton,
she finds friends
among the Anglican community.
She hardly ever
appears in public these days.
She feels as though
she's being watched,
followed everywhere.
She was very much afraid
of other people.
In fact,
she would come to our house
but she would ask us please
to not have other people.
She turned down...
parties to the President
of the United States twice.
She thought she was being
manipulated by the CIA often.
Stalin's daughter finds it
impossible to be at peace.
Svetlana moves around
the world restlessly.
Since her escape
from the Soviet Union,
she has had no contact
with her children.
I was prepared...
not to see them for a long time
but I was not prepared
to the idea that
they will not be permitted
to even to write to me.
Their well-being depends
on the fact that they are
cut off from me.
Homeless and lonely,
Svetlana attempts to find a home
for herself with her daughter.
When she goes to see
a Russian film in the cinema
with one of her friends,
Svetlana breaks down.
We went together
to see "Oblomov"...
and...
a half hour after everybody else
had left the theater...
she was still
sobbing uncontrollably.
She said this was her childhood,
this was the earth
she remembered.
It brought everything in.
The mother,
the love of a mother.
Because it just took her back
to really mother Russia.
New headlines in 1984,
"Svetlana returns to Moscow with
her American daughter, Olga".
Did her son ask her to come back
on the urging of the KGB
and the leaders of the country?
This is what
Svetlana believes later.
She soon feels she is being used
by the government
for Soviet propaganda.
Even the Soviet leadership
gradually leaves her alone.
After only a year,
she is permitted to travel
back to the west
without any difficulty.
Feeling restless,
always running,
she lives in England
for some time
and then returns to the USA.
Svetlana changes homes
more than 40 times.
Each time the residences
are smaller
and there is less money.
Martha Schad meets her at
the final stage
of her life's voyage.
The home in Wisconsin
accepts the needy.
Once again,
the highs and lows
of Svetlana's life
are to be depicted.
But how is it possible
to write about Svetlana
without talking about Stalin?
The land of her father...
- Alrighty.
- Just stop...
I stop it,
I stop it right away. I'm sorry.
- I don't want to be...
- OK I stop it.
- I don't want quotations from you.
- -Alrighty.
- Russian papers.
- Alrighty.
OK.
My father.
Svetlana Alliluyeva,
the princess from the Kremlin,
dies in utter poverty
in November 2011.
She talked about when she was
living in the poor houses
with other people,
sharing bathrooms and kitchens.
She was happy about that,
she said this was right.
"I started at the top,
I should end at the bottom.
That's the great balance."
Stalin did love his daughter,
Svetlana.
But there was no escape for her
from the shadow of his life.
Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.
It was '67.
It was the time of the beginning
of all these Brezhnev frost.
On the evening
of the 6th of March,
a Russian woman walks into
the American Embassy
in New Delhi
and asks for political asylum.
There was nobody who really
spoke Russian in the Embassy
and she said
she wanted to defect
and she was Stalin's daughter.
But they weren't sure
she really was
Stalin's daughter.
I mean she could be a fake
"Stalin's daughter".
It really is
Svetlana Alliluyeva.
She was flown out,
escorted by an agent
from the CIA.
For the Soviet authorities,
it is an embarrassing setback
in the propaganda war
with the USA.
We tried to do everything
to prevent this with London.
One of the possibilities
was to kill her.
The arrival of Stalin's daughter
in New York is a sensation.
They saw it as a victory.
Here she comes, her freedom and
freedom to be herself.
Svetlana, the Kremlin Princess.
How did the favorite child
of the Red Tzar
become the most famous
defector of the Cold War?
She didn't want to
live under this shade of an
umbrella,
this monstrous... history.
The Empire of the Red Tzar...
Joseph Stalin,
worshipped by many,
feared by even more.
Responsible for the death
of millions.
He is the father of two sons
and one daughter, Svetlana.
Here, the human face
of the bloody dictator
is revealed...
as the proud father
of his beloved daughter,
Svetlana.
The people of the Soviet Union
call the bloody dictator
who rules them "Father Stalin".
The personality cult surrounding
him knows no limits.
Joseph Jughashvili
is born in Georgia.
The son of a shoemaker.
As Joseph Stalin, the Steel One,
he rises to become a member
of the Inner Circle
of Marx's Revolutionaries.
He is not among
the most prominent of them.
But that will change.
In January 1924,
the leader of
the Russian Revolution,
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,
is carried to his grave.
Only a short time before,
he had warned
about Stalin's ambitions.
The potential successors
gather around the coffin.
The struggle for Lenin's legacy
has begun.
Stalin's rise to the position
of Undisputed Head
of the Kremlin
is partly due
to Svetlana's mother.
Stalin's second wife,
Nadezhda Alliluyeva,
was a close confidant of Lenin's
as well as his secretary.
Svetlana's mother, Nadezhda,
is only 16 years old when
she falls in love with Stalin...
more than 20 years her senior.
He is a friend of the family.
In 1921 their son,
Vasili, was born.
Then in 1926, Svetlana.
In one of her first interviews
in the USA, she remembers...
He was the same
person who was merciless
to his political enemies.
He could be at the same time
rather kind and tender
with his favorite child.
Everything was there.
Cruelty was there and...
and sending fruits and writing
tender letters to his daughter
was also there.
In Moscow's Central Archives,
the blueprints
of unknown letters
from Joseph Stalin
to Svetlana
have come to light.
They indicate that
the relationship between father
and daughter was tender.
In 1931, for example...
in Order Number 3, Svetlana,
then five years old,
instructs her father
to take her to the movies...
an American comedy.
The dictator
scribbles his reply...
"I obey my lady, Joseph Stalin."
Behind the walls of the Kremlin,
the leaders of the young
Soviet Union
live in close proximity.
Svetlana's mother, Nadezhda,
wants to be more
than Stalin's wife.
After the birth
of their daughter,
she begins to study.
Svetlana's mother intends to be
active in the construction
of the Socialist State.
One of her friends at university
will one day succeed Stalin as
the head of the Communist Party.
Nadezhda introduces
Nikita Khrushchev
to her husband.
My father became
the Party Secretary
so he was supervisor
and she came here
asking advice from him,
what she has to do
and how to behave.
And when he was invited
to the Stalin home,
he found that's she's
a very different person at home.
From 1927 on, Svetlana's father
is the sole ruler
of the Soviet Union
with unlimited power.
Joseph Stalin ruthlessly
pushes forward with the forced
collectivization of agriculture.
Any resistance
is brutally suppressed.
Millions of people
starve to death.
On the 8th of November, 1932,
Soviet dignitaries celebrate
the anniversary
of the Revolution.
Svetlana's mother mingles with
the common people.
It is the last time Nadezhda
is seen alive.
Nadezhda's body
is laid out in the Kremlin.
Ruptured appendix
is the official cause of death
stipulated by Stalin.
At Nadezhda's grave,
Joseph Stalin reveals
his true nature.
Svetlana will be told
that her mother died after
surgery to remove her appendix.
Exactly what Stalin did
that night has never been
fully explained.
Before her death,
Stalin lived a normal,
personal life.
Nadezhda's death...
really...
changed Stalin's nature
for the worse.
Svetlana and Vasili
are left motherless.
They also have
a half-brother, Yakov,
from Stalin's first marriage.
His mother died of typhoid.
From now on,
Joseph Stalin will only be
wedded to power.
Stepan Mikoyan knew Stalin's
children since their childhood
together in the Kremlin.
Later, he makes a career
for himself
in the Soviet Air Force,
together with Vasili.
Life in the Kremlin
is dominated
by fear and uncertainty.
In the mid 1930's,
Stalin's great Purge begins,
and not even the members
of the inner circle are safe.
Svetlana and Vasili
experience all this
at close quarters.
Stalin spends most of his time
in his dacha outside Moscow.
For weeks on end,
the only contact he has
with his daughter is by letter.
The tone of the correspondence
is affectionate.
It appears that his daughter
has forgotten about her father.
He requests further
instructions,
inquiries about her health.
"You are offending your father.
I kiss you and wait
for your letter. Papa."
The granddaughter
of the writer Maxim Gorky
and Stalin's daughter
become the best of friends.
Marfa Peshkova is probably
the only person still alive
who witnessed Joseph Stalin
as an affectionate father
in his private surroundings.
For the first time
the Kremlin princess
has a friend
who is the same age.
Svetlana and Marfa
are in the same class at school.
They often spend
the weekends together
in Stalin's dacha.
Marfa dreads dinners
together with Joseph Stalin.
It is because she has such
a close relationship
with Stalin's daughter...
that Marfa witnesses
the way Svetlana,
as a young girl in Moscow...
discovers the truth
about her mother's death.
Svetlana and her father
never speak about the lie.
Her brother, Vasili,
also suffers from this loss and,
on top of that,
he gets little attention
from their father.
The devoted father
of the Russian people
sacrificing himself for them.
This is the picture
created by the propaganda
around Joseph Stalin.
The new Moscow.
It is all to his credit.
In school children are taught
the superiority of socialism.
I didn't think of Stalin
as a family man.
I mean we knew
he was like a god almost
and in math
we learned the difference
how many days between
Lenin's birthday
and Stalin's birthday,
things like that.
The daughter
of the American diplomat,
George Kennan,
attends a normal school
in Moscow.
She participates
in everyday life
in the Soviet Union.
We went to a restaurant
and they had dancing.
And a Russian army officer
came over and asked me to dance.
And then one of the people
from our Embassy
went up and said,
"This is the daughter
of the American Ambassador,"
and he turned white.
I mean I could see it myself
he was pretty terrified.
In 1937, the terror
of Stalin's Purge reaches
a climax throughout the country.
Millions of people
are exiled or murdered.
Stalin's cruelty
can be turned upon anyone.
Even those closest to him.
In the peak of these purges
my father told that it
was a very dangerous time
because Stalin just...
brought him to the Kremlin
and looked in his eyes...
very straight and told
"You are not Khrushchev."
And my father was really nervous
and he told Comrade Stalin,
"You can ask all my neighbors
in my village of my name,
I am Khrushchev."
And Stalin...
who looks in his eyes
tried to...
fix his reaction of this.
Beria, the head of secret
police, was drunk.
The dictator regards everyone
as a potential spy and traitor.
Even comrades
who fought side by side
with Stalin.
Polina, wife of his
closest associate Molotov,
is banished to the Gulag.
From 1941 the Soviet Union
is at war with Nazi Germany.
Not long after the war begins,
Stalin's first born son Yakov,
is captured by the Germans.
After Stalingrad,
the Nazis offer to exchange him
for Field Marshal Paulus.
Stalin responds,
"I'm not going to exchange
a Private for a Field Marshal."
Svetlana's brother
commits suicide
in the concentration camp.
Yakov flings himself
onto an electrified fence.
Night after night,
there are arrests in Moscow.
Stalin drives Svetlana's uncle
on her mother's side
to his death.
Her aunts and cousins
are seized by the secret police.
Svetlana could no longer
turn a blind eye.
Stalin's oldest grandson,
Svetlana's nephew,
is the Russian Theater Director
Alexander Burdonsky.
He was born in 1941.
The son of Vasili.
Followed two years later
by his sister, Nadezhda.
Neither of them will ever
experience their grandfather
in a family setting.
Vasili and Svetlana
on a journey to the Crimea.
As they grow older,
they have less and less contact
with their father.
Vasili makes a career
for himself in the Air Force.
He rises to the rank of General.
This is one of the rare
public appearances
of Stalin's children.
Svetlana seems almost uneasy
to be paid so much attention.
Vasili's excessive
alcohol consumption has
long been an open secret.
He owes his career
in the Air Force
to the absolute power
of his father.
He was an awful person
because he had no brakes.
When I did something wrong,
my mother told,
"You mustn't do this
or you will be
like Vasili Stalin."
And it was and I told her
I don't want to be like
Vasili Stalin.
Svetlana wants
to study literature
but Joseph Stalin forces her
to study history.
Svetlana yearns
for a normal life.
A group of friends who have
nothing to do with
the intrigues of power.
Her first great love
is a Jewish filmmaker
20 years her senior...
Aleksei Kapler.
Svetlana is in love.
She goes to see her father
in their dacha.
Stalin's reaction
shocks Svetlana.
Joseph Stalin has
his daughter's lover arrested
and banished to a gulag
for ten years.
Svetlana refuses
to be intimidated.
A year later,
she is again in love with a Jew,
Grigory Morozov.
Svetlana's marriage collapses.
But during that brief period,
she becomes a mother
for the first time...
at the age of 19.
After their divorce,
Svetlana's husband
loses his job...
and her father-in-law
is arrested.
Now, Joseph Stalin attempts
to find a husband for Svetlana
who meets with his approval.
Stepan Mikoyan is one of
the candidates on the shortlist.
Svetlana's second marriage
to the son of a Politburo
collapses just as quickly.
She is left with a daughter.
Now Svetlana lives
with her son, Joseph,
and her daughter, Yekaterina,
in an apartment
Stalin has arranged.
The children hardly know
their grandfather.
Joseph Stalin dies on
the 5th of March 1953
from a stroke.
Svetlana is the only member
of the family to be called
to his death bed.
They never spoke
to one another again.
Throughout the country
the funeral is a state occasion.
The Russian people
are in mourning
for father Stalin.
At this time,
Stalin's oldest grandson
is attending a cadet school.
Crowds file past
Stalin's coffin.
Although the relationship
between them was difficult,
Svetlana mourns
her father sincerely.
Joseph Stalin is carried
to his grave.
In 1953, the world is dominated
by the Cold War.
But Svetlana dreams of a life
on the other side
of the Iron Curtain.
Not long after Stalin's death,
his daughter decides to use
her mother's maiden name.
From now on, she calls herself
Svetlana Alliluyeva.
Nikita Khrushchev,
the old friend
of Svetlana's mother
who will later
be her father's successor,
breaks with the legacy
of the Bloody Dictator.
All of us believed that Stalin
was a god
and he was really the person who
tried to do the best
to the people.
After Stalin dies,
Vasili is demoted
and later sentenced
to eight years in prison.
In 1961 he dies, aged just 41,
from the consequences
of his alcoholism.
He is buried in a grave
alongside his mother.
In the late '50s and early '60s,
Svetlana leads a reclusive life
in Moscow with her children.
She secretly writes her memoirs.
The Soviet Union has become
a prison for Stalin's daughter.
During a stay
in hospital in 1963,
Svetlana meets an Indian man,
Brajesh Singh,
and falls in love with him.
Brajesh Singh is seriously ill
with a lung condition.
Svetlana requests an audience
with the Russian Premier,
Alexei Kosygin.
The mission is not granted.
On the 31st of October 1966,
Singh dies in Svetlana's arms.
Svetlana wants to take his ashes
to India in person.
Since 1964, Leonid Brezhnev
has been ruling
the Soviet Union.
By implying her contacts
and her cunning,
Svetlana persuades Brezhnev.
In January 1967,
he allows her
to make the journey.
By now Svetlana is 40 years old.
For the first time,
she is allowed to leave
the Soviet Union.
Stalin's daughter
travels to India.
Her children,
almost grown up by now,
remain behind.
It is the peak of the Cold War.
In 1967, the Americans
are fighting in Vietnam
to halt the spread
of Communist regimes.
And the Soviet Union
is busy rattling savers.
In India, Svetlana blossoms.
She would very much like
to remain with the Singh family,
but the Indian government
won't allow this.
After almost two months,
the KGB tries
to force her to return.
But Stalin's daughter decides
to make her escape.
She said she wanted to defect
and she was Stalin's daughter
but they weren't sure
she really was
Stalin's daughter.
That's when the State Department
decided that they had to have
somebody who could
authenticate her.
And they picked my father.
That very same night,
accompanied by a CIA agent,
Svetlana is flown
out of the country.
She is to meet with
George Kennan
in neutral Switzerland.
He was quite impressed.
First of all, it was definitely
Stalin's daughter.
That was not even a question.
The soviet leadership
is informed
in a secret telegram.
At this point,
Svetlana's children
also discover that she has fled.
At the time,
Joseph is 21 years old
and Yekaterina is 17.
She will never forgive
her mother for abandoning her.
The Kremlin sets it's
propaganda machine in motion.
It is claimed that
Stalin's daughter went insane
and was kidnapped by the CIA.
Worse things are planned.
One of these possibilities
was to kill her.
I don't know?
Did they receive
the order to kill her
because they could not kill her
without Brezhnev's approval.
On the 12th of April 1967,
Svetlana lands in New York.
I was there at the airport.
My sister, Joan, and I were up
in a... we were up high
and looking down
and we could see
snipers on the roof.
We'd never seen
snipers on the roof.
Um, you know,
there was tremendous excitement
when she defected.
A woman once known as
"the little princess
of the Kremlin"
arrives in America
from Switzerland.
Svetlana, the 42 year old
daughter of Soviet dictator
Joseph Stalin,
sought asylum here,
where one can feel...
Even before her arrival,
Svetlana had sold her memoirs
for a record sum
of three million dollars.
Dogma has lost its significance.
It's impossible...
The daughter of the
Red Tzar has become a propaganda
tool for western capitalism.
If you defected, it was clear
that you will become...
manipulated by CIA
and it became part of
the big political game.
At first,
Svetlana is hidden on a farm
belonging to George Kennan.
His daughter, Grace,
looks after her there.
He made me feel
like we had Trotsky there.
You know, that she could be
any time kidnapped
or assassinated.
The State Department
offered her security
and she turned it down.
She, I remember her
telling me about it
and she was twirling around.
She was very
physically exuberant.
She was kind of twirling
and saying "I'm free! I'm free!"
And I was thinking
"Yeah, you're free
and I'm worried."
Because I was worried.
Svetlana receives
the international press
in a luxury New York hotel
and talks about her future
in the USA.
Well uh...
I think that the,
before the marriage
it should be love.
So, if I will love this country
and this country will love me,
then the marriage
will be settled
but I cannot say now.
The public is surprised
by her good English.
The sale of rights to her book
make Svetlana rich.
Stalin's daughter is treated
as a media star
proclaiming the joys of freedom.
I am dreaming about
the time when...
two countries,
two great countries,
Russia and the United States,
could become really friendly
and people could have
free contacts
and travel here and there.
Now Svetlana
is invited everywhere.
One of these invitations
takes her to Taliesin.
This artist's colony,
set in the hilly
Wisconsin countryside,
reminds her of Georgia,
her father's homeland.
It is here that she will find
new love.
Only a few weeks
after her arrival,
she marries Wesley Peters,
the closest assistant
of the brilliant architect,
Frank Lloyd Wright.
Svetlana is already 44 years old
when their daughter,
Olga, is born.
It looks as though
her happiness is perfect.
But the reporters
who come to talk to her
only ever want to talk
about one thing...
Joseph Stalin.
It's ironic,
but the granddaughter
of Joseph Stalin is born
a capitalistic
of the United States.
No I don't know.
First of all,
I don't see any irony
about myself
living in this country.
I feel very much at home here.
Her happiness with
her new husband is,
once again, short lived.
Svetlana feels restricted
by the strict regulations
in the artist's commune.
Though this is the framework
of Wesley Peters' life...
she buys a nearby ranch
for her husband's son.
But not even this step
can rescue her marriage.
She almost always
made poor decisions.
She was just...
I mean, lots of people told her
not to give her money away,
not to invest in,
as we were told,
it was in the ranch
of her husband's son.
She always did exactly
what she wanted to do.
And that was a little bit,
maybe the princess element,
I'm referring to.
Svetlana moves to Princeton.
She lived there
before this marriage.
But her dream
of teaching literature
at the University
comes to nothing.
She still has money there.
A second book about
her first year in the USA
is also a financial success.
Back in Moscow,
Svetlana has arranged
to be baptized.
Now in Princeton,
she finds friends
among the Anglican community.
She hardly ever
appears in public these days.
She feels as though
she's being watched,
followed everywhere.
She was very much afraid
of other people.
In fact,
she would come to our house
but she would ask us please
to not have other people.
She turned down...
parties to the President
of the United States twice.
She thought she was being
manipulated by the CIA often.
Stalin's daughter finds it
impossible to be at peace.
Svetlana moves around
the world restlessly.
Since her escape
from the Soviet Union,
she has had no contact
with her children.
I was prepared...
not to see them for a long time
but I was not prepared
to the idea that
they will not be permitted
to even to write to me.
Their well-being depends
on the fact that they are
cut off from me.
Homeless and lonely,
Svetlana attempts to find a home
for herself with her daughter.
When she goes to see
a Russian film in the cinema
with one of her friends,
Svetlana breaks down.
We went together
to see "Oblomov"...
and...
a half hour after everybody else
had left the theater...
she was still
sobbing uncontrollably.
She said this was her childhood,
this was the earth
she remembered.
It brought everything in.
The mother,
the love of a mother.
Because it just took her back
to really mother Russia.
New headlines in 1984,
"Svetlana returns to Moscow with
her American daughter, Olga".
Did her son ask her to come back
on the urging of the KGB
and the leaders of the country?
This is what
Svetlana believes later.
She soon feels she is being used
by the government
for Soviet propaganda.
Even the Soviet leadership
gradually leaves her alone.
After only a year,
she is permitted to travel
back to the west
without any difficulty.
Feeling restless,
always running,
she lives in England
for some time
and then returns to the USA.
Svetlana changes homes
more than 40 times.
Each time the residences
are smaller
and there is less money.
Martha Schad meets her at
the final stage
of her life's voyage.
The home in Wisconsin
accepts the needy.
Once again,
the highs and lows
of Svetlana's life
are to be depicted.
But how is it possible
to write about Svetlana
without talking about Stalin?
The land of her father...
- Alrighty.
- Just stop...
I stop it,
I stop it right away. I'm sorry.
- I don't want to be...
- OK I stop it.
- I don't want quotations from you.
- -Alrighty.
- Russian papers.
- Alrighty.
OK.
My father.
Svetlana Alliluyeva,
the princess from the Kremlin,
dies in utter poverty
in November 2011.
She talked about when she was
living in the poor houses
with other people,
sharing bathrooms and kitchens.
She was happy about that,
she said this was right.
"I started at the top,
I should end at the bottom.
That's the great balance."
Stalin did love his daughter,
Svetlana.
But there was no escape for her
from the shadow of his life.
Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.