Stalin's Daughter Lana Peters Dies at 85

[_eh]

Source: ABC News

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's only daughter, whose defection to the West in 1967 set off an international furor and made her a best-selling author, has died. She was 85.

Richland County, Wis., Coroner Mary Turner says Lana Peters died on Nov. 22 of colon cancer.

Peters' daughter, Chrese Evans, declined comment Monday when contacted via email.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/stalins-daughter-lana-peters-dies-85-15042138#.TtPrRdXNksk

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The last I'd heard, she had moved back to Russia and was going by the name "Svetlana Stalin."

[Warpy]

1. Obviously, she was here

I think she likely bounced back and forth, unable to deal with either country.

Being the pampered child of a well known figure has its drawbacks. She did eventually manage to live a quiet life away from the press and I have to think that brought her some peace, at last.

[RZM]

4. I'm not sure if 'pampered' is quite the right word

Certainly she and the rest of the children of Stalin's top people were part of the Soviet elite (though that didn't make them safe from repression). But that wasn't exactly the same as being the children of an oil sheikh or tinpot dictator/kleptocrat. Also, Stalin was more and more of an ass toward her the older she got. Her personal life was certainly full of drama.

[RZM]

2. I recommend her book, 'Twenty Letters to a Friend'

Not as reliable on the political stuff, but it's an interesting window into Stalin's private life.

http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-letters-friend-Svetlana-Allilueva/dp/B0006BRKII/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322512019&sr=8-1

[brooklynite]

3. She dated my wife's Uncle's college roommate...

[Hissyspit]

5. "No you won't fool the children of the revolution"

[fasttense]

6. Having a mass murderer as a father probably made life pretty awful.

The number of people killed under Stalin's regime is estimated at between 3 to 60 million.

Now there is a relative you would not want to associate with.

[pampango]

7. BBC: How Stalin's daughter defected in India

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-15936172

The only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has died in the US, aged 85. In 1967 she travelled to India to scatter the ashes of her Indian Communist lover in the river Ganges. During that visit she defected to the US causing a political sensation.

She was what is known as the common law wife of Brajesh Singh, one of the many Indian Communists who made Moscow their home in the 1930s and thereafter.

In early 1967 Mr Singh died. Svetlana saw to it that he was cremated according to Hindu rites and then decided to bring his ashes to India to consign them to the Ganges river, held sacred by Hindus. This took time because Soviet leaders tried hard to dissuade her from making that journey.

After completing the rituals in her late husband's ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh, she arrived in Delhi at a time when India was in the throes of a general election, the first without Jawaharlal Nehru - India's first prime minister after independence.

And then the sensational news broke one morning, with nuclear force, that Stalin's daughter had defected to the United States on Indian soil. The Soviet Union was incensed and said so but there was nothing India could do. Tension between Moscow and Delhi persisted for some time despite previously close relations.