Stalin's daughter and critic Svetlana Alliluyeva dies

Chicago, Nov 30 (PTI) Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's only daughter, Lana Peters, who had defected to the US while in India at the height of the Cold War, has died in obscurity at the age of 85. Born Svetlana Alliluyeva, a name she changed later, Peters had denounced communism and moved to the United States in the late 1960s. She died from colon cancer on November 22 in Wisconsin. Her defection in 1967 caused an international furore and was partly motivated by the poor treatment by Soviet authorities of Indian communist Brijesh Singh, with whom she had a relationship. She left the Soviet Union in 1966 for India, where she planned to leave the ashes of Singh who had died in the USSR. But, instead of returning to her country, she walked unannounced into the US embassy in New Delhi and asked for political asylum, shocking many. After a brief stay in Switzerland, she flew to the US. Upon her arrival in New York City in 1967, the then 41-year-old said, "I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied to me for so long in Russia." Peters carried with her a memoir to the US that she had written in 1963 about her life in Russia. "Twenty Letters to a Friend" was published within months of her arrival in the US and became a best-seller. In the book, she recalled her father, who died in 1953 after ruling the nation for 29 years, as a distant and paranoid man. She denounced Stalin's policies, which included sending millions into labour camps. Peters said her identity involved more than just switching from one side to the other in the Cold War, according to media reports. The then Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin denounced her as a 'morally unstable' and 'sick person'. The defection came at a high personal cost though as she left her two children behind in Russia, Josef and Yekaterina, from previous marriages. Peters was Stalin's only daughter. She had two brothers, Vasili and Jacob. She was married four times, the last time to William Wesley Peters, an apprentice to the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright. She took the name Lana Peters. Her father's legacy appeared to haunt her throughout her life. She returned to the Soviet Union in 1984, saying she wanted to be reunited with her children. Her Soviet citizenship was restored, and she then denounced her time in the US and Britain, saying she never really had freedom. More than a year later, she asked for and was given permission to leave after feuding with relatives. She returned to the US and vowed never to go back to Russia. She went into seclusion in the last decades of her life spent in Richland Centre, Wisconsin. PTI