Alillueva I. Svetlana

Svetlana I. Alilueva (Stalin, Jughashvili) (28. 02. 1926, Leningrad, USSR, – 22. 11. 2011, Richland, Wisconsin, USA) was a publicist, translator, philologist, scientist, and daughter of Joseph Stalin.

She received her education in Moscow and continued her studies at M. Lomonosov State University. Later, she completed her postgraduate studies at the Institute of Social Sciences and defended her candidate dissertation in Russian philology. She bore Stalin's last name from birth. From 1956 to 1967, she worked at the World Literature Institute. In 1967, her third husband, and Indian journalist, passed away. She received permission to leave USSR for India to bury her husband. From there, she eventually moved to the USA via Switzerland. She was stripped of USSR citizenship. In the USA, Svetlana published her first book "Twenty Letters to a Friend" (written near Moscow in 1963, published in 1967). She also published several other books in the West: "Only One Year" (1970), "A Book for the Grandchildren. Travels in the Motherland" (1991), and others. Her most successful work was only the first book, which is epistolary-memoir and provides many interesting details about Stalin's life and the lives of his family members.

She completed her undergraduate studies at Moscow State University's Faculty of Philology. On November 10, 1984, she requested permission to return to the homeland, and by the end of November, she was already back in Moscow. The government gave her USSR citizenship back and settled her in Tbilisi. However, in less than two years she, along with her youngest daughter, went abroad again, first to the US, then to England.

K. Tsqitishvili