The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan (2015-06-02)

Well documented and researched, this biography digs deeply into Svetlana and the Russia she both loved and hated. Forgiving the amateur psychological analysis that gets a little thick here and there, the audience will find the numerous first-hand accounts rich with information.

Packed with interest, intrigue, sensitivity, cruel history.....goodness, I couldn't put down those 600 pages for all of a week until I reached
the very last sentence. I highly recommend this book for it brought out so many historical figures long forgotten but so much a part of our
lifetime. I loved it!

I would give the writing and research 4 stars, but the length became so tedious. I do feel like I know Svetlana pretty well. I was very interested to read about her life, both with her father and later. And although her father died when she was a young adult, she felt his shadow her whole life. Our parents, of course, will affect the course of our lives, for good or bad, but when your father was a famous dictator, known for extremely harsh policies, executions and imprisonments . . . well, that's quite a deep shadow to live with. I think she was as happy as any average person is, and I think that's saying something, considering the baggage she carried around.

Her life would make a wonderful historical fiction book. A lot of conflict around her as well as within.

‘Stalin’s Daughter,’ by Rosemary Sullivan, Looks at a Complicated Life. Reviewed in NY Times
“The strongest proof that Svetlana Alliluyeva was Joseph Stalin’s daughter is that this small, demure-looking redhead scared people — and not just because her face and coloring so resembled her father’s.
She had some of his fevered intensity, which showed up even in one of their favorite games: Hostess, in which little Svetlana gave bossy orders, and Russia’s unopposed tyrant, in the role of her humble Secretary, pretended to grovel in response. When he wasn’t signing letters to her as “Your Little Papa,” the man who struck fear in many a Russian heart was calling himself, in 1935, “Svetanka-Hostess’s wretched Secretary, the poor peasant J. Stalin,” for his 9-year-old princess’s amusement.
But a lot of Stalin’s teasing had a tone of threat to it, too. Nikita S. Khrushchev once said of this father-daughter relationship that “his was the tenderness of a cat for a mouse.” And as Svetlana grew up and saw the fear that her father, and even she, aroused, she was too smart to mistake the fairy tales he told her for Russian reality. Looking backward, as the Canadian historian Rosemary Sullivan does clearly and evenhandedly in “Stalin’s Daughter,” it appears astounding that the girl who could have had the world’s worst daddy issues managed to grow up at all.
The early part of this book is a tangle of fried and burned family relationships, all destroyed by Stalin as he rose to power. Though he was dependent on a large extended family during Svetlana’s earliest years, family portraits from that time must be captioned with the names of those he arrested, had shot or otherwise caused to disappear.
Most egregious and mysterious is the matter of the little girl’s mother, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, known as Nadya, who supposedly shot herself after a long, bitter evening of quarreling with her husband in front of many witnesses. The degree to which Svetlana was sheltered — she was 6 ½ at the time — was so extreme that she did not know of her mother’s possible suicide until years later.
Ms. Sullivan fills this measured, informative biography with contrasting theories about such events, because there is no such thing as an uncomplicated death that involved Joseph Stalin. But it is not a highly opinionated book. It paints a strong but slightly distant portrait of the headstrong Svetlana, whose every brush with adversity seemed to make her tougher. She grew up to be so sexually charged that she became a danger to any man on whom she set her sights.
When she had just turned 17, her romance with Aleksei Yakovlevich Kapler, a worldly Jewish cineaste, brought them some remarkable movie-watching moments (Garbo, in “Queen Christina”: “I have grown up in a great man’s shadow. I long to escape my destiny.”). It also brought Kapler five years in a labor camp — and another five after he stealthily visited Moscow, not looking for Svetlana but simply trying to see his wife.
Still, Svetlana entered into three official marriages in Russia (one a purely political arrangement cooked up by her father) and one common-law union before the dying wish of the last man, Brajesh Singh, allowed her to leave the country. He was Indian-born, and he wanted his ashes scattered on the Ganges. Svetlana liked India and perhaps would have enjoyed staying there indefinitely, had she not sensed opportunity at the American Embassy in New Delhi. But the book grows ever more fascinating in explaining how her 1967 decision to defect made for a huge mess late in the Cold War and turned her into a political football”.

Enlightening story that gives the reader an insight into Stalin's personality and the trials of living a life that is damaged by a father's treatment of his daughter. Also what life was like in Russia and what remains of Stalin's legacy.

An amazing true story about someone I didn't even know existed. Anyone interested in the goings on behind the Iron Curtain and the attitudes that are currently projected by the Putin administration and the return of Stalin admiration will find this book interesting.

This was a fascinating story and well written. Don't be intimidated by the size of the book; approximately the last quarter is footnotes. We don't often think about the family members of the historically infamous and how difficult that must be.

I found this to be quite interesting, but the problem is that it is twice as long as it needs to be. Svetlana herself was a very complex person, and I enjoyed learning about her. But I truly had to make myself read it, as we had selected it for our book club. Had that not been the case, I would never have finished this book.

Great reading - lots of interesting facts about the life at Kremlin during the early post-revolutionary times. Also, a very interesting portrait of Svietlana, a tyrant's daughter who was not able to live without being loved by a man.

An interesting story with seldom told events in Stalin's private life but the recounting of the daughter's later life can be too long and tedious. Still worth plowing through to learn something of the turbulent, emotional and tragic personality of Stslin's daughter.

This book introduces the reader to an intelligent woman who led a painful life under the shadow of her evil father. Ranging from Russia to India to locations throughout the USA, this biography is eye opening and well written. Strongly recommend .