Stalin's Daughter : The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
Author(s): Rosemary Sullivan
Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
PEN Literary Award Finalist
New York Times Notable Book
Washington Post Notable Book
Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history’s most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin.
Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.
As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States—leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father’s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Wisconsin.
With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it’s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father’s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.
Illustrated with photographs.
Review(s):
“[A] measured, informative biography...fascinating...an admiring portrait of an amazingly adaptable person facing all but insurmountable odds…[and who] refused to let her lineage seal her fate.”
“Riveting…. Throughout, Sullivan treats the wealth of facts she has uncovered with a sensitive, compassionate touch…. Sullivan tells a nuanced story that, while invariably sympathetic, nonetheless allows readers the freedom of their own interpretations.”
“Compelling…. Sullivan takes us confidently through an eventful life…. It’s to Ms. Sullivan’s credit that, at least in these pages, Alliluyeva herself is proved…a fascinating person not simply because of her name but because she was a willful, intelligent, passionate woman who resisted being gawked at as a freak of history: the monster’s pretty daughter.”
“[An] extraordinary book…. Rosemary Sullivan possesses the sensitivity necessary to unlock a beguiling and complex character worthy of admiration, not ridicule…. Superb.”
“A child of the Kremlin who as an adult defected to the United States, Svetlana led a strange and often sad life; Sullivan brings deep scholarship and sympathy to her story.”
“A principal virtue of…Sullivan’s empathetic Stalin’s Daughter is the vivid sense it offers of Alliluyeva…. Sullivan does a nice job of conveying her subject’s point of view without accepting it as the last word.”
“In her poignant biography, Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan tells Alliluyeva’s story with sympathy and sharp psychological insight.…Stalin’s Daughter soars on details culled from dozens of interviews and impressive archival research from KGB and CIA files. The glimpses into the Stalin household are invariably fascinating, and the subsequent wanderings of Svetlana as she searches for inner peace take on an epic quality. It is to Sullivan’s credit that she makes the Homeric wanderings of Svetlana Alliluyeva—who died, almost penniless, in 2011—not only comprehensible, but also unforgettably moving.”
“Stalin’s Daughter is a poignant look at the struggles of a dictator’s offspring.”
“[A] magisterial biography.”
“Sullivan tells Alliluyeva’s story with sympathy and sharp psychological insight.… [It] soars…. It is to Sullivan’s credit that she makes the Homeric wanderings of Svetlana Alliluyeva—who died, almost penniless, in 2011—not only comprehensible, but also unforgettably moving.”
ISBN: 9780062206121