Stalin's daughter dies at 85

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/world/europe/stalins-daughter-dies-at-85.html

Quote :

Her three successive names were signposts on a twisted, bewildering road that took her from Stalin’s Kremlin, where she was the “little princess,” to the West in a celebrated defection, then back to the Soviet Union in a puzzling homecoming, and finally to decades of obscurity, wandering and poverty.

At her birth, on Feb. 28, 1926, she was named Svetlana Stalina, the only daughter and last surviving child of the brutal Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin. After he died in 1953, she took her mother’s last name, Alliluyeva. In 1970, after her defection and an American marriage, she became and remained Lana Peters.

Ms. Peters died of colon cancer on Nov. 22 in Richland County, Wis., the county’s corporation counsel, Benjamin Southwick, said on Monday...

Sounds like she lead a very tough life.

R.I.P.

True. Though $2.5 million in 1967, even after tax, was a considerable amount of money.

There is a whole mythos in Russia about the daughters, wives, and mistresses of the men who have inhabited the Kremlin over the years. Some of these women lived bizarre and tragic lives. I haven't read much about Alliluyeva (btw - what a last name! It means "hallelujah"), but Brezhnev's daughter in particular had the most famous descent into alcoholism, mental illness, and poverty. The daughters of the more recent presidents have had it better. Yeltsin's daughter was the de facto ruler of Russia during some of Boris' sick days. She is likely still pulling some major strings in the oligarchic circles. One of Putin's daughters apparently married a South Korean tycoon. Medvedev's family appears to be the the most normal, with their iPads and all.