First published 2017
Svetlana Alliluyeva lived her early years behind Kremlin walls as Stalin's eldest daughter. Born in the Soviet Union's first decade, she grew up sheltered by Communist Party officials who hid the famine and purges devastating her country. After her father's death, Svetlana began discovering the regime's true cruelty. In 1967, she shocked the world by escaping to the United States and speaking out. Rosemary Sullivan draws on KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives to reconstruct Svetlana's extraordinary life. This biography reveals a tormented woman caught between her desire to escape her past and her father's enduring shadow. The Cold War powers used her as a political pawn while she struggled repeatedly to forge her own identity. Sullivan examines this complex figure within an equally complex historical moment, keeping focus on the human story while opening doors to the brutal twentieth century history that continues to captivate us.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: identity-crisis, political-pawn
Setting: Kremlin, United States, Soviet Union
Period: 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s
544 pages · Hardcover · DEBATE
Content warnings: violence