Authors: Rosemary Sullivan
Interviews
IN THE UNITED STATES
Chrese Evans (Olga Peters), Marie Anderson, Michael Coyne, Aris Georges, Millie Harford, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Joan Kennan, Hella McVay, Thomas Miller, Walter Pozen, Robert and Ramona Rayle, Anne Reeves, Kathy Rossing, Alan Schwartz, Meryle Secrest, and Evgeniya Tucker.
IN RUSSIA
Alexander Pavlovich Alliluyev, Leonid Stanislavovich and Galina Ivanovna Alliluyev, Alexander Burdonsky, Marina
Rafailovna Kaul, Yelena Khanga, Diana Kondrashina, Stepan Anastasovich Mikoyan, and Alexander Mironovich Ushakov.
IN GEORGIA
Nestan Charkviani and Leila Sikmashvili.
IN ENGLAND
Mary Burkett, Pamela Egremont, Philippa Hill, Linda and Laurence Kelly, David and Clarissa Pryce-Jones, Jane Renfrew, Rosamond Richardson, and Vanessa Thomas.
IN CANADA
Olga Leonidovna Alliloueva and Frances Sedgwik.
IN MEXICO
Raoul Ortiz
In the USSR:
THE STALIN HOUSEHOLD
Vissarion “Beso” Djugashvili
: Stalin’s father; born in Georgia; a cobbler.
Ekaterina “Keke” Djugashvili
: Stalin’s mother, born in Georgia; seamstress and washerwoman; Stalin was her only surviving child.
Joseph “Soso” Vissarionovich Djugashvili
: Svetlana’s father; born in Gori, Georgia; revolutionary name Koba; adopted name Stalin (“steel”) in 1913.
Nadezhda “Nadya” (Alliluyeva) Stalina
: Stalin’s second wife and Svetlana’s mother; born in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Vasili “Vasya” Stalin
: Svetlana’s brother; born in Moscow, 1921; died of alcoholism.
Yakov “Yasha” Djugashvili
: Svetlana’s half brother; Stalin’s eldest son by first wife; born in Tbilisi, Georgia; captured by Germans in 1941; died in POW camp in 1943; second wife, Yulia Meltzer, arrested 1941; released 1943.
Artyom Sergeev
: adopted by Stalin when his father died in a train crash in 1921; lived with the Stalins until the late 1920s, when he returned to live with his mother.
Alexandra Andreevna Bychkova
: served as Svetlana’s nanny and as nanny to Svetlana’s children; died in 1956.
Carolina Til
: Latvian housekeeper who worked for the Stalins from 1927 to 1937, when she was dismissed during the “Great Terror.”
Mikhail Klimov
: Svetlana’s bodyguard; reluctant witness to the love affair with Aleksei Kapler, 1942–43.
Valentina “Valechka” Istomina
: Stalin’s loyal housekeeper and rumored intimate companion; served at Stalin’s Kuntsevo dacha from 1934 until Stalin’s death.
SVETLANA’S RELATIVES:
The Alliluyevs:
Olga Alliluyeva
: Svetlana’s maternal grandmother; born in Georgia of German ancestry; mother of four children.
Sergei Alliluyev
: Svetlana’s maternal grandfather; railway worker and Bolshevik revolutionary; introduced Stalin into the Alliluyev family in 1900.
Pavel Alliluyev
: Nadya’s brother; died of a heart attack in 1938; his wife, Zhenya, was arrested in 1947; released 1954.
Anna Alliluyeva
: Nadya’s sister: arrested in 1948; released in 1954; husband, Stanislav Redens, the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs in Kazakhstan and former head of the OGPU in the Ukraine; executed in 1940.
Fyodor Alliluyev
: Nadya’s brother, born in 1898; had mental breakdown in 1918–19, during training exercises in the Russian Civil War.
Svetlana’s Cousins and Childhood Companions:
Children of Pavel and Zhenya Alliluyev
: Kyra arrested 1948; released 1953; Sergei; and Alexander.
Children of Anna and Stanislav Redens: Leonid; Vladimir.
Svetlana’s Nephew:
Alexander Burdonsky
: son of Svetlana’s brother Vasili Stalin; rejected the name Stalin and assumed mother’s name Burdonsky; well-known theater director.
Svanidzes:
Ekaterina “Kato” Svanidze
: Stalin’s first wife; Georgian; married 1906; died of typhus in 1907.
Alexander “Alyosha” Svanidze
: brother of Stalin’s first wife, Kato; worked for Soviet Bank for Foreign Trade until arrest and execution in 1941; wife, Maria Svanidze, former Georgian opera singer; diarist; executed in 1942. Only son “Johnik.”
Mariko and Sashiko Svanidze
: sisters of Stalin’s first wife, Kato; Mariko was executed in 1942.
SVETLANA’S HUSBANDS IN THE USSR:
Grigori “Grisha” Morozov
: Jewish friend of Vasili; married in 1944; divorced in 1947; went on to become a law professor.
Yuri Zhdanov
: son of Supreme Soviet chairman Andrei Zhdanov; married 1949; divorced 1951; head of the Science Department of the Central Committee at age twenty-eight.
Johnreed “Johnik” (Ivan) Svanidze
: sent to orphanage for children of the condemned; exiled to Kazakhstan to work in mines;
returned to Moscow in 1956; married Svetlana in church wedding, 1962; divorced after one year.
Brajesh Singh
: son of the Rajah of Kalakankar in Uttar Pradesh; common-law husband; met Svetlana in 1963; died in 1966.
SVETLANA’S CHILDREN IN THE USSR:
Joseph Alliluyev
: son of Grigori Morozov; born in 1945; neurologist; first wife, Elena; son Ilya; second wife, Lyuda; died in 2008.
Katya Zhdanov
: daughter of Yuri Zhdanov; born in 1950; worked as a volcanologist in Kamchatka; daughter, Anya.
SVETLANA’S LOVERS IN THE USSR:
Aleksei Kapler
: Jewish screenwriter; platonic love affair 1942–43; exiled by Stalin to Gulag for ten years.
Yuri Tomsky
: son of Mikhail Tomsky, trade union leader who committed suicide in 1936; brought up in the Gulag as an orphan.
David Samoilov
: born in 1920; Jewish; one of the most important Russian postwar poets; died 1990.
Andre Sinyavsky
: dissident writer; arrested with Yuli Daniel in 1966; sentenced to seven years in the Gulag for anti-Soviet activity; released in 1971; emigrated to Paris with his wife, Maria Rozanova, in 1973; died 1997.
SVETLANA’S CIRCLE OF RUSSIAN FRIENDS:
Sergo Beria
: childhood friend at Model School No. 25; son of Lavrenty Beria.
Ilya Ehrenburg
: journalist; author of the novel
The Thaw
(1954), which gave its name to the post-Stalin period.
Lily Golden
: researcher at the Institute of African Studies and the author of articles on African music and culture.
Kyra Golovko
: actress; husband, Arsenii; chief of staff of the Navy of the USSR; friends at House on the Embankment.
Boris Gribanov
: editor at Children’s Literature Press; friend of David Samoilov.
Stepan Mikoyan
: son of Stalin’s minister Anastas Mikoyan; wife, Ella.
Marfa Peshkova
: granddaughter of Maxim Gorky; married to Sergo Beria.
Olga Rifkina
: fellow student at Model School No. 25; lifelong friend.
Fyodor Volkenstein
: professor of chemistry in Moscow; inspired Svetlana to write
Twenty Letters to a Friend.
STALIN’S MINISTERS AND OFFICIALS:
Lavrenty Beria
: Mingrelian; chief of Stalin’s secret police from 1938; Politburo member in charge of nuclear bomb; arrested after Stalin’s death; executed 1953.
Nikita Khrushchev
: Nadya’s fellow student at Industrial Academy; first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964; ousted 1964; “Secret Speech” in 1956 responsible for de-Stalinization policy; died in 1971.
Sergei Kirov
: Secretary of the Leningrad Party; assassinated 1934; his assassination was prelude to the subsequent “Great Terror.”
Anastas Mikoyan
: deputy prime minister, 1937; chairman of Supreme Soviet of USSR, 1964; died in 1978.
Vyacheslav Molotov
: first deputy premier from 1942 to 1957; dismissed by Khrushchev; retired in 1961; died in 1986.
Polina Molotov
: wife of Vyacheslav; close friend of Nadya Stalin; Fisheries Commissar; arrested in 1948; released in 1953; died in 1970.
Andrei Zhdanov
: chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1938 to 1947; as head of Ideology, originated Zhdanov Doctrine; dismissed by Stalin 1947; died of a heart attack in 1948.
Abel Enukidze
: Nadya’s godfather, secretary of the Central Executive Committee; dismissed and arrested in 1935; executed in 1937.
General Nikolai Vlasik
: chief of Stalin’s security detail from 1931 to 1952; head of Guards Directorate; died in 1967.
Genrikh Yagoda
: director of NKVD (Soviet Union’s Security and Intelligence Agency) from 1934 to 1936; arrested in 1937; executed in 1938.
Nikolai Yezhov
: director of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938; presided over “Great Terror”; arrested in 1939; executed in 1940.
VICTIMS OF ANTI-COSMOPOLITAN CAMPAIGN AND DOCTORS’ PLOT:
Solomon Mikhoels
: director of Moscow’s Yiddish State Theater; head of the Jewish anti-Fascist Committee, killed in 1948, at the beginning of the Anti-Cosmopolitan Campaign.
Dr. Yakov Rapoport
: Soviet pathologist; victim of the Doctors’ Plot. Arrested in December 1952; released in March 1953.
In India:
I. A. Benediktov
: Soviet ambassador to India; returned Svetlana’s passport, enabling her defection in 1967.
Triloki Nath Kaul
: Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union and a friend of Brajesh Singh; carried Svetlana’s manuscript out of Moscow in 1966; daughter, Preeti.
Mrs. Kassirova
: functionary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Svetlana’s minder on trip to India.
Dinesh Singh
: nephew of Brajesh Singh; minister of State in government of Indira Gandhi from 1966 to 1967; daughter, Reva.
Suresh Singh
: brother of Brajesh Singh; Svetlana’s host during her stay in Kalakankar before her defection.
THE US EMBASSY IN INDIA:
Chester Bowles
: US ambassador to India and Nepal in 1967; made the decision to give Svetlana a tourist visa to the United States; his term ended in 1968.
George Huey
: consul at the US embassy in Delhi; the first officer to talk with Svetlana.
Robert Rayle
: second secretary at the US embassy in Delhi, undercover CIA officer; accompanied Svetlana to Italy and Switzerland during her defection in 1967.
IN SWITZERLAND:
Antonino Janner
: chief of the East European section of the Swiss Foreign Ministry; took charge of Svetlana.
United States:
Cass Canfield
: publisher of Harper & Row; published Svetlana’s first two books.
Fritz Ermarth
: CIA national intelligence officer for the USSR and East Europe in 1984, when Svetlana returned to the USSR.
Edward Greenbaum
: “the General”; partner in New York law firm Greenbaum Wolff & Ernst; handled Svetlana’s visa and copyright; secured advance of $1.5 million.
Donald Jameson
: CIA officer; instrumental in securing Svetlana’s entry into the United States; assisted Svetlana during her early years in the United States.
George Kennan
: ex-ambassador to the Soviet Union; faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; wife, Annelise.
Foy Kohler
: undersecretary of State in the Johnson administration in 1967; spearheaded refusal of asylum to Svetlana.
Alan Schwartz
: lawyer; assistant to Edward Greenbaum.
Evan Thomas
: executive vice president of Harper & Row.
Russian Government Officials (from 1967):
Yuri Andropov
: appointed head of the KGB in 1967, shortly after Svetlana’s defection; succeeded Brezhnev as general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CPSU) in 1982; chairman of the Supreme Soviet (president) in June 1983; ill by August; died in 1984.
Leonid Brezhnev
: replaced Khrushchev as general secretary of the CPSU from 1964 to 1982; reinitiated policies of repression; died 1982.
Mikhail Gorbachev
: general secretary from 1985 to 1991; initiated failed policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring); granted Svetlana permission to leave the USSR in 1986.
Alexei Kosygin
: premier in 1964 after ouster of Khrushchev; shared power with Brezhnev as part of collective leadership; died in 1980.
Mikhail Suslov
: second secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Party’s chief ideologue; in 1966 refused Svetlana permission to marry Singh; died in 1982.
KGB AGENTS:
Vasiliy Fedorovich Sanko
: kidnapped Evdokia Petrova, wife of KGB officer Vladimir Petrov, in 1954; reputed to have been sent to kidnap Svetlana in 1967.
Viktor Louis (Vitaly Yevgenyevich Lui)
: pirated Svetlana’s
Twenty Letters to a Friend
and sold it to Flegon Press in London; sold family photos to
Stern
magazine.
George Kurpel
: possible KGB agent; attempted to engineer defection of Svetlana’s son, Joseph Alliluyev, in 1975.
Husband and Relatives in the United States:
Wesley Peters
: head architect, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation: married to Svetlana from 1970 to 1972; died in 1991.