Lana Peters, Stalin’s Daughter, Dies at 85

[n2doc]

By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: November 28, 2011


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.

Her death, like the last years of her life, occurred away from public view. There were hints of it online and in Richland Center, the Wisconsin town in which she lived, though a local funeral home said to be handling the burial would not confirm the death. A county official in Wisconsin thought she might have died several months ago. Phone calls seeking information from a surviving daughter, Olga Peters, who now goes by the name Chrese Evans, were rebuffed, as were efforts to speak to her in person in Portland, Ore., where she lives and works.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/world/europe/stalins-daughter-dies-at-85.html?hp&gwh=F59CA79E4F3804503D0C0CC66F13813F

[BeyondGeography]

1. Just read the obit

It all adds up to quite the saga. She comes through as very strong; moved out to the country, turned the noise off, and just lived. I find that admirable.

[riverwalker]

2. you never know

who is living right next door.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. I read a biography of Stalin

Svetlana was about the only person or thing that could bring human warmth out in him.

Rest in Peace.