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[drums and maracas]

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[narrator] Moscow, during the Cold War.

It was '67. It was the time of the beginning of all these Brezhnev frost.

On the evening of the 6th of March,

a Russian woman walks into the American Embassy in New Delhi

and asks for political asylum.

[Grace] There was nobody who really spoke Russian in the Embassy

and she said she wanted to defect and she was Stalin's daughter.

But they weren't sure she really was Stalin's daughter.

I mean she could be a fake "Stalin's daughter".

It really is Svetlana Alliluyeva.

She was flown out, escorted by an agent from the CIA.

For the Soviet authorities,

it is an embarrassing setback in the propaganda war with the USA.

We tried to do everything to prevent this with London.

One of the possibilities was to kill her.

The arrival of Stalin's daughter in New York is a sensation.

[Grace] They saw it as a victory.

Here she comes, her freedom and freedom to be herself.

Svetlana, the Kremlin Princess.

How did the favorite child of the Red Tzar

become the most famous defector of the Cold War?

[Sergei] She didn't want to live under this shade of an umbrella,

this monstrous... history.

[drums and maracas]

[marching]

[piano music]

The Empire of the Red Tzar...

Joseph Stalin, worshipped by many, feared by even more.

Responsible for the death of millions.

He is the father of two sons and one daughter, Svetlana.

[piano music continues]

Here, the human face of the bloody dictator is revealed...

as the proud father of his beloved daughter, Svetlana.

[piano music continues]

[gentle music] [cheering]

The people of the Soviet Union call the bloody dictator who rules them "Father Stalin".

The personality cult surrounding him knows no limits.

Joseph Jughashvili is born in Georgia. The son of a shoemaker.

As Joseph Stalin, the Steel One,

he rises to become a member of the Inner Circle of Marx's Revolutionaries.

He is not among the most prominent of them.

[mysterious music]

But that will change.

In January 1924, the leader of the Russian Revolution,

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is carried to his grave.

Only a short time before, he had warned about Stalin's ambitions.

The potential successors gather around the coffin.

The struggle for Lenin's legacy has begun.

[drums and maracas]

Stalin's rise to the position of Undisputed Head of the Kremlin

is partly due to Svetlana's mother.

Stalin's second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva,

was a close confidant of Lenin's as well as his secretary.

Svetlana's mother, Nadezhda, is only 16 years old when she falls in love with Stalin...

more than 20 years her senior.

He is a friend of the family.

[piano music]

In 1921 their son, Vasili, was born.

Then in 1926, Svetlana.

In one of her first interviews in the USA, she remembers...

[Svetlana] He was the same person who was merciless to his political enemies.

He could be at the same time rather kind and tender with his favorite child.

Everything was there. Cruelty was there and...

and sending fruits and writing

tender letters to his daughter was also there.

[gentle music]

In Moscow's Central Archives, the blueprints of unknown letters

from Joseph Stalin to Svetlana have come to light.

They indicate that the relationship between father and daughter was tender.

[gentle music continues]

In 1931, for example...

in Order Number 3, Svetlana, then five years old,

instructs her father to take her to the movies... an American comedy.

The dictator scribbles his reply...

"I obey my lady, Joseph Stalin."

Behind the walls of the Kremlin,

the leaders of the young Soviet Union live in close proximity.

Svetlana's mother, Nadezhda, wants to be more than Stalin's wife.

After the birth of their daughter, she begins to study.

Svetlana's mother intends to be active in the construction of the Socialist State.

One of her friends at university will one day succeed Stalin as the head of the Communist Party.

Nadezhda introduces Nikita Khrushchev to her husband.

[Sergei] My father became the Party Secretary so he was supervisor

and she came here asking advice from him,

what she has to do and how to behave.

And when he was invited to the Stalin home,

he found that's she's a very different person at home.

From 1927 on, Svetlana's father

is the sole ruler of the Soviet Union with unlimited power.

Joseph Stalin ruthlessly pushes forward with the forced collectivization of agriculture.

Any resistance is brutally suppressed.

Millions of people starve to death.

[ominous music]

On the 8th of November, 1932,

Soviet dignitaries celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution.

Svetlana's mother mingles with the common people.

It is the last time Nadezhda is seen alive.

[gunshot]

Nadezhda's body is laid out in the Kremlin.

Ruptured appendix is the official cause of death stipulated by Stalin.

[birds singing]

At Nadezhda's grave, Joseph Stalin reveals his true nature.

Svetlana will be told that her mother died after surgery to remove her appendix.

Exactly what Stalin did that night has never been fully explained.

Before her death, Stalin lived a normal, personal life.

Nadezhda's death...

really...

changed Stalin's nature for the worse.

Svetlana and Vasili are left motherless.

They also have a half-brother, Yakov, from Stalin's first marriage.

His mother died of typhoid.

[drums and maracas]

From now on, Joseph Stalin will only be wedded to power.

Stepan Mikoyan knew Stalin's children since their childhood together in the Kremlin.

Later, he makes a career for himself in the Soviet Air Force,

together with Vasili.

Life in the Kremlin is dominated by fear and uncertainty.

In the mid 1930's, Stalin's great Purge begins,

and not even the members of the inner circle are safe.

Svetlana and Vasili experience all this at close quarters.

Stalin spends most of his time in his dacha outside Moscow.

For weeks on end, the only contact he has with his daughter is by letter.

The tone of the correspondence is affectionate.

It appears that his daughter has forgotten about her father.

He requests further instructions, inquiries about her health.

"You are offending your father.

I kiss you and wait for your letter. Papa."

The granddaughter of the writer Maxim Gorky and Stalin's daughter

become the best of friends.

[piano music]

Marfa Peshkova is probably the only person still alive who witnessed Joseph Stalin

as an affectionate father in his private surroundings.

For the first time the Kremlin princess

has a friend who is the same age.

[gentle music]

Svetlana and Marfa are in the same class at school.

They often spend the weekends together in Stalin's dacha.

Marfa dreads dinners together with Joseph Stalin.

It is because she has such a close relationship with Stalin's daughter...

that Marfa witnesses the way Svetlana, as a young girl in Moscow...

discovers the truth about her mother's death.

Svetlana and her father never speak about the lie.

Her brother, Vasili, also suffers from this loss and, on top of that,

he gets little attention from their father.

The devoted father of the Russian people sacrificing himself for them.

This is the picture created by the propaganda around Joseph Stalin.

The new Moscow. It is all to his credit.

In school children are taught the superiority of socialism.

[Grace] I didn't think of Stalin as a family man.

I mean we knew he was like a god almost

and in math we learned the difference

how many days between Lenin's birthday and Stalin's birthday,

things like that.

The daughter of the American diplomat, George Kennan,

attends a normal school in Moscow.

She participates in everyday life in the Soviet Union.

We went to a restaurant and they had dancing.

And a Russian army officer came over and asked me to dance.

And then one of the people from our Embassy

went up and said, "This is the daughter of the American Ambassador,"

and he turned white. I mean I could see it myself he was pretty terrified.

In 1937, the terror of Stalin's Purge reaches a climax throughout the country.

Millions of people are exiled or murdered.

Stalin's cruelty can be turned upon anyone.

Even those closest to him.

[Sergei] In the peak of these purges

my father told that it was a very dangerous time

because Stalin just...

brought him to the Kremlin

and looked in his eyes...

very straight and told "You are not Khrushchev."

And my father was really nervous and he told Comrade Stalin,

"You can ask all my neighbors in my village of my name, I am Khrushchev."

And Stalin...

who looks in his eyes tried to...

fix his reaction of this.

Beria, the head of secret police, was drunk.

The dictator regards everyone as a potential spy and traitor.

Even comrades who fought side by side with Stalin.

Polina, wife of his closest associate Molotov, is banished to the Gulag.

[aircraft sound]

From 1941 the Soviet Union is at war with Nazi Germany.

Not long after the war begins, Stalin's first born son Yakov, is captured by the Germans.

After Stalingrad, the Nazis offer to exchange him for Field Marshal Paulus.

Stalin responds, "I'm not going to exchange a Private for a Field Marshal."

Svetlana's brother commits suicide in the concentration camp.

Yakov flings himself onto an electrified fence.

[somber music]

Night after night, there are arrests in Moscow.

Stalin drives Svetlana's uncle on her mother's side to his death.

Her aunts and cousins are seized by the secret police.

Svetlana could no longer turn a blind eye.

[somber music continues]

Stalin's oldest grandson, Svetlana's nephew,

is the Russian Theater Director Alexander Burdonsky.

He was born in 1941. The son of Vasili.

Followed two years later by his sister, Nadezhda.

Neither of them will ever experience their grandfather in a family setting.

Vasili and Svetlana on a journey to the Crimea.

As they grow older, they have less and less contact with their father.

Vasili makes a career for himself in the Air Force. He rises to the rank of General.

This is one of the rare public appearances of Stalin's children.

Svetlana seems almost uneasy to be paid so much attention.

Vasili's excessive alcohol consumption has long been an open secret.

He owes his career in the Air Force

to the absolute power of his father.

He was an awful person because he had no brakes.

When I did something wrong, my mother told,

"You mustn't do this or you will be like Vasili Stalin."

And it was and I told her I don't want to be like Vasili Stalin.

[somber music]

Svetlana wants to study literature

but Joseph Stalin forces her to study history.

Svetlana yearns for a normal life.

A group of friends who have nothing to do with the intrigues of power.

Her first great love is a Jewish filmmaker 20 years her senior...

Aleksei Kapler.

[piano music]

Svetlana is in love.

She goes to see her father in their dacha.

Stalin's reaction shocks Svetlana.

Joseph Stalin has his daughter's lover arrested

and banished to a gulag for ten years.

Svetlana refuses to be intimidated.

A year later, she is again in love with a Jew, Grigory Morozov.

Svetlana's marriage collapses.

But during that brief period, she becomes a mother for the first time...

at the age of 19.

After their divorce, Svetlana's husband loses his job...

and her father-in-law is arrested.

Now, Joseph Stalin attempts to find a husband for Svetlana who meets with his approval.

Stepan Mikoyan is one of the candidates on the shortlist.

Svetlana's second marriage to the son of a Politburo collapses just as quickly.

She is left with a daughter.

Now Svetlana lives with her son, Joseph, and her daughter, Yekaterina,

in an apartment Stalin has arranged.

The children hardly know their grandfather.

Joseph Stalin dies on the 5th of March 1953 from a stroke.

Svetlana is the only member of the family to be called to his death bed.

They never spoke to one another again.

[somber music]

Throughout the country the funeral is a state occasion.

The Russian people are in mourning for father Stalin.

At this time, Stalin's oldest grandson is attending a cadet school.

[somber music continues]

Crowds file past Stalin's coffin.

[somber music continues]

Although the relationship between them was difficult,

Svetlana mourns her father sincerely.

Joseph Stalin is carried to his grave.

In 1953, the world is dominated by the Cold War.

But Svetlana dreams of a life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Not long after Stalin's death, his daughter decides to use her mother's maiden name.

From now on, she calls herself Svetlana Alliluyeva.

Nikita Khrushchev, the old friend of Svetlana's mother

who will later be her father's successor,

breaks with the legacy of the Bloody Dictator.

All of us believed that Stalin was a god

and he was really the person who

tried to do the best to the people.

[ominous music]

After Stalin dies, Vasili is demoted

and later sentenced to eight years in prison.

In 1961 he dies, aged just 41, from the consequences of his alcoholism.

He is buried in a grave alongside his mother.

In the late '50s and early '60s, Svetlana leads a reclusive life in Moscow with her children.

She secretly writes her memoirs.

The Soviet Union has become a prison for Stalin's daughter.

During a stay in hospital in 1963,

Svetlana meets an Indian man, Brajesh Singh, and falls in love with him.

Brajesh Singh is seriously ill with a lung condition.

Svetlana requests an audience with the Russian Premier, Alexei Kosygin.

The mission is not granted.

On the 31st of October 1966, Singh dies in Svetlana's arms.

Svetlana wants to take his ashes to India in person.

Since 1964, Leonid Brezhnev has been ruling the Soviet Union.

By implying her contacts and her cunning, Svetlana persuades Brezhnev.

In January 1967, he allows her to make the journey.

By now Svetlana is 40 years old.

For the first time, she is allowed to leave the Soviet Union.

[piano music]

Stalin's daughter travels to India.

Her children, almost grown up by now, remain behind.

It is the peak of the Cold War.

In 1967, the Americans are fighting in Vietnam

to halt the spread of Communist regimes.

And the Soviet Union is busy rattling savers.

In India, Svetlana blossoms.

She would very much like to remain with the Singh family,

but the Indian government won't allow this.

After almost two months, the KGB tries to force her to return.

But Stalin's daughter decides to make her escape.

She said she wanted to defect and she was Stalin's daughter

but they weren't sure she really was Stalin's daughter.

That's when the State Department decided that they had to have

somebody who could authenticate her.

And they picked my father.

That very same night, accompanied by a CIA agent,

Svetlana is flown out of the country.

She is to meet with George Kennan in neutral Switzerland.

[Grace] He was quite impressed.

First of all, it was definitely Stalin's daughter. That was not even a question.

The soviet leadership is informed in a secret telegram.

At this point, Svetlana's children also discover that she has fled.

At the time, Joseph is 21 years old and Yekaterina is 17.

She will never forgive her mother for abandoning her.

[anticipatory music]

The Kremlin sets it's propaganda machine in motion.

It is claimed that Stalin's daughter went insane and was kidnapped by the CIA.

Worse things are planned.

One of these possibilities was to kill her.

I don't know? Did they receive the order to kill her

because they could not kill her without Brezhnev's approval.

On the 12th of April 1967, Svetlana lands in New York.

[Grace] I was there at the airport.

My sister, Joan, and I were up in a... we were up high and looking down

and we could see snipers on the roof.

We'd never seen snipers on the roof.

Um, you know, there was tremendous excitement when she defected.

[reporter] A woman once known as "the little princess of the Kremlin"

arrives in America from Switzerland.

Svetlana, the 42 year old daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin,

sought asylum here, where one can feel...

[narrator] Even before her arrival, Svetlana had sold her memoirs

for a record sum of three million dollars.

[reporter] ...dogma has lost its significance. It's impossible...

[narrator] The daughter of the Red Tzar has become a propaganda tool for western capitalism.

If you defected, it was clear that you will become...

manipulated by CIA

and it became part of the big political game.

At first, Svetlana is hidden on a farm belonging to George Kennan.

His daughter, Grace, looks after her there.

[Grace] He made me feel like we had Trotsky there.

You know, that she could be any time kidnapped or assassinated.

The State Department offered her security and she turned it down.

She, I remember her telling me about it and she was twirling around.

She was very physically exuberant.

She was kind of twirling and saying "I'm free! I'm free!"

And I was thinking "Yeah, you're free and I'm worried."

Because I was worried.

Svetlana receives the international press in a luxury New York hotel

and talks about her future in the USA.

Well uh...

I think that the, before the marriage it should be love.

So, if I will love this country and this country will love me,

then the marriage will be settled but I cannot say now.

The public is surprised by her good English.

The sale of rights to her book make Svetlana rich.

Stalin's daughter is treated as a media star proclaiming the joys of freedom.

I am dreaming about the time when...

two countries, two great countries, Russia and the United States,

could become really friendly and people could have free contacts

and travel here and there.

Now Svetlana is invited everywhere.

One of these invitations takes her to Taliesin.

This artist's colony, set in the hilly Wisconsin countryside,

reminds her of Georgia, her father's homeland.

It is here that she will find new love.

Only a few weeks after her arrival, she marries Wesley Peters,

the closest assistant of the brilliant architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

[piano music]

Svetlana is already 44 years old when their daughter, Olga, is born.

It looks as though her happiness is perfect.

But the reporters who come to talk to her

only ever want to talk about one thing... Joseph Stalin.

[reporter] It's ironic, but the granddaughter of Joseph Stalin is born

a capitalistic of the United States.

No I don't know. First of all, I don't see any irony

about myself living in this country.

I feel very much at home here.

[narrator] Her happiness with her new husband is, once again, short lived.

Svetlana feels restricted by the strict regulations in the artist's commune.

Though this is the framework of Wesley Peters' life...

she buys a nearby ranch for her husband's son.

But not even this step can rescue her marriage.

[Grace] She almost always made poor decisions.

She was just...

I mean, lots of people told her not to give her money away,

not to invest in, as we were told,

it was in the ranch of her husband's son.

She always did exactly what she wanted to do.

And that was a little bit, maybe the princess element, I'm referring to.

Svetlana moves to Princeton.

She lived there before this marriage.

But her dream of teaching literature at the University

comes to nothing.

She still has money there.

A second book about her first year in the USA is also a financial success.

Back in Moscow, Svetlana has arranged to be baptized.

Now in Princeton, she finds friends among the Anglican community.

She hardly ever appears in public these days.

She feels as though she's being watched, followed everywhere.

[Rosa] She was very much afraid of other people.

In fact, she would come to our house

but she would ask us please

to not have other people.

She turned down...

parties to the President of the United States twice.

She thought she was being manipulated by the CIA often.

Stalin's daughter finds it impossible to be at peace.

Svetlana moves around the world restlessly.

Since her escape from the Soviet Union,

she has had no contact with her children.

I was prepared...

not to see them for a long time but I was not prepared to the idea that

they will not be permitted to even to write to me.

Their well-being depends on the fact that they are cut off from me.

Homeless and lonely, Svetlana attempts to find a home for herself with her daughter.

When she goes to see a Russian film in the cinema with one of her friends,

Svetlana breaks down.

We went together to see "Oblomov" ...

and...

a half hour after everybody else had left the theater...

she was still sobbing uncontrollably.

She said this was her childhood, this was the earth she remembered.

It brought everything in.

The mother, the love of a mother.

Because it just took her back to really mother Russia.

New headlines in 1984, "Svetlana returns to Moscow with her American daughter, Olga".

Did her son ask her to come back

on the urging of the KGB and the leaders of the country?

This is what Svetlana believes later.

She soon feels she is being used by the government for Soviet propaganda.

Even the Soviet leadership gradually leaves her alone.

After only a year, she is permitted to travel back to the west

without any difficulty.

Feeling restless, always running,

she lives in England for some time and then returns to the USA.

Svetlana changes homes more than 40 times.

Each time the residences are smaller and there is less money.

Martha Schad meets her at the final stage of her life's voyage.

The home in Wisconsin accepts the needy.

Once again, the highs and lows of Svetlana's life

are to be depicted.

But how is it possible to write about Svetlana without talking about Stalin?

[Martha] The land of her father...

[shouts in frustration]

-[Martha] Alrighty. -Just stop...

[Martha] I stop it, I stop it right away. I'm sorry.

-I don't want to be... -[Martha] OK I stop it.

-I don't want quotations from you. -[Martha] Alrighty.

-Russian papers. -[Martha] Alrighty.

[Martha] OK.

My father.

Svetlana Alliluyeva, the princess from the Kremlin,

dies in utter poverty in November 2011.

She talked about when she was living in the poor houses

with other people,

sharing bathrooms and kitchens.

She was happy about that, she said this was right.

"I started at the top, I should end at the bottom. That's the great balance."

Stalin did love his daughter, Svetlana.

But there was no escape for her from the shadow of his life.

[somber music]

[somber music continues]