Svetlana Alliluyeva Twenty Letters To A Friend

Svetlana Alliluyeva Twenty Letters To A Friend – No matter how cruel or harsh our country may be, no matter how often we stumble and get hurt, no matter how many undeserved wrongs we may experience, no one who loves Russia in his heart will ever betray it, give up or run away. in search of material comfort. Her calm and wise beauty shines like a soft, sad light from a pale sky. It will survive everything and last forever.

I’m still not quite sure how I stumbled upon this book—a first edition, no less—but I picked it up to read the other day and put it down within the next forty-eight hours. Svetlana’s letters are some of the most intimate, subtle, psychologically fascinating autobiographical works I have ever read. Yes, much of the book’s magnetism can be explained by the fact that her father was none other than Joseph Stalin himself, but there is more to it; Svetlana herself is a thoughtful, introspective and highly conflicted personality, and the way she puts her memories on paper is both captivating and haunting.

Svetlana Alliluyeva Twenty Letters To A Friend

Perhaps my favorite part of this book was the pamphlet I found tucked inside the cover at a publishing company sponsored by The American Book of the Month Club. I read this little pamphlet before diving into the book, and the amount of passive-aggressive jabs it contained made me brace myself for an utterly miserable book. Here’s just a snippet of what the Book of the Month Club has to say about Ms. Alliluyeva’s work:

Review: Stalin’s Daughter, Rosemary Sullivan’s New Biography, Explores The Strange Life Of Svetlana Alliluyeva

First of all, it can’t be argued that this is a great piece of art [read: sorry for forcing this book on you]. The author is not an experienced professional writer. She has simply spontaneously put down what is heavy in her heart and remains in memory. She is clearly a woman of good will and character, with a rather innocent mind [read: low intelligence]. As a result of a biological accident, her father became a malevolent man with a complex and evil mind. The contradiction between father and daughter has produced a book that is certainly extremely interesting [the need for the writer’s name makes their reluctance palpable]. What remains is a transparently sincere human document, often touching in its lack of sophistication [tasting contempt?], showing us a Stalin that no historian, no scholar, or even any other Russian could ever show us. It remains a pathetic [yes, pathetic] but never exaggerated account of the tragedy of a strange family […].

Now, having read the book in its entirety, I am puzzled, outraged, and of course a little amused by America’s inability to say anything nice about the Russian in 1967. Every compliment carries contempt and judgment. Although Svetlana may not be a professional author, her words vividly reflect her family and life in Russia, and she captures the personalities and motivations of her parents, siblings, aunts and uncles very keenly. She is introspective, humble and, despite what the Book of the Month Club might imply, very intelligent. In particular, I am fascinated by the psychological complexity of her relationship with her father Joseph Stalin.

Svetlana gives her readers a glimpse of a side of Stalin that history books never illuminate: Stalin is a father. Svetlana’s childhood was far from ideal, but despite being the daughter of the most powerful man in all of Russia, her childhood was neither spoiled nor neglected. Although she is still open about her father’s bullying of her brother Yakov (who eventually committed suicide), she also remembers his love of nature, his years of jokes with her, games and many kisses. To Russia and the world, he represented fear and power. For Svetlana, he was simple

. She doesn’t gloss over his monsters, apologize for his sins, or ask for our sympathy. She tells her story the way it needs to be told: with care and candor. I love the way another reviewer described the power of Svetlana’s memoir:

The Red Daughter,’ By John Burnah Schwartz Book Review

Allilueva’s memoirs are sensational, but they are anything but sensational. Her prose is simple and clear, and her narrative style is reminiscent of a child at the time. Even the family tragedies – the suicide of the mother, the relentless destruction of the Alliluyu family and, yes, the death of the father – are described in clear, businesslike language. That’s not to say Twenty Letters is emotionless. With almost nothing standing between us and the horror of these events, we are overwhelmed with all their emotional impact. The author does not for a moment try to evoke our sympathy; she simply tells how it happened. It’s the opposite of a disaster memoir. [source]

Much more cannot and should not be said about Svetlana’s letters. Whether she wants it to or not, they illuminate her heart’s co-existing love and revulsion for her father, Stalin. She loves him with the unwavering love of a daughter, yet she refuses to ignore the pain and death he brought to his family, country, and world. It is this puzzle of conflicting emotions, love and hate, that makes Svetlana’s letters so deeply haunting. I probably won’t forget them or him anytime soon.

History is a harsh judge. It is not for me, but for history, to decide who served the purpose of good and who of vanity and vanity. I certainly have no rights. A book that looks new but has been read. There is no visible wear to the cover and a dust jacket (if present) is included for the hardcovers. There are no missing or damaged pages, no folds or tears, and no underlining/highlighting or writing in the margins. There may be very minimal identification marks on the inner cover. Very minimal wear. See the seller’s listing for full details and a description of the defect. View all condition definitions open in a new window or tab

“The dust jacket is torn and worn, but the book itself is like new. See photos for more. “

Letters To Olga

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In this riveting New York Times best-selling memoir, first published by Harper in 1967, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the subject of Rosemary Sullivan’s biography Stalin’s Daughter, describes the surreal experience of growing up in the Kremlin under her father’s shadow. , Joseph Stalin. Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva, later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin and his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967, she fled the Soviet Union to India, where she applied to the US embassy for asylum. Once there, she showed her CIA handler something remarkable: a personal memoir about growing up in the Kremlin that she had written in 1963. The Indian ambassador to the USSR, with whom she had befriended, had smuggled the manuscript out of the Soviet Union. the previous year and gave it to her as soon as she arrived in India. Svetlana refused to identify him, but now we know it was her close friend Fyodor Volkenstein, this amazing memoir reveals the dark heart of the Kremlin man, framed as a series of letters to a “friend”. After opening with Stalin’s death, Svetlana returns to her childhood. Each letter adds a new thread to her remarkable story; some are belated—romanticized memories of her early years and her family—and others are desperate exorcisms from the tragedies that plagued her, such as her mother’s suicide and her father’s growing cruelty. It is also, in a way, a love letter to Russia, with its ancient heritage and impressively diverse geography. Direct, surprising and absolutely convincing, twenty letters