June 24, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when 85-year-old Lana Peters passed away in 2011 from complications due to colon cancer, the nation seemed to have forgotten the woman who became a sensation during the Cold War. The History Guy recalls the extraordinary life of the woman whose defection to the United States marked a seminal moment in history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
And we continue with our American Stories, and we love
telling stories about history. Our next story comes to us
from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.
His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people
of all ages over on YouTube. The History Guy's also
heard here at our American Stories. Here's the History Guy
with a real beauty. The story of Stalin's Daughter.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
On November twenty second, twenty eleven, an eighty five year
old woman named Lona Peters passed away in Wisconsin from
complications due to colon cancer. Eventually, her death made it
into some newspapers, but it seemed to go largely unnoticed
by an American public that seemed to have largely forgotten
who she was and all the attention that she had
gained During one of the seminal events of the Cold
(00:54):
War that happened in March ninth, nineteen sixty seven. Lona Peters,
otherwise known as Svetlana Alyeva, represented the contradictions of the
era of the Cold War and was witness some of
the greatest crimes of that era. She's most known because
of her famous father, but is perhaps most notable because
(01:16):
of how very different she was from him the defection
of the woman whose birth name was Svetlana Stalina, the
youngest child and only daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin,
deserves to be remembered. Born Josef Yukoshvili in the Imperial
State of Georgia and then part of the Russian Empire
(01:37):
in eighteen seventy eight, Joseph Stalin already had a reputation
for brutality when he was arrested and exiled by the
Zirous government in nineteen oh eight. He had purportedly been
responsible for a bank robbery in nineteen oh seven that
had killed some forty people, and had, as one historian
put it, established himself as Georgie's leading Bolshevik. It was
sometime during this period that he started using the name Stalin,
(02:00):
meaning roughly man of steel. After the October Revolution, Stalin
became a trusted supporter of Vladimir Lenin and a vocal
supporter the brutal period of political repression and mass execution
called the Red Terror. Appointed People's Commissar for Nationalities in
nineteen nineteen, he took Sergeiyanoga's daughter, Nadezhda, who had worked
as a clerk in Lenin's office as his secretary. The
(02:23):
two married later the same year. At the time, Nadezhda
was eighteen and Stalin was a forty year old widower,
his first wife having died of typhus in nineteen oh seven.
Stalin and Alueva had two children, Vastly born in nineteen
twenty one and Svetlana, born in nineteen twenty six. At
the time of her birth, Stalin was General Secretary of
(02:44):
the Soviet Union, had largely gained the upper hand in
the struggle to replace Lenin following his death in nineteen
twenty four. As intreagues continued in the Soviet Union, Stalin's
daughter was feted by both the Soviet people and her father,
who showered her with gifts and called her Little Sparrow.
She became a celebrity in her country, compared to Shirley
Temple in the United States, thousands of babies were named Svetlana,
(03:06):
so it was a perfume. But being the daughter of
the man of steel did not lead to an easy destiny.
While she was being treated like Shirley Temple. So the
collectivization of the agricultural sector, essentially forcing peasants onto collective
farms was resulting in various periods of famine over the
period of collectivization, and estimated fourteen million people died due
(03:29):
to starvation. On November night, nineteen thirty two, Josef and
Nadejda had a public argument about collectivization policy at a
dinner party. When they got home that evening, she went
into a separate room and shot herself to prevent scandal.
Her death was reported as because of an appendicitis. Her children,
Vasily was eleven and Svetlana, just six, were told the
(03:52):
same lie for fear if they knew the truth, that
they might accidentally reveal it. Svetlana did not know the
truth of how her mother died until she read it
in an American newspaper in nineteen forty two. Nearly six
decades later, she was quoted saying, I do regret that
my mother didn't marry a carpenter. While she still enjoyed
her father's favor with a notoriously unsentimental Stalin, even playing
(04:15):
little games with her. She and her siblings were also
under great pressure of examples to the Soviet people, and
even Svetlana was not free from the brutality of her
father's regime. In December nineteen thirty four, when Sergei Kirov,
a fellow revolutionary and close friend of Stalin's, was assassinated.
Stalin used the event as a provocation for the Great Purge.
In fact, some historians argue that it was Stalin who
(04:36):
was behind Kiro's murders, pretext for the repressive effort to
purge what Stalin called enemies of the people, including counter
revolutionaries and essentially anyone who was a threat to Stalin's power.
Among the as many as one and a quarter million
victims of the purge was Alexander's Vanitch, the brother of
Stalin's first wife, whom Vetlana knew his a favorite uncle.
(04:57):
More relatives were removed, as well as some of Svetlana's
school friends, whose once privileged lives were shattered when their
parents were deemed untrustworthy. When she protested to her father
on behalf of one of her friends, her father replied
to his fourteen year old daughter, sometimes you are forced
to go against even those you love. She later said
that it took her years to grasp the extent of
her father's crimes. In nineteen forty three, Svetlana met and
(05:21):
fell in love with filmmaker Alexey Kapler, who was married
in twenty three years. Her senior Coppler leader said that
he was drawn to Vetlana by the freedom within her.
Stalin disapproved for numerous reasons, but Setlana suspected he was
most insulted by the fact that Capler was Jewish. Tapler
was arrested in charge with being a British spy, although
(05:41):
it was assumed the actual crime was the indiscreet affair
with Stalin's daughter. Stalin destroyed the letters that two had
written each other. He banished Vetlana from his house because
of moral depravity, and even punished her brother, at whose
home she had met Kepler and her grandparents for failing
to intervene. Capler was event so imprisoned for ten years.
(06:02):
When Stalin's purchase continued after the war, they instired more
of the Setlana's family, including her mother's sister. When she
tried to intervene with her father on her aunt's behalf,
Stalin made it clear to her that she also could
be accused. In March second, nineteen fifty three, she was
called from class. Her father had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage
and was dying. Stalin lingered for four days, as she
(06:25):
believed God grants an easy death only to the just.
The family had difficulty blaming the man who had been
both patriarch and villain. Even as family members returned from
the Gulag, they became convinced that it wasn't Stalin's fault,
that someone else was responsible for making them a political target,
that Stalin had been poisoned against them, but the prisoner's
(06:49):
returning from the gulags were compelling evidence of the crimes
of Stalin. The new leader who was consolidating power, Nikita Krushchev,
saw bringing down the cult of Stalin as critical to
retaining the support of the people. By then, Fetlana had
had two failed marriages and had two children. In nineteen
fifty seven, to escape the stigma of her father's name,
she went to her mother's maiden name and became Setlana
(07:10):
al Ueva. She wandered through love affairs, flirted with different religions,
spent another year on another failed marriage. A friend later
said of her, she was a very kind and warm
hearted person, but it was impossible to escape her terrible heritage.
She couldn't trust anyone. How could you if you were
Stalin's daughter. She alternatively had to deal with people who
(07:33):
sought to associate with her in hope of getting some favor,
and others who loathed her for her father's crimes. In
nineteen sixty three, well in the hospital for a tons eectomies,
Fetlana met an Indian national named Brajes Singh. She sought
to marry him, but that required state permission, and once
again she suffered from the curse of being Stalin's daughter.
(07:55):
Singh died from impisima in October. In nineteen sixty six,
Fetlana was allowed to travel to give seeing his traditional
funeral as long as she did not talk to any
foreign reporters. She was staying at the guest house of
the Soviet Embassy in Delhi, and on March ninth, nineteen
sixty seven, no one apparently suspected her motives when she
went outside held a cab, entered the US Embassy in India,
(08:20):
presented her Soviet passport and asked for asylum. The request
took the Americans completely off guard. Chester Bowls, the US
Ambassador to India, didn't even know Stalin had a dollar
or less that she was visiting India. Bulls put Veetlana
on the next plane to anywhere but Moscow, and sent
her with a diplomat actually a CIA agent as escort
(08:41):
to Rome. The assessment by the CIA at the time
was our own preconceived notions of what Stalin's daughter must
be like. Just didn't let us believe that this nice, pleasant, attractive,
middle aged Hofstrow could possibly be who she claimed to be.
Sveetlana Alieva's defection reques fired a lot of political maneuvering.
She had spent time both in Italy and then in
(09:03):
Switzerland before she could finally go to the United States.
The Soviets tried to portray her as crazy, calling her
Kukshuka or cuckoo bird. Later it was revealed that the
KGB had made plans to either kidnap her or assassinate her,
but they decided not to because it would be too
easy to trace back to them in the United States.
(09:23):
She married one last time between nineteen seventy and nineteen
seventy three, to an architect named William Peters. They had
a daughter named Olga. She went by the name Lana
Peters for the rest of her life. In nineteen seventy eight,
she became a US citizen, but in nineteen eighty four,
she and her daughter Olga returned to the Soviet Union,
but she found she was shunned there, and she and
Olga returned to the United States in nineteen eighty six.
(09:46):
When author Nicholas Thompson decided he wanted to interview her
for a book he was doing on US Soviet relations
during the Cold War in two thousand and six, he
had to do a public record search to find her.
She was living in Wisconsin when she passed away in
November twenty eleven. The New York Times found it difficult
to even confirm her death, which wasn't even reported in
the local newspaper. But it does seem that the woman
(10:08):
who was so unlike her father had finally escaped her
father's shadow.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
And a special thanks as always to Greg Hangler for
the production and especial thanks as always to the History Guy.
Please subscribe to his YouTube channel, The History Guy. History
deserves to be remembered. The story of Lanna Peters. He
becomes an American citizen in nineteen seventy eight, but never ever,
(10:33):
I would guess is ever truly home anywhere. Her story
here on our American stories,
And we continue with our American Stories, and we love
telling stories about history. Our next story comes to us
from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.
His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people
of all ages over on YouTube. The History Guy's also
heard here at our American Stories. Here's the History Guy
with a real beauty. The story of Stalin's Daughter.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
On November twenty second, twenty eleven, an eighty five year
old woman named Lona Peters passed away in Wisconsin from
complications due to colon cancer. Eventually, her death made it
into some newspapers, but it seemed to go largely unnoticed
by an American public that seemed to have largely forgotten
who she was and all the attention that she had
gained During one of the seminal events of the Cold
(00:54):
War that happened in March ninth, nineteen sixty seven. Lona Peters,
otherwise known as Svetlana Alyeva, represented the contradictions of the
era of the Cold War and was witness some of
the greatest crimes of that era. She's most known because
of her famous father, but is perhaps most notable because
(01:16):
of how very different she was from him the defection
of the woman whose birth name was Svetlana Stalina, the
youngest child and only daughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin,
deserves to be remembered. Born Josef Yukoshvili in the Imperial
State of Georgia and then part of the Russian Empire
(01:37):
in eighteen seventy eight, Joseph Stalin already had a reputation
for brutality when he was arrested and exiled by the
Zirous government in nineteen oh eight. He had purportedly been
responsible for a bank robbery in nineteen oh seven that
had killed some forty people, and had, as one historian
put it, established himself as Georgie's leading Bolshevik. It was
sometime during this period that he started using the name Stalin,
(02:00):
meaning roughly man of steel. After the October Revolution, Stalin
became a trusted supporter of Vladimir Lenin and a vocal
supporter the brutal period of political repression and mass execution
called the Red Terror. Appointed People's Commissar for Nationalities in
nineteen nineteen, he took Sergeiyanoga's daughter, Nadezhda, who had worked
as a clerk in Lenin's office as his secretary. The
(02:23):
two married later the same year. At the time, Nadezhda
was eighteen and Stalin was a forty year old widower,
his first wife having died of typhus in nineteen oh seven.
Stalin and Alueva had two children, Vastly born in nineteen
twenty one and Svetlana, born in nineteen twenty six. At
the time of her birth, Stalin was General Secretary of
(02:44):
the Soviet Union, had largely gained the upper hand in
the struggle to replace Lenin following his death in nineteen
twenty four. As intreagues continued in the Soviet Union, Stalin's
daughter was feted by both the Soviet people and her father,
who showered her with gifts and called her Little Sparrow.
She became a celebrity in her country, compared to Shirley
Temple in the United States, thousands of babies were named Svetlana,
(03:06):
so it was a perfume. But being the daughter of
the man of steel did not lead to an easy destiny.
While she was being treated like Shirley Temple. So the
collectivization of the agricultural sector, essentially forcing peasants onto collective
farms was resulting in various periods of famine over the
period of collectivization, and estimated fourteen million people died due
(03:29):
to starvation. On November night, nineteen thirty two, Josef and
Nadejda had a public argument about collectivization policy at a
dinner party. When they got home that evening, she went
into a separate room and shot herself to prevent scandal.
Her death was reported as because of an appendicitis. Her children,
Vasily was eleven and Svetlana, just six, were told the
(03:52):
same lie for fear if they knew the truth, that
they might accidentally reveal it. Svetlana did not know the
truth of how her mother died until she read it
in an American newspaper in nineteen forty two. Nearly six
decades later, she was quoted saying, I do regret that
my mother didn't marry a carpenter. While she still enjoyed
her father's favor with a notoriously unsentimental Stalin, even playing
(04:15):
little games with her. She and her siblings were also
under great pressure of examples to the Soviet people, and
even Svetlana was not free from the brutality of her
father's regime. In December nineteen thirty four, when Sergei Kirov,
a fellow revolutionary and close friend of Stalin's, was assassinated.
Stalin used the event as a provocation for the Great Purge.
In fact, some historians argue that it was Stalin who
(04:36):
was behind Kiro's murders, pretext for the repressive effort to
purge what Stalin called enemies of the people, including counter
revolutionaries and essentially anyone who was a threat to Stalin's power.
Among the as many as one and a quarter million
victims of the purge was Alexander's Vanitch, the brother of
Stalin's first wife, whom Vetlana knew his a favorite uncle.
(04:57):
More relatives were removed, as well as some of Svetlana's
school friends, whose once privileged lives were shattered when their
parents were deemed untrustworthy. When she protested to her father
on behalf of one of her friends, her father replied
to his fourteen year old daughter, sometimes you are forced
to go against even those you love. She later said
that it took her years to grasp the extent of
her father's crimes. In nineteen forty three, Svetlana met and
(05:21):
fell in love with filmmaker Alexey Kapler, who was married
in twenty three years. Her senior Coppler leader said that
he was drawn to Vetlana by the freedom within her.
Stalin disapproved for numerous reasons, but Setlana suspected he was
most insulted by the fact that Capler was Jewish. Tapler
was arrested in charge with being a British spy, although
(05:41):
it was assumed the actual crime was the indiscreet affair
with Stalin's daughter. Stalin destroyed the letters that two had
written each other. He banished Vetlana from his house because
of moral depravity, and even punished her brother, at whose
home she had met Kepler and her grandparents for failing
to intervene. Capler was event so imprisoned for ten years.
(06:02):
When Stalin's purchase continued after the war, they instired more
of the Setlana's family, including her mother's sister. When she
tried to intervene with her father on her aunt's behalf,
Stalin made it clear to her that she also could
be accused. In March second, nineteen fifty three, she was
called from class. Her father had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage
and was dying. Stalin lingered for four days, as she
(06:25):
believed God grants an easy death only to the just.
The family had difficulty blaming the man who had been
both patriarch and villain. Even as family members returned from
the Gulag, they became convinced that it wasn't Stalin's fault,
that someone else was responsible for making them a political target,
that Stalin had been poisoned against them, but the prisoner's
(06:49):
returning from the gulags were compelling evidence of the crimes
of Stalin. The new leader who was consolidating power, Nikita Krushchev,
saw bringing down the cult of Stalin as critical to
retaining the support of the people. By then, Fetlana had
had two failed marriages and had two children. In nineteen
fifty seven, to escape the stigma of her father's name,
she went to her mother's maiden name and became Setlana
(07:10):
al Ueva. She wandered through love affairs, flirted with different religions,
spent another year on another failed marriage. A friend later
said of her, she was a very kind and warm
hearted person, but it was impossible to escape her terrible heritage.
She couldn't trust anyone. How could you if you were
Stalin's daughter. She alternatively had to deal with people who
(07:33):
sought to associate with her in hope of getting some favor,
and others who loathed her for her father's crimes. In
nineteen sixty three, well in the hospital for a tons eectomies,
Fetlana met an Indian national named Brajes Singh. She sought
to marry him, but that required state permission, and once
again she suffered from the curse of being Stalin's daughter.
(07:55):
Singh died from impisima in October. In nineteen sixty six,
Fetlana was allowed to travel to give seeing his traditional
funeral as long as she did not talk to any
foreign reporters. She was staying at the guest house of
the Soviet Embassy in Delhi, and on March ninth, nineteen
sixty seven, no one apparently suspected her motives when she
went outside held a cab, entered the US Embassy in India,
(08:20):
presented her Soviet passport and asked for asylum. The request
took the Americans completely off guard. Chester Bowls, the US
Ambassador to India, didn't even know Stalin had a dollar
or less that she was visiting India. Bulls put Veetlana
on the next plane to anywhere but Moscow, and sent
her with a diplomat actually a CIA agent as escort
(08:41):
to Rome. The assessment by the CIA at the time
was our own preconceived notions of what Stalin's daughter must
be like. Just didn't let us believe that this nice, pleasant, attractive,
middle aged Hofstrow could possibly be who she claimed to be.
Sveetlana Alieva's defection reques fired a lot of political maneuvering.
She had spent time both in Italy and then in
(09:03):
Switzerland before she could finally go to the United States.
The Soviets tried to portray her as crazy, calling her
Kukshuka or cuckoo bird. Later it was revealed that the
KGB had made plans to either kidnap her or assassinate her,
but they decided not to because it would be too
easy to trace back to them in the United States.
(09:23):
She married one last time between nineteen seventy and nineteen
seventy three, to an architect named William Peters. They had
a daughter named Olga. She went by the name Lana
Peters for the rest of her life. In nineteen seventy eight,
she became a US citizen, but in nineteen eighty four,
she and her daughter Olga returned to the Soviet Union,
but she found she was shunned there, and she and
Olga returned to the United States in nineteen eighty six.
(09:46):
When author Nicholas Thompson decided he wanted to interview her
for a book he was doing on US Soviet relations
during the Cold War in two thousand and six, he
had to do a public record search to find her.
She was living in Wisconsin when she passed away in
November twenty eleven. The New York Times found it difficult
to even confirm her death, which wasn't even reported in
the local newspaper. But it does seem that the woman
(10:08):
who was so unlike her father had finally escaped her
father's shadow.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
And a special thanks as always to Greg Hangler for
the production and especial thanks as always to the History Guy.
Please subscribe to his YouTube channel, The History Guy. History
deserves to be remembered. The story of Lanna Peters. He
becomes an American citizen in nineteen seventy eight, but never ever,
(10:33):
I would guess is ever truly home anywhere. Her story
here on our American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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