Baby Bump

Just a few months into her whirlwind marriage, Svetlana finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at 44 — much to the displeasure of Olgivanna.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There aren't many things about steed Lana Alujeva that are surprising.
She's a Russian who doesn't like vodka. She's a princess
who hates dressing up. Her favorite movie of all time
is Weird Al Yankovic's uhf Okay. That last one is
actually my favorite movie. But the point is the most
unsurprising thing about Stetlana is that she fantasizes about a

(00:24):
picture perfect, calm, loving nuclear family. And when I had
my own children and I wanted them to have more
normal life. Look, we're all trying to give our kids
what we didn't have, a normalcy, or s fet Lana's
fantasy of it was one thing she lacked growing up
as Stalin's daughter, and any normalcy she'd managed to create

(00:47):
for herself was thrown out the window when she left
her kids behind and made her way to America. Since
defecting three years ago, Svetlana hasn't really spoken to her children,
Josef and Katia. Their response to her abandonment was understandably
harsh and resentful, but she never stopped trying, even though

(01:07):
her birthday cards and letters arrived back in her mailbox
marked return to sender and she held out hope that
eventually they would come around. Maybe in future, I hope
I will be able to invite them to come to
spend their vacations. Maybe that would be possible, that would

(01:31):
not be possible. So now she's going to try and
shape her life into the most fantastically normal existence anyone
could ever dream of. At tally Essen, the least normal
place of all time. My name is Dan Catroser, and
this is sped Lana. Sped Lana. You wake up in

(01:57):
the morning, you live your day, and then you do
it tomorrow, and over and over again, and over again
and over and over again. Act one Cash Cows. If

(02:27):
you go to spring Green, Wisconsin, one thing people will
be so excited to tell you about is how the
geological area that encompasses southwestern Wisconsin, the area where the
Rights made their home, is called the Driftless. Let's go there. Now,
close your eyes, breathe in. Imagine softly rolling hills laced

(02:48):
with babbling brooks. Give yourself permission to step back in
time before the last Ice Age, to a region spared
from glaciers, allowing it to retain its natural splendor. Now
open your eyes and give yourself a pat on the

(03:11):
back for watching a YouTube channel called slow TV Dreamy
Views of Driftless Wisconsin. You must be really cool the driftless.
Wasn't that just the perfect metaphor for ours ft Lana?
And yet, ironically, after drifting around from Russia to India
to New York to Princeton to Arizona, it was here

(03:33):
in the driftless where she started to feel rooted. About
a week after stet Lana and West arrived that summer,
fresh off their blissful cross country road trip from Arizona,
the local paper publishes a front page article missus William
Wesley Peters enjoys being spring greenhousewife. When the reporter asks
if she intends to continue her writing, Stetlana says, oh, no,

(03:56):
two books were enough. She is planning to do quote
nothing except be a good wife to my husband. That
is a full time job. A good wife what does
that really mean? You could watch Julianna Margalie's for seven
seasons and still not know. And a good mom that's
an even tougher one. But spent Lana is gonna have

(04:17):
to figure it out, because when she and Wes arrived
in Wisconsin, she meets her new stepson, Brandoc. May I
tell you how happy I am to have a twenty
eighth year old son, Brando Kapeters, who is a charming
young man. I am too lucky. Indeed, you've heard Brandoc's
name before. He was once Wes's little boy, the one

(04:40):
who survived the deadly car crash that killed his mother
and little brother. Now all grown up at twenty eight
years old, Brandoc is a little bit between jobs. An
accomplished cellist, he had made it all the way to
the Munich Orchestra, but because he wasn't first chair, his
grandma Olgavana had apparently told him he didn't stack up.

(05:05):
So Brandoc ditches the cello and moves back to Wisconsin
to live in his father's farmhouse called Aldebren West fittingly
chose the name, which in Arabic means the follower. Brandock's
going through the sort of stunted What am I going
to do with my life? How will I ever live
up to my lineage? My grandfather is Frank Lloyd right,

(05:25):
and I'm just a retired cellist arrested development phase, which,
in my humble opinion, sounds perfect for someone likes svent Lana,
who's in search of normal. He approached me that was
about the farm when he wanted to run this agricultural
business Brandoc has big dreams and spent Lana can help.
He wants to start a cattle breeding venture that he

(05:48):
and his father can manage. This whole thing sounds pretty
quaint to me. A little farmhouse, a herd of Hareford's.
It's like a family band that's all cowbell and stent.
Lana is thrilled at the chance to do something for
her men. As she calls them, outcomes the checkbook. Who

(06:09):
started the farm operation in Aldeberan that puts lots of
money into z Aldebra was originally built by Frank Lloyd
Wright's uncle, and while it's within view of taliesin up
on the Hill, it's a separate, single family home away
from communal life. These days it's an airbnb. So obviously

(06:31):
my producers and I stayed there. Here's Catherine, how much
should they do? I think you gotta read the whole thing.
Proudly Displayed on the wall is a framed advertisement for
the Peters family business. Aldebra, the Hamford Star of Wisconsin.
Cows that do not measure up to a high standard
of production, or who fail to transmit their own good

(06:52):
qualities to their offspring have no place in this herd.
And then William Wesley Peters, operator is at the bottom
in funt Now listen, all this is well and grand,
but stet Lana is choosing to invest in her husband
and stepson after having refused to invest in the Foundation
to the tune of thirty thousand dollars a year. Wes

(07:14):
and Brandock were her family, not tally Esen, not Olgavana,
But to Olgavana, Lloyd Wright, these freaking cows must be
a radical act of disobedience. Wes had always given everything
to the Foundation, and Olgavana expected that his new wife
would too. Here's harold, he had inherited a significant amount

(07:34):
of wealth that was ultimately all turned over to tally
Essen one way or another. Still, for a moment, let's
ignore Olgavana's brewing discontent, because something bigger is brewing, something
no one expected would happen, something very normal. Stretlana Stalin Peters,

(07:56):
daughter of the late Soviet dictator, says she's expecting a
baby next ry. A forty four year old missus Peters
effective to the West four years ago, or two grown
children by a previous marriage, or still in the Soviet Joe.
This was everything set Lana could have asked for more,

(08:16):
even she rushes to tell Wes, who is of course
surprised a father again at fifty eight, But he's glad.
He was rather pleased, who were rather pleased as as
a surprise and speed. Lana is ecstatic. She had wanted
another chance to be a good mother, and now, by

(08:38):
some miracle, she's going to get it. I wanted to
be because I lost my two children adults are were
abroad and lost forever, so I was glad to have
another one. So let's once again close our eyes and
live inside this moment of warm than happiness and promise

(09:01):
among the rolling hills of driftless Wisconsin, inside a moment
where stet Lana is content and at peace and getting
everything she wants. Because almost immediately after Wes learns of
the pregnancy, he will run to Olgavannah and tell her everything,
and Olgavana will react in a very not normal way

(09:26):
after the break at two bullshit, I love it when
friends call it tell me they're pregnant. As a uncle
many times over I've gotten used to the text message, Hi,
will you be around later for a FaceTime? Okay, maybe
I feigned surprised two three eighty times. But it's always

(09:47):
really sweet when people you love are letting you be
a part of their great familial prologue. Okay, maybe it's
not always sweet. For example, that one time Wes went
ahead and told Olgavana that he and sp Lana we're expecting.
West ran to her with the news that we're going
to have a baby, you know, in our age, and
then of course he returned from her with the gray

(10:10):
face and saying that aren't you going to do something
about it? She wanted me to make abortion. Not exactly
the response you'd be hoping for as a middle aged
woman yearning for a family. Still, Lana must have noticed
there weren't many kids at tally Essen after Frank was
right died. No children should be worn there. There's some

(10:35):
kind of prohibition, you know, no babies here. Here's biographer
Rosemary Sullivan again. And if there were kids, they were
put in tents on the edge of the property. Olga
Vana considers the pregnancy a problem to be dealt with.
She said to him, how could you be so careless

(10:56):
when he told her kids Lana was pregnant. Olgavana begs
West to reason with his wife. She even calls Fetlana's friends,
the Kennon's, and demands they interfeed. It's a full court
press as Frank Lloyd Write's widow tries to abort Joseph
Stalin's American grandchild. What a sentence those Fetlana was religious.

(11:20):
From what I can gather, she wasn't opposed to abortion.
She told one prospective biographer she'd had three abortions back
in Russia, but those were her choices. She asks Wes,
why does that dictator always interfere with human lives? Words
that will eventually make their way back to Olgavana. In
this world that is so fiercely overseen by its matriarch,

(11:43):
Stetlana is getting a bitter taste of the life she
thought she left behind. She had a way to impose
herself on other people, which she was like my father.
She was a born dictator. She had this mandus tyrannical
dictatorial ways. Moreover, Svetlana is forty four years old, and

(12:08):
this pregnancy is her last chance to build the life
she always wanted. She's going to keep that baby. She's
going to fight for her family, which puts Wes in
a bit of a tough spot. He's become the human
rope in a game of tug of war between Stetlana
and Olga Vanna. But it's not a fun game of
tug of war like at theater camp where everyone is

(12:30):
gay and hates rope. This is like tug of war
at a sports camp where everyone is closeted and likes rope.
Don't think too hard on that one. The point is
this tug of war will last years. It will cost
s Fetlana a lot of heartache and a lot of money.
There's a letter we found in the archives from Stetlana

(12:50):
to her friend Don Loveless, dated January twenty fifth, nineteen
seventy one. She's about six months pregnant and nine months
into her marriage, and the pictures she paints is bleak.
It seems to me that we are doing something in
a wrong way which might turn out to be fatal
for both of us in the long run. Wes, she writes,

(13:15):
is so good, so trustful, that he is enslaved mentally
and financially by his loyalty to tally Essen. One by one,
she lists her grievances. Before she and West were married,
she had a million dollars and was living on twenty
five hundred dollars a month in Princeton. Then enters one
hundred and twenty thousand spent on paying down as two

(13:36):
hundred thousand dollars worth of debts Chiching, one hundred and
forty thousand to save his farm, Chiching two hundred and
fifty thousand to launch the family cattle business Chiching. She
said she's happy to do it. I enjoyed looking at
father and son being so close. I still continue to
feel clayteppy doing all these changes and arrangements, signing lots

(13:59):
of to me, but it's starting to add up spent.
Lana ditches the lawyers that oversee her money in New
York and hires Wes's firm instead. She pays to renovate
their rooms at Talis and West, which takes months and
goes one hundred and fifty percent over budget. Twenty five
thousand dollars paid to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Chitching,

(14:22):
Oh And if anyone cares. Spent Lana is also paying
for a hospital in India in honor of her late husband,
Brajesh Singh, just sing, it is clear we have to
stop doing that, or very soon nothing will be left here.
I am not writing more sensational books. Yet Wes continues

(14:43):
to spend NonStop. That is after all his m He
apparently mails ball gowns for some reason to spe Lana's
friend Joan Kennon. He buys so many cologns and perfumes
that he and speed Lana call their bathroom the fragrance garden.
For some with no money, he sure knows how to
spend it. It is good for him that I happened

(15:05):
to be near, but even Rockefeller or Ford would not
be enough to replace the money, which, in this abnormal
situation is just going into the send. And this send
is a vast Sahara desert, and there is only a
small brook in my possession to feed it. West clearly

(15:29):
has a problem and spent. Lana knows she cannot be
the one to solve it indefinitely, so she summons the
new lawyers who represent both her and the Franclay Wright
Foundation and demands that her husband be paid for his
architectural work. They laugh and tell her the foundation has
no money to pay him. So after a brief ray

(15:50):
of happiness and hope, a new marriage, a new baby,
a new life spent, Lana finds herself with a husband
and stepson who are either willingly or carelessly bankrupting her,
a quasi mother in law who wishes the baby inside
of her had never existed, and an entire fellowship of
architects who now shun her in the hallways. Other letters

(16:10):
in the archives revealed that Olgavana shouts at spet Lana
and says she behaves just like Stalin, and Olgavanna's daughter Vanna,
who'd once wished spet Lana could be your sister, curses
her out, writing you are the worst thing that ever
happened to poor West, and I feel nothing but pity
for him, and curses for myself and getting him involved

(16:31):
with you. And then Wes, who is still working tirelessly
for zero dollars a year, is sent to Tehran to
work on a palace. Obviously, so spet Lana is pregnant
and alone in a strange, suffocating place, and she decides,
for her final trimester she's going to get the hell
out of tali Essen and finish out her pregnancy in

(16:52):
California with Wes's sister and brother in law. Finally, can
we all just breathe a sigh of relief for stet
in this moment. I've never been pregnant before, but even
if I didn't have a fetus jes dating inside of me,
I'd probably want some space from Olgavana, Yavannah and the
rest of the Taliessen troope. And to be fair, I've

(17:16):
never had to care for a woman who is forty
four years old and pregnant with my dead daughter's husband's child.
So spent Lana focuses on her bun in the oven,
in peace and quiet, away from Olga, Vanna and the
rest of them. And on May twenty first, nineteen seventy one,
at a hospital outside of San Francisco, she gives birth

(17:37):
to a baby girl. Spent Lana Peters, the emigrant daughter
of Joseph Stalin, gave birth yesterday to a daughter. Like
any new parents, the Peters were proud to show off
their baby girl, named Olga wait in it a healthy
seven pounds nine ounces. Did you catch that? Spet Lana
names her baby girl Olga? Remember how Speta's grandmother's name

(18:01):
was Olga, which was also Olga Vanna's given name, and
how Olga Vanna had believed there was a mystical connection
between the two of them because her dead daughter's name
was speed Lana and spent Lana's name was Fetlana. Well,
now to complete the cycle, spent Lana, our spent Lana
is naming her daughter. That's right, Olga, Yes, Olga the

(18:24):
name Bullshita's back baby. Now, Wes isn't there for the birth,
not because he's in Tehran building a palace at this point.
He's actually in California, but no one can get a
hold of him because he's out to dinner with Olga
Vanna and the Talies and crew. He does eventually make

(18:47):
it to the hospital to high five his wife and
meet his kid, but in tali es In fashion, he
doesn't come alone like an older male. Valerie Cherish West
saunters into speed Lana's hospital room with news cameras in
tow And if there is any irony in the birth
here in the United States of a granddaughter of Joseph Stalin,
the baby's mother prefers not to see it for the

(19:09):
funding them just to hit the mother sharing this child,
and I only hope that she will being the joys
to my life. Can you imagine giving birth without your husband?
And then he shows up a day late with an
entourage of reporters who want to remind you of your

(19:32):
tortured lineage. Unfortunately, West loved to be in the mid
public identy. He allowed, He loves to talk, and he
thought this is promoting architecture. Nevertheless, she writes that he
was giddy like a young father, even though he was
nearly sixty. He wanted the world to know and for

(19:53):
a woman that would swoon when he called her his
wife publicly Spetlana must have seen this whole charade as
proof of his love for her, for their family. For
a while after the birth, things seem better spent. Lana
loves motherhood, She loves her daughter. She loves staying with
Wes's sister in California for two glorious months. They get

(20:16):
to be a family away from the Fellowship, and in
this time away perhaps svent Lana dreams that they really
can have it all, that Wes can carry on at
tally Essen and she can forge her family on her
own terms inside of it when sped Lana and West
fly from California to Wisconsin that summer, Olga Vana, as

(20:39):
a gesture of goodwill, gives them an extra room for
the baby. Wes, who is so often withholding, tells her
you brought me back to life after all those years.
Sped Lana is in a suspended heaven. Sped Lana had
this fantasy, and I found it so poignant. She's at
the farm. She's sitting on the bench in the front

(21:01):
open porch. Olga had just been born three months ago,
and I was sending the baby buggy. While sitting on
the wooden porch of a small farm. We had got
a dog at her feet. She has her baby in
the carriage. A big Irish wolfhound was peacefully lying at
my feet as I rocked in an old comfortable rocker.
Her two men, as she calls them, Wesley and his

(21:24):
son are coming over ther horizon. A herd of cows
was returning home down the road with cowbells tinkling. I
could see down the road near the gate Wesley and
his grown son, hens in their pockets, slowly walking home
while discussing farm affairs. And she's happy. She thought she

(21:49):
could turn Wesley Peters into this pastoral romance. The rocker
was rocking, Olga was sleeping, and then here it is
the greatest, happiest moment of my life. Stop hold this
moment forever. I have a family, a home in my

(22:12):
new country, and from here on my life will be
like this, harmonious, secure and filled with evening light. So
you know, we all fictionalized our lives somewhat so that

(22:35):
Lana wants to stay in this beautiful moment. But we
can't hit the pause button on our lives. Time has
an unrepentant way of flicking forward, no matter how hard
we try to stop it. More after the break, Act three,

(23:01):
Grave Danger, Svetlana really loved Wisconsin. She loved watching her
baby Olga grow healthy and strong, walking her in the
sunshine under rustling trees, nursing her on the warm earth,
and playing with her toes in the green grass. This
was her Motherland's Svetlana writes, this was home. In fact,

(23:24):
Svetlana loved Wisconsin so much that she would eventually die there,
just twenty five miles from tally Essen. Its hold on
her would last her lifetime. When my team and I
went to Spring Green. We were skeptical. We'd read Harold
and Roger's book about the Fellowship, We'd read Svetlana's manuscripts
tinged with cynicism. But there really is some magic in

(23:47):
the driftless peace and wonder and so many delicious cheese
kurds hashtag lactad hashtag fart. I stayed in that farmhouse.
I sat on that porch where s Lana rocked her
baby and looked out at her men coming up over
the hill, golden in the setting sun. I started to
understand the intoxicating allure, the dream she was projecting onto

(24:11):
everyone and everything around her. But I think that's what
it was, a fiction at odds with reality, and the
fantasy quickly shatters speed. Lana dreams of moving her family
away from the hubbub of tally Essen and into the
farm she's bankrolling Aldebran, but Brandoc says no, he and

(24:35):
his girlfriend live here and they need privacy. Okay, cool
cool Cool West starts to become distant again, seemingly resentful
that his new spet Lana doesn't more closely resemble his
first spet, Lana. Of course, Susana was part of the establishment,
and I was supposed to get into this thing too
and become part of it. Instead, spet is bad mouthing

(24:58):
tali Esen's traditions so openly that Olga Vanna bands the
young fellows from stopping by her room to chat, calling
her a bad influence. And oh yeah, the cattle venture
is bleeding money chi ching not exactly the cash cow
they'd hoped for. When September comes and Olga Vanna prepares

(25:20):
the fellowship to travel back to Arizona, she calls s
fet Lana into her private chamber for a chat. I
had one too, and she kind of almost hypnotized me.
You describe it about how you ended up kissing her hand, Yes,
tete a tete hypnosis hand kissing. Olga Vanna wants to

(25:42):
know spet Lana's beef with tally Esen. Spet Lana bites
her tongue, but Olgavana isn't having it. She suddenly took
my both hands in ours and pulled me to herself,
so close that there is almost no spacelift between us.
I tried to loosen the gripe and to step backward

(26:03):
a little bit. She held my hands tightly. Algabonna stares
deeply into Spelana's eyes, locking her into her gaze. She
began to breathe deeply and slowly, still staring. I lost
all my volition and stood there terrilyzed. Fear entered me

(26:23):
like a cold wave. But I could not move after
a moment of strain, and broke down in tears, still
holding my hands. Then something incredibly out of character happens.
I have done something I would never have done on
my own accord. I kissed those hands of hers several times.

(26:49):
Only then did she release me. Who she was pleased
stet is shuck. I said goodbye, my tears with my
poems and left. I could only do that under her
will you know I wouldn't do that, my old sort

(27:11):
of I was scared of her. When Splana returns to Wes,
she's trembling, crying, Convinced that Olgavana has the power to
hypnotize her into submission. She can never be alone with
her again. She hopes West will hold her, soothe her,
and take her away from this terrible place, but instead

(27:35):
he chastises her, tells her that it is a privilege
to live at tally Essen and that if she doesn't
change her attitude. He doesn't know what the future of
their marriage will be. Remember, Wes was the first apprentice
of the Fellowship and he stayed at tally Esen for
close to forty years. He named his cabin Aldebra, which

(27:56):
means the Follower. He's not going to suddenly change teams
just because this woman happens to be his wife and
mother of his child. Before summer's end set Lana takes
a stroll with her little baby to Unity Chapel, a tiny,
quaint little church just at the bottom of a hill.

(28:16):
Aside from being a lovely spot, Unity Chapel is also
the Lloyd Wright family Cemetery. It's maybe a few hundred
feet from where we were staying at Aldebren so we
strolled down there too at night. I'm gonna pull him
right here, all right, We're going at night to a
cemetery and hopefully Bilby ghosts. It was kind of a

(28:41):
tally essent scavenger hunt my producers and I in the
middle of Wisconsin in the middle of the night. Odd
to be stumbling across the tombstones of the different members
of this weird history that we'd all been sucked into.
This is wood Sydney. Yes, oh my god, that's my

(29:02):
brother's name, Jeffrey. Oh Stu Schwartz. There is a jew here.
That's comforting. We found the master's grave, Alison May. This
is Franklin writs grave. And then Adam found stat Lana,
the first one you found her speed Lana Peters, Daniel Peters,

(29:29):
William Wesley Peters. Oh my god, stet Lana might have
come here in the day, not at midnight with a baby,
not a gaggle of producers. But she stood where I
stood and saw what I saw, her own name spent

(29:50):
Lana Peters on a gravestone, and it shook her to
her very core. Nice, oh my name Setlana Peters. So,
oh my god, that's what That's how it will finish.
Was me, she writes, I was here to repeat this

(30:14):
woman's life, to marry her former husband. I would surely
end up one day in something terrible, and perhaps my
little daughter too. The grave Steed Lana is certain was
an omen one that meant she was condemned to the
same fate as the first fet Lana, That baby Olga

(30:36):
was condemned to the same fate as baby Daniel. It
must have been terrifying steed Lana had been here before,
thwarted by fate, trapped in cycles. She thought she'd broken.
She had risked everything to step out of Stalin's shadow
to tell her own story, only to find herself sucked
into the orbit of a woman who reminded her of

(30:58):
her father. She'd taken chances on love, only to have
her heart broken over and over and exactly the same place.
She had tried to create a new family, only to
find herself haunted by a woman who had lived her
same life, who had had her same name. But now
she had this tiny baby that she had to protect

(31:20):
at all costs. For stent Lana, it was clear she
and Olga were under threat, and that threat was Olga Vanna.
If she wanted them to escape their fate, to not
end up in the ground, she'd have to protect them
from missus Wright. Their lives st Lana was sure depended

(31:42):
on it. On the next episode of s Lana, svent Lana,
spent Lana. St Lana is a production of iHeart Podcasts
and the documentary group I'm Your Host Dan could Rocer.
The show was written and produced by me Adam Webber,

(32:03):
Alison Joy and Katherine Isaac. We also serve as executive
producers at the Documentary Group. Our executive producer is Joe Batzilhouetz,
with production oversight by Stacy Kleiger an additional support from
Tom Yellen and Gabrielle tenenbau our iHeart Team is supervising
producer Casey Pegram and executive producer Maya Howard. Editing assistants

(32:24):
from producers Christina Lorenger and Joey pat Original music by
Elan Izakov, Production counsel by Slas ekhous dasty Haynes Lockoe,
clearance counsel by Ballard Sparr. Fact checking assistance by Meghan Trout.
Special thanks to my husband Jordan Siegel and Roger Friedland
and Harold Zelman, authors of the book The Fellowship, who

(32:46):
kindly granted permission to include excerpts from their taped interview
with spet Lana Excerpts from sphet Lana Alujeva's book The Faraway.
Music are performed by Cassie Greer.