Back to the USSR

Svetlana keeps searching for a place that feels like home. Could it be America? Could it be England? Could it be… Russia and the children that she left behind 18 years ago?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We last left set Lana on Christmas nineteen seventy five,
clutching a telephone in her ex sister in law's California home.
She just placed what I can only imagine was a
very expensive long distance call from Mill Valley to Moscow,
and had spoken directly to her son Joseph for the
first time in almost a decade. I can't say I

(00:22):
understand how exactly she got three to him, or what
exactly she felt hearing his gruff voice echoing through the
receiver from roughly six thousand miles away. But this call
sets in motion a chain of events that threatened to
make my head explode. A chain of events that, while
trap set Lana in the same cycles she's been stuck
in over and over again, a chain of events that

(00:45):
will get her from the US to England, to Russia
and back again. She's been here before, overwhelmed, fired up, impulsive,
and unstoppable. But this time the circumstances are different. This time,

(01:06):
it's not just her life she's uprooting. It's her daughters too,
a daughter who is quote as American as apple Pie. Ironically,
America was never set on his dream. When she made
up her mind to defect in nineteen sixty seven, she
thought perhaps she could stay in India. At her first

(01:28):
press conference in New York, she had high hopes for
her new homeland, but she wasn't ready to put a
ring on it just yet. Do you intend to make
your a permanent home in America? And do you intend
to apply for American citizenship? Well? I think that before
the marriage, it should be loved. So if I will

(01:50):
love this country and this country will love me, then
the marriage will be settled. But I cannot say now.
So in this episode, we're going to watch spet Lana
fall out of love with America and run back into
the arms of her X the USSR. I'm damn Katroser

(02:10):
and this is sped Lana. Speed Lana. You wake up
in the morning, you live your day, and then you
do it tomorrow and over and over again, and over

(02:33):
again and over. Act one, A stateless woman of the World.
The year is nineteen seventy seven. Both Atari and the
Apple two computer make their way to the marketplace. Arnold
Schwarzenegger gets swollen in the film Pumping Iron and Debbie

(02:56):
Boone's You Light Up My Life is number one for
ten straight weeks. And if you were to open the
pages of your April edition of McCall's magazine, you might
find yourself reading an article titled the Americanization of Stalin's Daughter,
a profile in which set Lana seems positively happy and
free living in California. Spet is wearing blue jeans and

(03:20):
likes to dance. Adorable Little Olga is pestering her mother
for Kentucky fried chicken and corrects sveet Lana's English. Sipping
a beer, Svetlana tells the interviewer, I think in English,
I dream in English, I read in English. I don't
even think about Russia. I'm getting rusty speaking Russian. I
have to stop and remember the words. She tells the

(03:43):
interviewer that she is quote a stateless woman of the world,
a Russian defector, an American alien. If all you had
to go off of was this article, you'd think spet Lana,
while a little unrooted, was living a life of domestic bliss,
of absolute normalcy. That is what she wants to give
her daughter, and she makes it clear in every interview

(04:05):
she gives that Olga is not to know the truth
of their lineage. Here she is around that time on
Good Morning America. Have you told her who her grandfather? Yeah,
for her own good, she doesn't know much about it
than maybe she isn't going through I don't think it's
necessary for her. And you want your daughter to be
completely America. Oh, she will be. She will be. One

(04:29):
might wonder if going on Good Morning America to say
that she was keeping a secret was the best way
to keep that secret. But there are a lot of
contradictions when it comes to sed Lana, because in truth,
these years of being a single mom without a stable
income in a country where she still wasn't a citizen,
where as you might imagine hard and in running away

(04:51):
from her problems in Russia or at tali Essen, she'd
run right into new ones. In her solitude at home,
she worries about secret Soviet microwave experiments and plots to
kidnap Olga. She clips pictures from magazines of her estranged
Russian children, Joseph and Coccia, and frames them on the mantel.

(05:13):
Eventually she sees a psychiatrist to work through her quote
undigested bitterness towards west, and she moves around a lot speed.
Lana would later write to a friend. I feel very
much being a stranger, a fild them everywhere, a gypsy
of sorts, and I do not mind that. But I

(05:34):
carry the inner feeling of home with me everywhere, like
a snail carries her shell. Throughout the first seven years
of her daughter's life, sped Lana moves them from Scottsdale, Arizona,
to Princeton, New Jersey, to Oceanside, California, to La Joya,

(05:54):
and back to Princeton again. And inside of those cities,
they're moving from rental houses to purchase ones. Olga is
in and out of different public and private schools. Why
was spent Lana so driftless, so lost? Why was it
that every autumn, as the cold and darkness set in,
she'd feel the same familiar urge to blow everything up.

(06:17):
November the dark short days, the time when my mother
took her life. I felt as if I was sinking
into dark waters, as it is sometimes in a nightmare
when water floods everything. And do you know that you

(06:37):
are doomed? Yet spent Lana is spending off the dark
waters and she sees dry land ahead Yoho, Captain thar
Be America, and so in nineteen seventy eight, she's back
in Princeton once more, and she officially becomes a citizen
of the United States. Final spet Lana has officially chosen America,

(07:03):
and America has chosen her. The story is over. Spet
Lana will never move again until four years later, when
she says she's done with America, packs up her daughter
and moves to England. The move comes after a trip
stet Lana had taken to the English countryside for a
televised interview with the BBC presenter Malcolm Muggridge. It was

(07:27):
her first time out of the country since her defection.
Dear mister Mugridge, I am getting somewhat nervous about meeting
you in person because I have been and always wanted
to be an ordinary person. Something about Muggridge's plea resonated
with her. He seemed interested in spet Lana the person,

(07:49):
not spet Lana the headline. I have been pushed around
a lot and developed a certain protective habits to say
no leave me alone piece. Something in your letters has
stashed me and I feel I cannot say no to
you anymore. We connected with the show's producer, Jonathan Steadall Hello, Jonathan. Hello.

(08:13):
Jonathan had been gardening all morning before our chat. Because
he's very British. He's also very warm and introspective, and
his relationship with Stetlana didn't end with the show. We
finished the filming my wife and I showed her around
London and she'd never been to England before. A Great Britain,
damp and monarchical and filled with BBC presenters asking her

(08:37):
introspective questions. Perhaps England can be her new home, and
she decided that she wanted to come and live here,
and she settled in Cambridge. Nineteen eighty two. Bangs are in.
Prince William comes out of Princess Diana, the Iron Margaret

(09:00):
Thatcher runs her country with austerity and hawkishness, And just
like that, to quote Carrie Bradshaw, Speed Lana sells her
Princeton house, enrolls Olga in a British boarding school, and
rents a flat in Cambridge, just fifteen miles from her daughter.
Everything is perfect. Olga fits in beautifully at school and

(09:22):
in the storied flats of Cambridge. Stet Lana dives back
into her writing, working on short stories and even penning
her third memoir called The Faraway music about her time
at Taliesin. Feeling anonymous again, set Lana is hopeful that
this time she's finally found her home where she can
be a writer and a mother and live a completely

(09:44):
normal life. Svetlana moved to England and then she asked
me to please not let on that she'd come here
or where she was, which was fine and I honored that,
but it was a little bit naive of her to
think that, you know, the press wouldn't find out if

(10:04):
that somebody like her who was coming to live here,
and of course they did. Spet Lana had spent the
past decade trying to protect Olga, fighting to protect herself.
She tried to secure them a home, anonymity, freedom, but
she could only step into the sun and out of
her father's shadow for so long. One day, the paparazzi

(10:27):
show up at eleven year old Olga's boarding school in
search of Stalin's granddaughter. Spe Lana's family secret is out here,
spet Lana's daughter, as she told it to me, Mom
had to just basically break down and tell me the

(10:48):
whole story. I got confined to the house for the
next three weeks, keeping the curtains drawn, sneaking out in disguises,
getting carved chases. I mean, it was just ridiculous. It
was all just weird. I didn't know what to make
of it. I mean, it was it was not normal.

(11:09):
On the one hand, this reveal must have been difficult
for both mother and daughter, but on the other hand
it must have been incredibly liberating. No more secrets, no
more lies. The Soviet cat was out of the Babushka,
as someone somewhere probably says. But that wasn't the only
secrets fet Lana was keeping. See. Something else was going

(11:32):
on during this time, something that only spent Lana and
a few trusted people knew, something that must have felt
at the same time wildly dangerous and painfully hopeful. Over
the last decade, speed Lana had been playing a strange
game of late stage Cold War telephone with her son.
There were letters and photos in the mail journalists playing Middleman.

(11:56):
Speed Lana's friend George Kennon, had advised against any further
con tact. It was too dangerous both for her and
her son. But all of that changes one December in Cambridge,
Spetlana is in her flat when the phone rings Mama,

(12:17):
is that you, asks the gruff voice of her son
on the other end of the line. Spet Lana's heart
is a flutter. She remembers the last time they spoke
at Christmas, when the call was cut short. She knows
she has to speak and speak quickly. Your voice has changed,
so she tells her son, who laughs and spits back,
you too, You speak like a Russian tourist. They chat

(12:40):
some more, and Joseph gives her his personal phone number,
and soon they are connected, really connected, Trading phone calls
back and forth. Spetlana and Olga talk to Josef and
to his new wife, Luda. Joseph and Nuda even ask
if Stetlana and Olga could come and visit Russia over
the net next year or two. More invitations are made,

(13:03):
Could Joseph come to England? Oh no, maybe spet Lana
and Olga can meet them in Finland. Why don't you
come here to Russia. It sounds like they're planning an
ordinary family vacation, But when you're the descendants of Stalin
and the Iron Curtain is still hanging tight, this is
all very high stakes, and there's something about it that

(13:23):
is unsettling. To Stetlana, I now found it unexpectedly difficult
to combine my usual life in the West with the
news from out there, blending the two worlds, it was
difficult for me. I get separated them in the my

(13:44):
psyche with wolves. Sveet Lana has a daughter now, a
completely westernized one. She can see that a return would
not be an Olga's best interest, and she can see
that any move, no matter how personal her motivations, will
be construed as political. And yet the more my mind

(14:05):
realized what a shock my trip to the USSR would
be for everyone, the more my heart insisted on it
for its own reasons. In September nineteen eighty four, Splana
seeks guidance from her astrological horoscope. It read not to

(14:27):
make right now any big decisions for clear understanding of
things is somewhat befogged and an absolutely iconic fashion. She
does not take this advice. What nonsense, I said to myself,
and I sat down to write a letter to the

(14:48):
Soviet ambassador with a request to permit me to return
to my motherland. Our stateless woman of the world is
going back to the uss ARE after the break Act

(15:09):
two there's no place like home. You know that feeling
you get when you've decided that you are in fact
going to have pizza for dinner. You've scrolled through all
the other options but valiantly landed on some za because
you deserve it. And today has been a day that
pizza is on its way feeling. I'd like to think

(15:29):
that's what speed Lana is experiencing as she prepares to
take a delicious bite of her children. The plan comes
together faster than she'd ever thought possible. Olga had a
fall semester break coming up, and speed Lana would use
that opportunity to take her daughter to Russia. Now there
is only one problem. She has sort of kind of

(15:51):
maybe suggested to Olga that the two of them are
sort of kind of maybe just going on a little
vacation to Greece at the last possible. In it, the
truth comes out and she just said, We're going to
go move to Russia. So I cried, and I cried,
and I cried, and I cried the whole night, and
I cried the home warning and then she said, okay,
we won't, which I think she just lied. So as

(16:19):
the Beatles once sang Joseph Stalin's daughter, Spethlana, is back
in the USSR seventeen years after she defected to the West.
Friends say she never got over the life that she

(16:40):
left behind. She said that not for one single day
was she free while in the West. She also said
that she had complete legal control over her thirteen year
old American born daughter, Olga, who returned with her to Moscow.
It's fifty nine years of age. She had decided to
return home to live with the past. Okay, pawn, let's

(17:00):
take a moment to reflect on this. The Princess of
the Kremlin is on her way back to the USSR,
the land of ice, skates and communism, where the roads
are paved with caviar and borshed. This is, of course
a big flipping deal. The USSR is in decline, the
Soviets are bolstering Joseph Stalin's memory as the World War

(17:22):
Two hero who defeated the Nazis, and now his daughter,
the Princess of the Kremlin, is undeffecting proving that life
in Russia is as good as it gets. Trading capitalism
back in for communism, well, that's a hot piece of propaganda.
But when Spetlana arrives in Moscow. She doesn't want the
big press conference, she doesn't want to give interviews. All

(17:43):
she wants is to go somewhere quiet and private and
hug the sun she hasn't touched in almost two decades.
At first speed, Lana and Olga have to do some boring,
bureaucratic shit meeting with a committee of Soviet women, getting
ushered from room to room handing over their passports. But
finally the moment arrives. The Hotel Sovietsky sits right in

(18:10):
the middle of Moscow. It is a big, brown, impressive structure.
Inside the decor is nineteenth century chic chandeliers, ornate moldings, pillars,
burgundy carpets, Golden crowned birds peek out of corners, just
to remind you that here there are golden crowned birds.

(18:31):
This is the grandiose, ostentatious landing pad for spet Lana,
A woman who had never been one for pomp and circumstance,
she cares little for the backdrop. What she cares about
is the man who awaits her, and finally, in the
white marbled lobby she sees him. Her thirty nine year

(18:51):
old son, Joseph. They embrace quickly. Here she is holding
her son, him holding her. It had been nearly eighteen years.
When she releases herself from the overdue hug, she sees
who else is with him Her ex husband, Joseph's father,

(19:12):
and a woman in her mid fifties with grayish permed
hair Spedlana assumes that this woman is her ex husband's
new wife, but then Joseph intervenes Mama. He says, this
is Luda Svetlana is taken aback. She describes Luda as
portly more than once in her writing, and can't fathom

(19:33):
how Joseph has married someone his mother's age. But that
was just the start of her concerns. He looks much
older than he's thirty nine years, somewhat boldish, with somewhat
of tummy. Nothing he's left of that slim, quick boy
with shining eyes. The other weird thing is that though

(19:56):
Joseph was fluent in English, he says not one word
to his English speaking little sister. He merely looks thirteen
year old Olga up and down at dinner. Things get
even more awkward speed Lana's first husband, Joseph's father tries
to make conversation in Russian, but Olga doesn't understand anything.
Joseph holds his mother's hand throughout the meal, but he

(20:19):
remains silent. Speed Lana can feel her heart breaking. Her
daughter Kacha doesn't show up at all. My sister was
never in on this. She was absolutely Communist. She turned
her back on my mother when she defected, and that
was it. And she's lived on top of this volcano.

(20:40):
A quick aside, this is not a Russian euphemism that
doesn't translate. Speed Lana's daughter literally became a geophysicist studying
volcanoes in the remote peninsula known as Kumchatka. So not
exactly the reunion anyone was hoping for. After dinner, things

(21:01):
go from awkward to hostile. Stetlana is harassed by the
press and police on the street. When things get tense,
she loses her cool. The daughter of Joseph Stalin was
not happy about her involuntary meeting with Western newsman. Today,
you have savages, you have un civilized people. She wasn't
about to tell where her daughter Olga was either. Look

(21:23):
your blood business. It was just a front line of
paparazzi outside the front I wouldn't know until years later
that that's how people who I knew here, my father included.
We're keeping tabs on us West alleges that Stetlana kidnapped Olga,
intensifying the media circus. There are ferrish tonight for the

(21:45):
happiness of a thirteen year old California born girl named Olga.
She happens to be the granddaughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Olga's father, William Wesley Peters, thinks that the girl may
have been taken against her will. Stetlana and Olga are
under constant state surveillance. Missus Ali Lujeva is staying at
a hotel where the Soviets often house visiting dignitaries. The

(22:08):
hotel is under constant guard from uniformed and plane closed police.
Sources have told CBS News that she is staying as
a guest of the government. All her expenses are being
picked up by the state, and where Spitlana had once
felt like a quote Cia pet she now felt like
a KGB puppets. Any decision to talk to the press

(22:29):
officially would probably be made by the Soviet Foreign Ministry,
which he has organized. News conferences in the past for
former defectors, they are usually trundled out before the cameras.
They denounced the West, endorse the Soviets, and when they're
no longer needed, they usually fade from public view. Oh
if only they would let Spelana fade. Everywhere she goes,

(22:50):
she's being watched, questioned, lampooned. All of this might have
been bearable worth it even if Spitlana had gotten what
she'd come for, a happy little family reunion. But instead
she rarely sees Josef, and when she does, the encounters
are so icy Joseph's father has to step in. Sped
Lana writes leave with Freese together alone. She and Olga

(23:16):
would both come to believe that her son and his
wife were in cahoots with the KGB, that they'd simply
done their part in an effort to get her back
onto Soviet soil, and it was all just reeked of KGB.
There's no other way that they would be able to
call each other. She would later go on to say
that it was I mean, it's definitely pulling out her

(23:37):
heart strings, but it was all staged. Russia got its
marker back, Russia got its mascot. Just like when Svetlana
flew to talies In West under the pretense of finding family,
she now finds herself in Moscow, useful for only her name.
Her son is married to a woman her age, her
daughter is married to a volcano, and Moscow feels like

(23:59):
a huge graveyard, sad and isolated. It's November again. She's lost,
She's trapped. She wants to go home. But where is home.
It wasn't tally Essen, it was in California, it wasn't Princeton,
it wasn't England. And now for sure she knows it's
not Moscow. Much like after I've eaten that entire pizza

(24:22):
by myself, steed Lana was filled with guilt and unable
to sleep. And then, suddenly, amidst the sleepless night of
anxiety and doubt, emerged the image of a country where
were born, leaved, married. Almost all my ancestors ah Georgia,

(24:47):
a fragrant land full of old stone churches cut into
the hills, fine arden, storied history. If anywhere was home,
it was the home of her ancestors. When st Lana
flew to Taliesin to meet Olga Vana, she had been
seduced by the idea of being near a Balkan maternal figure.
Georgia was full of them. If anywhere was home, it

(25:11):
was the home of her ancestors. As much as I
want to honor speed Lana's line of thinking here, I
do want to point out that this late night revelation
slash decision to move, this is all part of a
cycle that she just keeps repeating again and again. But

(25:32):
what's interesting, or maybe just sad, is that this cycle
had previously taken years. Now it's tightening. No sooner does
fet Lana declare someplace home than she declares it her prison.
So two months after their arrival in Moscow, sped Lana
yang Solga out of her public school, and mother and

(25:53):
daughter head south across the border, over the range of
the Caucasus Mountains to the capital of Georgia, to Tubilisi.
Georgia is a place of great meaning, where both sides
of Speedlana's family had lived, crossed paths and changed the
course of history, Where the Bolsheviks had rallied, and where

(26:15):
the Alla Lujevs had sheltered a young Yosep Jugashvili, the
man who would become Joseph Stalin, which means Joseph Man
of Steel, which sounds like a great porn star name. Honestly,
speed Lana had been running from her father for most
of her life. Now she was heading right back to

(26:35):
where he'd been born and raised. After the break, Act
three a repeat of Act one, it's time for some

(26:56):
fun facts about Georgia or Fag for short. Georgia is
considered the birthplace of wine. Georgia has twelve climate zones.
Georgia the country is not the same as Georgia the state,
and in December of nineteen eighty four, Georgia becomes the

(27:17):
new home of sped Lana and Olga Peters. The Times
of London reports they've been allocated a flat in a
prestige block reserve for Georgian VIPs. They're offered a car
and chauffeur. The Soviets are trying hard to keep Splana happy,
but it seems to make her squirm. Here's Rosemary Selana

(27:39):
was given so many things to keep her there, including
it all, chauffeur, wonderful apartment, all of which she refused
in the name of her own integrity. Sped Lana and
her daughter visit Stalin's birthplace, the town of Gory. They
find that it's something of a shrine. There's even a
Joseph Stalin museum built around his childhood home, glorifying his life.

(28:03):
Sveetlana tries to bite her tongue. I already seemed to
be a somewhat strange bird to the Georgians. Anyway, the
admirers of my father thought I did not pay enough
respect and attention to his memory. Either Slana was hated
as the daughter Stalin or loved as the daughter Stalin
and as speed. Lana is yearning for home, yearning for family,

(28:27):
Feeling lost and confused and pulled in different directions. She
finally hears from her daughter Katya, who closes her incendiary
letter with the Latin phrase dixit, meaning she has spoken great?
Is anyone else getting a little deja vu? Like? Haven't
we been stuck inside of the Soviet Union? Feeling like

(28:48):
upon feeling misunderstood, cast hopelessly in the eternal role as
a child of Stalin before. It's the kind of thing
that would make someone want to undeffect Ah, not Russia anymore,
away with the Soviets and the handlers and the people
obsessed with Stalin, and not in a good way. The

(29:09):
story of how spet Lana and her daughter Olga got
out of Russia in the spring of nineteen eighty six
is really interesting, and I would so tell it to you,
But the thing is you already know it. It's happened before.
This second Soviet defection is begging for passports, leaving in

(29:33):
the middle of the night, working diplomats on both sides
of the globe, even a pit stop in Switzerland. There
are car chases and paparazzi for Olga, and no certainty
for spet Lana until she touches down in the United
States of America. Even set Lana can see it's ridiculous.
In the fut beg the movie infot amateurish screen the

(29:56):
play with a fledgling writer dare to arrange all the
events in facts so as to repeat the final scene
with the opening scene in such detail. In my life,
it was as if some joker playwright was doing just that,
forcing me down his chalk line in a repeat of ACTE.

(30:23):
For the record, that joker playwright is me. Olga goes
back to boarding school in England, where all of her
classmates have carried on without her. The late Soviet dictator
Joseph Stalham's granddaughter went back to school in the West. Today,
Olga Pedios arrived at the Quaker boarding school she attends
in England. It was a tearful reunion with the classmate

(30:45):
she left eighteen months ago when she went back to
the Soviet Union with her mother. Olga speaks to reporters
waiting for her at her school, telling them that she
doesn't regret the experience, she's glad to be back, and
that she and her Russian family simply quote, didn't know
what to say to each other. And Stetlana goes back
to the US and hides out in a farmhouse in

(31:07):
the driftless Wisconsin. Stetlana, I'll llow you Jeva is back
in the United States tonight, after once again abandoning the
Soviet Union. The daughter of the late Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin is staying with friends in Wisconsin. That's right, of
all the places she could have gone, Stetlana is living
once again, mere miles from tally Essen. When I think

(31:29):
about this chapter of stet Lana's life, bursting out of
Moscow again, landing with international fanfare. Back in the English
speaking West again, I can't help but think that Stetlana
had not only repeated her escape from Soviet Russia, but
she had unwittingly forced Olga to do it too. So

(31:50):
now look at them, tornadoing around the globe, uprooting themselves
and everything in their path. Olga wants stability, speed, Lana
wants home. What do they have left each other? And
the story of it all on the next and final
episode of Setana spet Lana. St Lana. Stet Lana is

(32:16):
a production of iHeart Podcasts and the documentary group I'm
Your Host Dan Katroser. The show was written and produced
by me Adam Weber, Alison Joy, and Katherine Isaac. We
also serve as executive producers at the documentary group. Our
executive producer is Joe Batzilouts, with production oversight by Stacy
Kleiger an additional support from Tom Yellen and Gabrielle tenenbau Our.

(32:39):
iHeart team is supervising producer Casey Pegram and executive producer
Maya Howard, editing assistants from producers Christina Lorenger and Joey
pat Original music by Elan Iszakoff. Production counsel by Slas Eckhouse,
Dasty Haynes, Locko, Clearance counsel by Ballard Sparr. Fact checking
assistance by Megan Trout. Special thanks to my husband Jordan Siegel.

(33:03):
Excerpts from Spetlana Alieva's book, A Book for Granddaughters are
performed by Cassie Greer