Stalin's Daughter

Plutarch Award Winner and Boston Globe Best Book of the Year: An "extraordinary" biography of the Soviet dictator's daughter, Svetlana (The Washington Post).
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
PEN Literary Award Finalist
New York Times Notable Book
Washington Post Notable Book

Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and oppression that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy. Her mother committed suicide, and her father's purges claimed the lives of aunts and uncles; he also exiled her lover to Siberia.


As she gradually learned about the extent of her father's brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States—leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father's regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Wisconsin.


With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana's daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana's incredible life in a masterful account both epic in scope and of unprecedented intimacy.

Illustrated with photographs

"Alliluyeva [proves] a fascinating person not simply because of her name but because she was a willful, intelligent, passionate woman who resisted being gawked at as a freak of history: the monster's pretty daughter." —The Wall Street Journal

"Riveting." —The New York Times Book Review