Svetlana; The Story of Stalin's Daughter

New York: The New American Library [a Signet Book], 1967. First Printing [Stated]. Mass market paperback. Good. 192 pages. Twenty-one photographs. Chronology. Family Tree. Selected Bibliography. A Note on Sources. Cover has some wear and soiling. The contents include: From Tragedy to Rebirth; Decision in Paradise; Escape to Freedom; The Mother; Nadya's Suicide; Little Girl in the Kremlin; What Svetlana Did Not Know; Brothers and Husbands; Stalin's Death: Medical Murder?; The Children; Between Two Worlds; "Nothing has changed..."; Moscow-Washington: Political Dilemma; New York Temptation; What Does She Believe; and Svetlana's Future: To Hope is to Fear. Martin Ebon (May 27, 1917 - February 11, 2006) was the pen-name of Hans Martin Schwarz, a German American journalist and author of non-fiction books and articles, particularly as an anti-communist. In 1938, Schwarz emigrated to the USA and changed his name to Martin Ebon. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Office of War Information (formed June 1942), the U.S. Department of State (as an information officer), and by 1948 had joined the staff of Partisan Review magazine. In January 1948, Ebon published his first book in English, World Communism Today, which reviewed a century of Marxism, following the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels in 1848. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. praised the book as an "outstanding work on communist penetration and strategy." The book was cited as an expert source. His July 1948 article "Communist Tactics in Palestine" in the Middle East Journal received a favorably review as "carefully documented" and "objective and non-partisan." Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (28 February 1926 - 22 November 2011), later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967, she caused an international furor when she defected to the United States and, in 1978, became a naturalized citizen. From 1984 to 1986, she briefly returned to the Soviet Union and had her Soviet citizenship reinstated. Until her death in 2011, she was Stalin's last surviving child. After her father's death in 1953, Alliluyeva worked as a lecturer and translator in Moscow. Her training was in History and Political Thought, a subject she was forced to study by her father, although her true passion was literature and writing. In a 2010 interview, she stated that his refusal to let her study arts and his treatment of Kapler were the two times that Stalin "broke my life," and that the latter loved her but was "a very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel." When asked at a New York conference about whether she agreed with her father's rule, she said that she was disapproving of a lot of his decisions but also noted that the responsibility for them also lay with the Communist regime in general. On 9 March 1967, while in India Alliluyeva approached the United States Embassy in New Delhi. After she stated her desire to defect in writing, the United States ambassador Chester Bowles offered her political asylum and a new life in the United States. The Indian government feared condemnation by the Soviet Union, so she was immediately sent from India to Rome. When the Qantas flight arrived in Rome, Alliluyeva immediately traveled farther to Geneva, Switzerland, where the government arranged her a tourist visa and accommodation for six weeks. She traveled to the United States, leaving her adult children in the USSR. Upon her arrival in New York City in April 1967, she gave a press conference denouncing her father's legacy and the Soviet government. While in the Soviet Union, Alliluyeva had written a memoir in Russian in 1963. The manuscript was carried safely out of the country by Indian Ambassador T. N. Kaul, who returned it to her in New Delhi. Alliluyeva handed her memoir over to the CIA agent Robert Rayle at the time of her own defection. Rayle made a copy of it. The book was titled Twenty Letters to a Friend ("Dvadtsat' pisem k drugu"). It was the only thing other than a few items of clothing taken by Alliluyeva on a secret passenger flight out of India. In 1978, Alliluyeva became a US citizen.