Nadezhda Alliluyeva-Stalina
Encyclopedia
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
.
Nadezhda was the youngest child of Russian revolutionary Sergei Alliluyev, a railway worker, and his wife Olga, a woman of German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
, Romani
Romani
Romani relates or may refer to:- Nationality :*The Romani people**their Romani language*The Latin term for the ancient Romans, see Roman citizenship*The Italian term for inhabitants of Rome...
and Georgian
Georgians
The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....
ancestry who spoke Russian with a strong accent.
Sergei Alliluyev, though Russian, had found work and a second home in the Caucasus. During Stalin's time of exile, the Alliluyev family was a source of assistance and refuge, and during 1917, Stalin lived from time to time in their apartment. Nadezhda first met Stalin as a child when her father, Sergei Alliluyev, sheltered him after one of his escapes from Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
n exile during 1911. She may have always been in love with the mysterious swarthy Georgian with the yellowish-colored eyes who saved her life from drowning when she was a child.
After the revolution, Nadezhda worked as a confidential code clerk in Lenin's
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
office. She eschewed fancy dress, makeup, and other trappings that she felt un-befitting of a proper Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
.
The couple married in 1919, when Stalin was already a 41-year-old widower and father of one son, born to his first wife, who died of typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
years earlier. Nadezhda and Joseph had two children together: Vasily
Vasily Dzhugashvili
Vasily Iosifovich Dzhugashvili , known also as Vasily Stalin , , was the son of Joseph Stalin and his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva....
, born in 1921, who became a fighter pilot (C.O. of 32 GIAP) at Stalingrad, and Svetlana
Svetlana Alliluyeva
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva , later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's second wife...
, their daughter, born 1926.
According to her close friend, Polina Zhemchuzhina
Polina Zhemchuzhina
Polina Semyonovna Zhemchuzhina was a Soviet stateswoman and the wife of the Soviet premier Vyacheslav Molotov.Born Perl Karpovskaya to the family of a Jewish tailor in the village of Pologi, in the Aleksandrov uyezd of Yekaterinoslav Governorate , she joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour...
, the marriage was strained, and the two argued frequently. She also suffered from a mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...
; Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
recalled that she suffered from mood changes that made her seem like a "mad woman". While she was friendly with Vasily, she wasn't very close to Svetlana, and was very stern with both children.
After a public spat with Stalin at a party dinner, Nadezhda was found dead in her bedroom, a revolver by her side. Regardless, the official announcement was that Nadezhda died from appendicitis
Appendicitis
Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the appendix. It is classified as a medical emergency and many cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy. Untreated, mortality is high, mainly because of the risk of rupture leading to...
. Two doctors, who refused to sign a certificate stating false conclusions about the cause of her death (Levin and Pletnev), were later convicted during the Trial of the Twenty-One and executed. Some claim the gun was found beside the hand she didn't use, apparently indicating a framed suicide; many in Russia allege that Stalin killed her himself.
Accounts of contemporaries and Stalin's letters indicate that he was much disturbed by the event.
Her daughter Svetlana later emigrated from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and defected to the United States, where she eventually published her autobiography, which included recollections of her parents and their relationship.