Stalin’s only daughter dies in US

November 29th, 2011 - 7:41 pm ICT by IANS  

London, Nov 29 (IANS) The only daughter of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin has died of colon cancer at the age of 85 in a care home in the US, Sky News reported Tuesday.

Svetlana Alliluyeva — also known as Lana Peters — who defected to the US from the Soviet Union in 1967, died in Wisconsin Nov 22.

Stalin ruled Russia from 1941 till his death in 1953.

Svetlana denounced communism and her father and his policies, and reportedly called him “a moral and spiritual monster”.

In 1970, she settled in Wisconsin after marrying architect William Peters. The couple had a daughter, Olga, but later divorced.

Svetlana wrote two best-selling memoirs including “Twenty Letters To A Friend” that earned her about one million pounds.

However, in an interview in 1990 with the Independent she said she had no income from her books and was living with Olga in a shared rented house.

She had left two children from her first two marriages in the former Soviet Union. Both marriages had ended in divorce.

In an interview in 2010 with the Wisconsin State Journal, she said: “I am quite happy here. Wherever I go, here, or Switzerland, or India, or wherever. Australia. Some island. I always will be a political prisoner of my father’s name.”

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