Svetlana - My Story; Svetlana Alliluyeva.

Autobiography of Svetlana - the daughter of Stalin - was published when the whole story was fresh, and much in public eye. As far as I remember this is the title it was published and I read it after having bought it fresh, having looked forward to it as the story unfolded in news. She was then in India, when the story began to be in news papers, and visiting for personal reasons. The story exploded when she fled, escaping Soviet regime successfully, when she flew out of India with much secrecy, in spite of the Indian government having no intentions of going against Soviet wishes, with much political uproar and confusion following the event.

Svetlana had not wanted to return to Russia from India when she came to visit the home of Brajesh Singh, , after he had died. He was the man she found love with, (and married - if only in their hearts and in their mutual intentions, with an official marriage not acceptable to the then authorities in USSR), who had died "in her arms, looking at her" (as I remember from what I read all those years ago in her autobiography) - due to his frail health, though he stayed on in the country in spite of it after having met her, and in fact went to Moscow to be with her. She had traveled to India to bring his ashes back to his home, Kaalaakaankar (spelling slightly changed for sake of correct pronounciation) on banks of Gangaa, where they would be immersed in Gangaa as per his religion. She thought of Brajesh Singh and refered to him as her husband, and a marriage of hearts was certainly valid in ancient Indian traditions.

She came to India to find peace and a home and hoping to never return, and she could not find sanctuary in India. That must have been such a unique distinction, few are refused sancturay in or by India! This exception in her case was due to political reasons to a large extent, since Russia sort of would certainly have treated it as a theft of a national treasure. But she had gone through much in life and she was in no mind to return.

Subsequently she flew out and successfully managed to escape to Italy, and then from there to Switzerland, trying hard to find a place, any decent place to live away from her homeland that had become a pain to her. This she realised she could not find elsewhere due to power of USSR and their unwillingness to let her go, and there was only one place she could in fact find sanctuary, so she finally flew to US.

I looked for her autobiography now on shelfari and this is the only title I find matching the possibility even remotely. I had not read it in this language - but then nor was it in any other European language, the copy I hurried and bought when it was fresh as a publication and as the whole event too.

Quite a life this woman led until then. In India a phrase goes "dark under the lamp" and it is a bit of that, though not quite. Not quite, because what she grew up in was more dark than light.

Her position was almost that of a princess through her growing years, with her father ruling the nation that had stopped being a monarchy and yet had a ruling class and peasants and workers - with only a fearless middle class intellectual level missing, fearless being the key word. Then in those days they were sent to camps out in Siberia where there was no need of a fence - it is said often even the guard dogs died of winter, it was so cold; so there was really no need of a lock or a building to contain the inmates.

Perhaps the story of those fearless ones is not any less relevant today, even though the iron curtain is no more - for, quite ironically, the so called open societies are the ones that are now under total surveillence, what with the new ultra IT technologies, and the political will to control people by any means having become guaranteed to be successful after the terror attacks - so now it is no more open societies but in fact fish bowls that the then secure societies of west and in fact pretty much the whole world lives in. Big brother time is very much here and now.

I wonder if Svetlana finds it all ironic to have come through iron curtain to live in a fish bowl.

This sensitive princess had a youth that had been more like that of a Rapunzel, with the prince awaited eagerly but missing, or disposed off, depending on how one sees it.

With the third love she found some measure of peace, but she was not allowed by Russian authorities to marry him with any sort of official recognition in her country for the marriage.

This probably had little to do with the fact that he was a prince from a state (on banks of Gangaa river) in India - a real one, although the governement of India had abolished the princely states and their priviledges, and subsequently even the titles, officially.

He died in Russia, from what I remember of her story, and she had come to India desolate and in need of solace and peace. It was rather ironic (again, that word!) that this is one place people come and find it and she who thought it would be a home by right as the love of her life, could not.

By tradition of India she should have had such a right to a home in the land since it was land of her man, with an official state recognised formality of a Soviet legal wedding not being the obstacle, what with ancient traditions of India defining marriage in broadest terms possible. But that was not to be, with political and some personal ones as well. So she did not find sanctuary where most seekers do with no personal connections whatsoever.

Later I heard about her visits back to her homeland from her new home in US after many years of living in US, and meeting her children she had had to leave when she fled, when it was possible for her to do so, and since then there has been little news of her.

One of the most touching parts in the book that I remember is about the little girl being told her mother was dead - and later remembering having heard raised voices, and noises. She did not know if her mother was killed in a fit of rage or even otherwise. What a trauma is it for a child to have the beautiful intelligent mother disposed off in youth and not knowing if it was an accident, or what - and as it is it would be bad enough if it were an accident.

One only hopes the later years brought a measure of peace, not just security and stability - which are no joke either.