Josef Stalin holding his daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva Stalin, 1935.
The only daughter of Josef Stalin, the Soviet leader who imprisoned thousands and was responsible for the Ukrainian famines of the early 1930s that killed millions, passed away last week at her home in Wisconsin.
More surprising than Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva (later she would be known as Lana Peters), living and dying in the United States (she defected in 1967) is that the infamous leader’s granddaughter is a Portlander.
In a Nov. 28 story in The Oregonian, Chrese Evans (pronounced like “Chris”) remembers her mother and her accomplishments.
Evans … said her mother was an talented writer and lecturer who taught at Princeton University and did not just draw on her father’s past to write two books: “She had a lot of accomplishments in her own right,” she said.
Peters died Nov. 22 of colon cancer at her home in the city of Richland Center, Wisconsin. She was 85.