Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva has died in the USA from complications arising from colon cancer, according to the New York newspaper. She was 85.

      Svetlana Allilueva was born on 28 February 1926, in the family of the Premier of the Soviet Union and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, and his wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva.

      Six months later Svetlana's mother committed suicide. That fact has been concealed from the girl for many years.

      At the age of 16, Svetlana Allilueva fell in love with Alexei Kapler, a Soviet film director, who was 40 years old. Stalin disapproved that romance. Later Kapler was sentenced to ten years in exile in the Vorkuta city.

      After leaving the school, Svetlana entered the language and literature department of the Moscow State University, but later transferred to the historical department. After the graduation from the University, Svetlana worked as an English translator and literary editor. 

        In 1963, while in hospital for the removal of her tonsils, she met Brajesh Singh, an Indian Communist visiting Moscow. He became her common-law husband (earlier Svetlana had been married and divorced twice), though they weren't allowed to marry. In 1966 Brajesh Singh died and Alliluyeva traveled to India to take his ashes to his family. Then she refused to return to the Soviet Union. In 1967 Svetlana became naturalized as a American citizen with the support of the United States embassy in New Delhi. In 1970 she married an American architect William Peters, gave birth to a daughter Olga, divorced two years later but kept the Lana Peters name. 

      Earlier she lived in England and sometimes visited the Soviet Union, publishing books about the Soviet regime and giving press-conferences.

      Her last years Svetlana Alliluyeva spent in the U.S., in a warehouse, and died on 22 November 2011 from the cancer in Richland Center, Wisconsin. 

Sources: RBK Newsru Images: KP

      
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