Nadezhda Alliluyeva

Nadezhda Alliluyeva

Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva (Russian: Наде́жда Серге́евна Аллилу́ева; 9 September 1901 – 9 November 1932) was the second wife of Joseph Stalin.

Early life

Nadezhda was the youngest child of Russian revolutionary Sergei Alliluyev, a railway worker, and his wife Olga, a woman of German and Georgian 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.

Joseph Stalin

Nadezhda first met Stalin as a child when her father, Sergei Alliluyev, sheltered him after one of his escapes from Siberian 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.^[1]

After the revolution, Nadezhda worked as a confidential code clerk in Lenin's office. She eschewed fancy dress, makeup, and other trappings that she felt un-befitting of a proper Bolshevik.

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 years earlier. Nadezhda and Joseph had two children together: Vasily, born in 1921, who became a fighter pilot (C.O. of 32 GIAP) at Stalingrad, and Svetlana, their daughter, born 1926.

According to her close friend, Polina Zhemchuzhina, the marriage was strained, and the two argued frequently. She also suffered from a mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder ; Molotov recalled that she suffered from mood changes that made her seem like a "mad woman". While she was friendly with Vasily, she was not close to Svetlana, and was stern with both children.

Death

After a public spat with Stalin at a party dinner, Nadezhda shot herself in her bedroom.^[2] The official announcement was that Nadezhda died from appendicitis.^[3]

Accounts of contemporaries and Stalin's letters indicate that he was much disturbed by the event.^[4][5]

Nadezhda's and Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defected to the United States in 1967, where she eventually published her autobiography, which included recollections of her parents and their relationship.

In popular culture

Alliluyeva was portrayed by Julia Ormond in the 1992 television film Stalin.^[6]

References

1. 1. S. Ia. Alliluev, "Moi vospominaniia," Krasnaia letopis' 5 (1923); Alliluev, "Vstrechi s tovarishchem Stalinom," Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 8 (1937); Alliluev, Proidennyi put' (Moscow, 1946); the memoirs of Sergei Alliluev's daughter and Nadezhda's sister, Anna Sergeevna Allilueva, were published in two editions, both in the same year, 1946, as Iz vospominanii, published by Pravda and Vospominaniia, published by Sovietskii pisatel'. Stalin was angered by revelations of his personal life and ordered both editions withdrawn from circulation soon after they appeared. Svetlana Allilueva, Dvadtsat' pisem k drugu (New York, 1967), 56–57.
   2. Figure 2: From the Alliluev family album. Stalin's mother-in-law, Ol'ga Evgen'eva Allilueva (1905), and his father-in-law, Sergei Iakovlevich Alliluev (1914), who first met Stalin in Tbilisi during 1904. RGASPI, f.558, op.11, d.1651, nos. 16 and 15.
   3. Figure 3: From the family album of the Alliluevs. Stalin during 1915 during his Siberian exile and his future wife, Nadezhda Allilueva, taken during 1912, about a year after he met her. RGASPI, f.558, op.11, d.1651, nos. 18 and 22.
   Rieber, Alfred J. (December 2001). "Stalin, Man of the Borderlands". The American Historical Review 106 (5). Retrieved 26 March 2007.
2. "Stalin's women". Sunday Times (UK). 29 June 2003. Retrieved 26 March 2007.
3. V. Topolyansky. Blow from the past. (Russian: В. Торолянский. Сквозняк из прошлого.) Novaya Gazeta/InaPress. Moscow. 2006. ISBN 5-87135-183-2. The false report was signed by Kremlin's doctors Obrosov and Pogosyants. Obrosov was executed by a firing squad during 1937.
4. He mourned the loss of Nadezhda but also blamed her in bursts of self-pity: "The children will forget her in a few days, but me she has crippled for life."^{1 2} He virtually abandoned Zubalovo and became a wanderer again, shifting his residence from place to place
   1. "Dnevnik . . . Svanidze," 177. Characteristically, Stalin's reaction was to rage at the world exactly as he had done when his first wife died. Iremaschwili, Stalin, 40–41. His ritualistic mourning of Nadezhda had much emotional ambivalence. Allilueva, Dvadtsat' pisem, 99–109.
   2. Allilueva, Dvadtsat' pisem, 23, 45.
   Rieber, Alfred J. (December 2001). "Stalin, Man of the Borderlands". The American Historical Review 106 (5). Retrieved 26 March 2007.
5. Among the first relatives to arrive were Zhenya and her husband Pavel, who was Nadya’s brother. They were shocked not only by the death of a sister but by the sight of Stalin himself, who had never seemed so vulnerable. He threatened suicide and asked Zhenya: “What’s missing in me?” She temporarily moved in to watch over him. One night she heard screeching and found him lying on a sofa in the half-light, spitting at the wall, which was dripping with trails of saliva
   1. Extracted from Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
   "Stalin's women". Sunday Times (UK). June 29, 2003. pp. cover story. Retrieved 26 March 2007.
6. Robert Duvall as Stalin, the Embodiment of Evil, John J. O'Connor, The New York Times, November 20, 1992