For the millions of Soviet people who survived the horrors of war, the disputes and ambitions of politicians were peripheral. The country, finally at peace, could look to the future with hope.
FAMILY
2 March 1953 at the near dacha. The arrival of the daughter.
Once the seriousness of Stalin’s condition became clear, his children, Svetlana and Vasily, were called to the dacha. This was largely a symbolic gesture. Over time, Stalin’s family had come to play less and less of a role in his life.
Stalin met his first wife when he was still a young revolutionary adventurer. Returning to Tiflis in 1905 after escaping from his first exile and traveling through Transcaucasia, he moved in with the Svanidze family. There were five members of this family: Aleksandr Svanidze, who was involved in the revolutionary movement, and his sisters—Sashiko, Kato (Yekaterina), and Masho—as well as Sashiko’s husband, whom Stalin had known in the seminary. Sashiko and Kato were well-known dressmakers in the city who had nothing to do with the revolutionary movement. So when he brought Iosif Jughashvili into the household, Aleksandr tried to keep this outsider as far away as possible from his sisters.1 Nevertheless, an infatuation developed between Iosif and Yekaterina, who were both young and attractive. Kato’s sisters could not have been happy about her involvement with an impoverished seminary dropout. Some light is shed on this period by a letter sent to Stalin forty years later, in 1946. An acquaintance of Stalin and the Svanidze family from his Tiflis days asked for help and rather artlessly implied that Stalin owed him a favor. First, Stalin had used the letter writer’s room for assignations with Yekaterina. Second, when Stalin proposed to Kato and “the relatives were opposed,” “I told her, if you like him, don’t listen to anybody, and she heeded my advice.”2
The Svanidze family was basically presented with a fait accompli, and in July 1906 the couple was married.3 This new family member inevitably entangled the Svanidzes in his world. Soon after the wedding, Yekaterina was arrested as an accomplice of revolutionaries. The matter was resolved thanks to her sister Sashiko, who used her ties to wives of police officers. Yekaterina spent about two months under arrest, but instead of being held in a jail cell, she was kept in a local police chief’s apartment—apparently at the request of the chief’s wife, who was a client of the dressmakers.4 One important argument for closing Yekaterina’s case was that she was pregnant. In March 1907 the future dictator’s first child, Yakov, was born. Family life and revolution did not mix. Iosif moved his wife and son with him to Baku, where Yekaterina fell seriously ill. In November 1907 she died. This was a heavy blow to Iosif. Unable to take adequate care of his son, he left Yakov with his wife’s family.
There were other women in Stalin’s life. Evidence survives of a relationship with Stefaniia Petrovskaia, a young revolutionary from the landowning class, that began in 1909, when both were exiled to Solvychegodsk in Vologda Province. After serving out her term, Petrovskaia followed Iosif to Baku. When he was arrested in June 1910, the future dictator even asked the police for permission to “enter into lawful wedlock” with her. The permission was granted, but the wedding never took place. In September 1910 Jughashvili, still a bachelor, was again sent into exile.5 During this second exile in Solvychegodsk he registered his place of residence (in the home of M. P. Kuzakova) together with fellow exile Serafima Khoroshenina, suggesting that the two were intimate. Soon, however, Khoroshenina was transferred out of Solvychegodsk.6 According to rumors now being promoted by some journalists, Stalin then began a relationship with his landlady, Kuzakova, resulting in the birth of a son. There is no hard evidence of this relationship. After finishing his term of exile a few months after the supposed affair with Kuzakova, Jughashvili spent some time living in Vologda. Here he became acquainted with an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl named Pelageia Onufrieva, the fiancée of one of his fellow exiles, Petr Chizhikov. The future dictator flirted openly with the girl and gave her a book with the inscription, “To clever, nasty Polya from the oddball Iosif.” When Pelageia left Vologda, Jughashvili sent her facetious cards, such as: “I claim a kiss from you conveyed via Petka [Chizhikov]. I kiss you back, and I don’t just kiss you, but passionately (simple kissing isn’t worth it). Iosif.”7 In his personal files, Stalin kept a photograph of Chizhikov and Onufrieva dating to his time in Vologda: a serious, pretty, round-faced girl in glasses and a serious young man with regular features and a moustache and beard.
The jocular cards, presents, and photograph attest to the thirty-three-year-old Jughashvili’s interest in the young woman but do not prove that he was romantically involved with her. We have only a few vague hints. Around the same time that Stalin left Vologda, in 1912, Chizhikov went to visit his parents in Ukraine, where he fell ill and died suddenly, without marrying Pelageia, as he may or may not have intended. Onufrieva suffered the sort of misfortune that befell many of her compatriots. After Chizhikov’s death she married, and as her erstwhile gallant admirer presided over the country, her husband was arrested. It is not known whether she ever tried to appeal to Stalin for help. She died in 1955, having lived her entire life in Vologda.8
The evidence that Iosif Jughashvili had an affair with the even younger Lidiia Pereprygina during his last Turukhansky exile is more solid, although rumors that they had a son together have not been proved. In any case, Stalin never recognized Pereprygina’s son or any other illegitimate children attributed to him.
Returning to St. Petersburg after the February 1917 revolution, Stalin was ready to turn a new page. The Alliluev household provided a place of warmth after the upheavals of life underground. The attraction this family held for him is understandable. Stalin had known them since his years in Tiflis and had corresponded with them during his final exile in Kureika. The head of the family, Sergei Alliluev, was a longtime party member who had been arrested many times. The family’s two sons and two daughters were often left without adult supervision and led rather freewheeling lifestyles. Iosif was particularly fond of the youngest, the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nadezhda, who reciprocated his feelings despite the twenty-three-year difference in their ages. To a young woman from a revolutionary family, he must have seemed like the ideal man: a tried-and-true revolutionary, brave and mysterious but also personable. In 1919 Stalin and Nadezhda tied the knot. As to the nature of their relationship before marriage, we can only guess.