Back to the USSR

receiver from roughly six thousand miles away. But this call sets in motion a chain of events that threatened to make my head explode. A chain of events that, while trap set Lana in the same cycles she's been stuck in over and over again, a chain of events that will get her from the US to England, to Russia and back again. She's been here before, overwhelmed, fired up, impulsive, and unstoppable. But this time the circumstances are different. This time,

it's not just her life she's uprooting. It's her daughters too, a daughter who is quote as American as apple Pie. Ironically, America was never set on his dream. When she made up her mind to defect in nineteen sixty seven, she thought perhaps she could stay in India. At her first press conference in New York, she had high hopes for her new homeland, but she wasn't ready to put a ring on it just yet. Do you intend to make your a permanent home in America? And do you intend

to apply for American citizenship? Well? I think that before the marriage, it should be loved. So if I will love this country and this country will love me, then the marriage will be settled. But I cannot say now. So in this episode, we're going to watch spet Lana fall out of love with America and run back into the arms of her X the USSR. I'm damn Katroser

and this is sped Lana. Speed Lana. You wake up in the morning, you live your day, and then you do it tomorrow and over and over again, and over again and over. Act one, A stateless woman of the World. The year is nineteen seventy seven. Both Atari and the Apple two computer make their way to the marketplace. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets swollen in the film Pumping Iron and Debbie Boone's You Light Up My Life is number one for

ten straight weeks. And if you were to open the pages of your April edition of McCall's magazine, you might find yourself reading an article titled the Americanization of Stalin's Daughter, a profile in which set Lana seems positively happy and free living in California. Spet is wearing blue jeans and likes to dance. Adorable Little Olga is pestering her mother for Kentucky fried chicken and corrects sveet Lana's English. Sipping a beer, Svetlana tells the interviewer, I think in English,

I dream in English, I read in English. I don't even think about Russia. I'm getting rusty speaking Russian. I have to stop and remember the words. She tells the interviewer that she is quote a stateless woman of the world, a Russian defector, an American alien. If all you had to go off of was this article, you'd think spet Lana, while a little unrooted, was living a life of domestic bliss,

of absolute normalcy. That is what she wants to give her daughter, and she makes it clear in every interview she gives that Olga is not to know the truth of their lineage. Here she is around that time on Good Morning America. Have you told her who her grandfather? Yeah, for her own good, she doesn't know much about it than maybe she isn't going through I don't think it's necessary for her. And you want your daughter to be

completely America. Oh, she will be. She will be. One might wonder if going on Good Morning America to say that she was keeping a secret was the best way to keep that secret. But there are a lot of contradictions when it comes to sed Lana, because in truth, these years of being a single mom without a stable income in a country where she still wasn't a citizen, where as you might imagine hard and in running away from her problems in Russia or at tali Essen, she'd

run right into new ones. In her solitude at home, she worries about secret Soviet microwave experiments and plots to kidnap Olga. She clips pictures from magazines of her estranged Russian children, Joseph and Coccia, and frames them on the mantel. Eventually she sees a psychiatrist to work through her quote undigested bitterness towards west, and she moves around a lot speed. Lana would later write to a friend. I feel very much being a stranger, a fild them everywhere, a gypsy

of sorts, and I do not mind that. But I carry the inner feeling of home with me everywhere, like a snail carries her shell. Throughout the first seven years of her daughter's life, sped Lana moves them from Scottsdale, Arizona, to Princeton, New Jersey, to Oceanside, California, to La Joya, and back to Princeton again. And inside of those cities, they're moving from rental houses to purchase ones. Olga is in and out of different public and private schools. Why

was spent Lana so driftless, so lost? Why was it that every autumn, as the cold and darkness set in, she'd feel the same familiar urge to blow everything up. November the dark short days, the time when my mother took her life. I felt as if I was sinking into dark waters, as it is sometimes in a nightmare when water floods everything. And do you know that you

are doomed? Yet spent Lana is spending off the dark waters and she sees dry land ahead Yoho, Captain thar Be America, and so in nineteen seventy eight, she's back in Princeton once more, and she officially becomes a citizen of the United States. Final spet Lana has officially chosen America, and America has chosen her. The story is over. Spet Lana will never move again until four years later, when she says she's done with America, packs up her daughter

and moves to England. The move comes after a trip stet Lana had taken to the English countryside for a televised interview with the BBC presenter Malcolm Muggridge. It was her first time out of the country since her defection. Dear mister Mugridge, I am getting somewhat nervous about meeting you in person because I have been and always wanted to be an ordinary person. Something about Muggridge's plea resonated with her. He seemed interested in spet Lana the person,

not spet Lana the headline. I have been pushed around a lot and developed a certain protective habits to say no leave me alone piece. Something in your letters has stashed me and I feel I cannot say no to you anymore. We connected with the show's producer, Jonathan Steadall Hello, Jonathan. Hello. Jonathan had been gardening all morning before our chat. Because he's very British. He's also very warm and introspective, and

his relationship with Stetlana didn't end with the show. We finished the filming my wife and I showed her around London and she'd never been to England before. A Great Britain, damp and monarchical and filled with BBC presenters asking her introspective questions. Perhaps England can be her new home, and she decided that she wanted to come and live here, and she settled in Cambridge. Nineteen eighty two. Bangs are in.

Prince William comes out of Princess Diana, the Iron Margaret Thatcher runs her country with austerity and hawkishness, And just like that, to quote Carrie Bradshaw, Speed Lana sells her Princeton house, enrolls Olga in a British boarding school, and rents a flat in Cambridge, just fifteen miles from her daughter. Everything is perfect. Olga fits in beautifully at school and

in the storied flats of Cambridge. Stet Lana dives back into her writing, working on short stories and even penning her third memoir called The Faraway music about her time at Taliesin. Feeling anonymous again, set Lana is hopeful that this time she's finally found her home where she can be a writer and a mother and live a completely

normal life. Svetlana moved to England and then she asked me to please not let on that she'd come here or where she was, which was fine and I honored that, but it was a little bit naive of her to think that, you know, the press wouldn't find out if that somebody like her who was coming to live here, and of course they did. Spet Lana had spent the past decade trying to protect Olga, fighting to protect herself.

She tried to secure them a home, anonymity, freedom, but she could only step into the sun and out of her father's shadow for so long. One day, the paparazzi show up at eleven year old Olga's boarding school in search of Stalin's granddaughter. Spe Lana's family secret is out here, spet Lana's daughter, as she told it to me, Mom had to just basically break down and tell me the whole story. I got confined to the house for the next three weeks, keeping the curtains drawn, sneaking out in disguises,

getting carved chases. I mean, it was just ridiculous. It was all just weird. I didn't know what to make of it. I mean, it was it was not normal. On the one hand, this reveal must have been difficult for both mother and daughter, but on the other hand it must have been incredibly liberating. No more secrets, no more lies. The Soviet cat was out of the Babushka, as someone somewhere probably says. But that wasn't the only

secrets fet Lana was keeping. See. Something else was going on during this time, something that only spent Lana and a few trusted people knew, something that must have felt at the same time wildly dangerous and painfully hopeful. Over the last decade, speed Lana had been playing a strange game of late stage Cold War telephone with her son. There were letters and photos in the mail journalists playing Middleman. Speed Lana's friend George Kennon, had advised against any further

con tact. It was too dangerous both for her and her son. But all of that changes one December in Cambridge, Spetlana is in her flat when the phone rings Mama, is that you, asks the gruff voice of her son on the other end of the line. Spet Lana's heart is a flutter. She remembers the last time they spoke at Christmas, when the call was cut short. She knows she has to speak and speak quickly. Your voice has changed, so she tells her son, who laughs and spits back,

you too, You speak like a Russian tourist. They chat some more, and Joseph gives her his personal phone number, and soon they are connected, really connected, Trading phone calls back and forth. Spetlana and Olga talk to Josef and to his new wife, Luda. Joseph and Nuda even ask if Stetlana and Olga could come and visit Russia over the net next year or two. More invitations are made, Could Joseph come to England? Oh no, maybe spet Lana and Olga can meet them in Finland. Why don't you

come here to Russia. It sounds like they're planning an ordinary family vacation, But when you're the descendants of Stalin and the Iron Curtain is still hanging tight, this is all very high stakes, and there's something about it that is unsettling. To Stetlana, I now found it unexpectedly difficult to combine my usual life in the West with the news from out there, blending the two worlds, it was difficult for me. I get separated them in the my

psyche with wolves. Sveet Lana has a daughter now, a completely westernized one. She can see that a return would not be an Olga's best interest, and she can see that any move, no matter how personal her motivations, will be construed as political. And yet the more my mind realized what a shock my trip to the USSR would be for everyone, the more my heart insisted on it for its own reasons. In September nineteen eighty four, Splana

seeks guidance from her astrological horoscope. It read not to make right now any big decisions for clear understanding of things is somewhat befogged and an absolutely iconic fashion. She does not take this advice. What nonsense, I said to myself, and I sat down to write a letter to the Soviet ambassador with a request to permit me to return to my motherland. Our stateless woman of the world is going back to the uss ARE after the break Act

two there's no place like home. You know that feeling you get when you've decided that you are in fact going to have pizza for dinner. You've scrolled through all the other options but valiantly landed on some za because you deserve it. And today has been a day that pizza is on its way feeling. I'd like to think that's what speed Lana is experiencing as she prepares to take a delicious bite of her children. The plan comes

together faster than she'd ever thought possible. Olga had a fall semester break coming up, and speed Lana would use that opportunity to take her daughter to Russia. Now there is only one problem. She has sort of kind of maybe suggested to Olga that the two of them are sort of kind of maybe just going on a little vacation to Greece at the last possible. In it, the truth comes out and she just said, We're going to

go move to Russia. So I cried, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried the whole night, and I cried the home warning and then she said, okay, we won't, which I think she just lied. So as the Beatles once sang Joseph Stalin's daughter, Spethlana, is back in the USSR seventeen years after she defected to the West. Friends say she never got over the life that she left behind. She said that not for one single day

was she free while in the West. She also said that she had complete legal control over her thirteen year old American born daughter, Olga, who returned with her to Moscow. It's fifty nine years of age. She had decided to return home to live with the past. Okay, pawn, let's take a moment to reflect on this. The Princess of the Kremlin is on her way back to the USSR, the land of ice, skates and communism, where the roads are paved with caviar and borshed. This is, of course

a big flipping deal. The USSR is in decline, the Soviets are bolstering Joseph Stalin's memory as the World War Two hero who defeated the Nazis, and now his daughter, the Princess of the Kremlin, is undeffecting proving that life in Russia is as good as it gets. Trading capitalism back in for communism, well, that's a hot piece of propaganda. But when Spetlana arrives in Moscow. She doesn't want the

big press conference, she doesn't want to give interviews. All she wants is to go somewhere quiet and private and hug the sun she hasn't touched in almost two decades. At first speed, Lana and Olga have to do some boring, bureaucratic shit meeting with a committee of Soviet women, getting ushered from room to room handing over their passports. But finally the moment arrives. The Hotel Sovietsky sits right in the middle of Moscow. It is a big, brown, impressive structure.

Inside the decor is nineteenth century chic chandeliers, ornate moldings, pillars, burgundy carpets, Golden crowned birds peek out of corners, just to remind you that here there are golden crowned birds. This is the grandiose, ostentatious landing pad for spet Lana, A woman who had never been one for pomp and circumstance, she cares little for the backdrop. What she cares about is the man who awaits her, and finally, in the white marbled lobby she sees him. Her thirty nine year

old son, Joseph. They embrace quickly. Here she is holding her son, him holding her. It had been nearly eighteen years. When she releases herself from the overdue hug, she sees who else is with him Her ex husband, Joseph's father, and a woman in her mid fifties with grayish permed hair Spedlana assumes that this woman is her ex husband's new wife, but then Joseph intervenes Mama. He says, this

is Luda Svetlana is taken aback. She describes Luda as portly more than once in her writing, and can't fathom how Joseph has married someone his mother's age. But that was just the start of her concerns. He looks much older than he's thirty nine years, somewhat boldish, with somewhat of tummy. Nothing he's left of that slim, quick boy with shining eyes. The other weird thing is that though Joseph was fluent in English, he says not one word

to his English speaking little sister. He merely looks thirteen year old Olga up and down at dinner. Things get even more awkward speed Lana's first husband, Joseph's father tries to make conversation in Russian, but Olga doesn't understand anything. Joseph holds his mother's hand throughout the meal, but he remains silent. Speed Lana can feel her heart breaking. Her daughter Kacha doesn't show up at all. My sister was

never in on this. She was absolutely Communist. She turned her back on my mother when she defected, and that was it. And she's lived on top of this volcano. A quick aside, this is not a Russian euphemism that doesn't translate. Speed Lana's daughter literally became a geophysicist studying volcanoes in the remote peninsula known as Kumchatka. So not exactly the reunion anyone was hoping for. After dinner, things go from awkward to hostile. Stetlana is harassed by the

press and police on the street. When things get tense, she loses her cool. The daughter of Joseph Stalin was not happy about her involuntary meeting with Western newsman. Today, you have savages, you have un civilized people. She wasn't about to tell where her daughter Olga was either. Look your blood business. It was just a front line of paparazzi outside the front I wouldn't know until years later that that's how people who I knew here, my father included.

We're keeping tabs on us West alleges that Stetlana kidnapped Olga, intensifying the media circus. There are ferrish tonight for the happiness of a thirteen year old California born girl named Olga. She happens to be the granddaughter of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Olga's father, William Wesley Peters, thinks that the girl may have been taken against her will. Stetlana and Olga are under constant state surveillance. Missus Ali Lujeva is staying at

a hotel where the Soviets often house visiting dignitaries. The hotel is under constant guard from uniformed and plane closed police. Sources have told CBS News that she is staying as a guest of the government. All her expenses are being picked up by the state, and where Spitlana had once felt like a quote Cia pet she now felt like a KGB puppets. Any decision to talk to the press officially would probably be made by the Soviet Foreign Ministry,

which he has organized. News conferences in the past for former defectors, they are usually trundled out before the cameras. They denounced the West, endorse the Soviets, and when they're no longer needed, they usually fade from public view. Oh if only they would let Spelana fade. Everywhere she goes, she's being watched, questioned, lampooned. All of this might have been bearable worth it even if Spitlana had gotten what

she'd come for, a happy little family reunion. But instead she rarely sees Josef, and when she does, the encounters are so icy Joseph's father has to step in. Sped Lana writes leave with Freese together alone. She and Olga would both come to believe that her son and his wife were in cahoots with the KGB, that they'd simply done their part in an effort to get her back onto Soviet soil, and it was all just reeked of KGB. There's no other way that they would be able to

call each other. She would later go on to say that it was I mean, it's definitely pulling out her heart strings, but it was all staged. Russia got its marker back, Russia got its mascot. Just like when Svetlana flew to talies In West under the pretense of finding family, she now finds herself in Moscow, useful for only her name. Her son is married to a woman her age, her daughter is married to a volcano, and Moscow feels like a huge graveyard, sad and isolated. It's November again. She's lost,

She's trapped. She wants to go home. But where is home. It wasn't tally Essen, it was in California, it wasn't Princeton, it wasn't England. And now for sure she knows it's not Moscow. Much like after I've eaten that entire pizza by myself, steed Lana was filled with guilt and unable to sleep. And then, suddenly, amidst the sleepless night of anxiety and doubt, emerged the image of a country where

were born, leaved, married. Almost all my ancestors ah Georgia, a fragrant land full of old stone churches cut into the hills, fine arden, storied history. If anywhere was home, it was the home of her ancestors. When st Lana flew to Taliesin to meet Olga Vana, she had been seduced by the idea of being near a Balkan maternal figure. Georgia was full of them. If anywhere was home, it

was the home of her ancestors. As much as I want to honor speed Lana's line of thinking here, I do want to point out that this late night revelation slash decision to move, this is all part of a cycle that she just keeps repeating again and again. But what's interesting, or maybe just sad, is that this cycle had previously taken years. Now it's tightening. No sooner does fet Lana declare someplace home than she declares it her prison.

So two months after their arrival in Moscow, sped Lana yang Solga out of her public school, and mother and daughter head south across the border, over the range of the Caucasus Mountains to the capital of Georgia, to Tubilisi.

Georgia is a place of great meaning, where both sides of Speedlana's family had lived, crossed paths and changed the course of history, Where the Bolsheviks had rallied, and where the Alla Lujevs had sheltered a young Yosep Jugashvili, the man who would become Joseph Stalin, which means Joseph Man of Steel, which sounds like a great porn star name. Honestly, speed Lana had been running from her father for most of her life. Now she was heading right back to

where he'd been born and raised. After the break, Act three a repeat of Act one, it's time for some fun facts about Georgia or Fag for short. Georgia is considered the birthplace of wine. Georgia has twelve climate zones. Georgia the country is not the same as Georgia the state, and in December of nineteen eighty four, Georgia becomes the new home of sped Lana and Olga Peters. The Times of London reports they've been allocated a flat in a

prestige block reserve for Georgian VIPs. They're offered a car and chauffeur. The Soviets are trying hard to keep Splana happy, but it seems to make her squirm. Here's Rosemary Selana was given so many things to keep her there, including it all, chauffeur, wonderful apartment, all of which she refused in the name of her own integrity. Sped Lana and her daughter visit Stalin's birthplace, the town of Gory. They

find that it's something of a shrine. There's even a Joseph Stalin museum built around his childhood home, glorifying his life. Sveetlana tries to bite her tongue. I already seemed to be a somewhat strange bird to the Georgians. Anyway, the admirers of my father thought I did not pay enough respect and attention to his memory. Either Slana was hated as the daughter Stalin or loved as the daughter Stalin and as speed. Lana is yearning for home, yearning for family,

Feeling lost and confused and pulled in different directions. She finally hears from her daughter Katya, who closes her incendiary letter with the Latin phrase dixit, meaning she has spoken great? Is anyone else getting a little deja vu? Like? Haven't we been stuck inside of the Soviet Union? Feeling like upon feeling misunderstood, cast hopelessly in the eternal role as

a child of Stalin before. It's the kind of thing that would make someone want to undeffect Ah, not Russia anymore, away with the Soviets and the handlers and the people obsessed with Stalin, and not in a good way. The story of how spet Lana and her daughter Olga got out of Russia in the spring of nineteen eighty six is really interesting, and I would so tell it to you, But the thing is you already know it. It's happened before.

This second Soviet defection is begging for passports, leaving in the middle of the night, working diplomats on both sides of the globe, even a pit stop in Switzerland. There are car chases and paparazzi for Olga, and no certainty for spet Lana until she touches down in the United States of America. Even set Lana can see it's ridiculous. In the fut beg the movie infot amateurish screen the play with a fledgling writer dare to arrange all the events in facts so as to repeat the final scene

with the opening scene in such detail. In my life, it was as if some joker playwright was doing just that, forcing me down his chalk line in a repeat of ACTE. For the record, that joker playwright is me. Olga goes back to boarding school in England, where all of her classmates have carried on without her. The late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalham's granddaughter went back to school in the West. Today, Olga Pedios arrived at the Quaker boarding school she attends

in England. It was a tearful reunion with the classmate she left eighteen months ago when she went back to the Soviet Union with her mother. Olga speaks to reporters waiting for her at her school, telling them that she doesn't regret the experience, she's glad to be back, and that she and her Russian family simply quote, didn't know what to say to each other. And Stetlana goes back to the US and hides out in a farmhouse in

the driftless Wisconsin. Stetlana, I'll llow you Jeva is back in the United States tonight, after once again abandoning the Soviet Union. The daughter of the late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is staying with friends in Wisconsin. That's right, of all the places she could have gone, Stetlana is living once again, mere miles from tally Essen. When I think about this chapter of stet Lana's life, bursting out of

Moscow again, landing with international fanfare. Back in the English speaking West again, I can't help but think that Stetlana had not only repeated her escape from Soviet Russia, but she had unwittingly forced Olga to do it too. So now look at them, tornadoing around the globe, uprooting themselves and everything in their path. Olga wants stability, speed, Lana wants home. What do they have left each other? And the story of it all on the next and final

episode of Setana spet Lana. St Lana. Stet Lana is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the documentary group I'm Your Host Dan Katroser. The show was written and produced by me Adam Weber, Alison Joy, and Katherine Isaac. We also serve as executive producers at the documentary group. Our executive producer is Joe Batzilouts, with production oversight by Stacy Kleiger an additional support from Tom Yellen and Gabrielle tenenbau Our.

iHeart team is supervising producer Casey Pegram and executive producer Maya Howard, editing assistants from producers Christina Lorenger and Joey pat Original music by Elan Iszakoff. Production counsel by Slas Eckhouse, Dasty Haynes, Locko, Clearance counsel by Ballard Sparr. Fact checking assistance by Megan Trout. Special thanks to my husband Jordan Siegel. Excerpts from Spetlana Alieva's book, A Book for Granddaughters are performed by Cassie Greer