The Last Laugh

daughter resilience. Two. My mother would make me recite the story of Scheherazade to myself as a means of telling myself that things could be so much worse. The story of Scheherazade comes from the classic tale One thousand and one Nights. As the story goes, a Persian sultan, driven into a jealous rage by his unfaithful wife, would marry a verse gin every night and behead her in the morning.

When the beautiful and clever Shahrazade weds the monarch, she staves off death by telling him enchanting stories Aladdin Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sindbad the Sailor. But each night she stops the story before getting to the end. If the Sultan wanted to hear the rest. He'd have to spare her life until the next night, and the next, and the next, and after one thousand and one nights of bedtime story blue Balls. The Sultan, who'd fallen head

over heels for Shahrazad, spares her life forever. Ah, love, I could be kidnapped by a king and having to be telling him stories to keep myself alive, you know, the never ending story to keep myself alive, that kind of thing like we should be so lucky. Of all the sagas of survival that' stet Lana could have compelled her daughter to recite, she chose Shahrazade, a woman trapped by a tyrant, A woman whose power, whose very survival was rooted in her ability to tell stories of Stalin's children.

His eldest son was killed in war at thirty six. His younger son drank himself to death by forty, but Svetlana lived to eighty five. She lived by telling her story. Storytelling was her route to freedom, her ticket to America, to financial independence, a means to gain control over and make sense of her messy life. So how does that Lana's story end? Did she ultimately find what she was looking for. Did she ever really break free of her family history, of the cycles that haunted her? Can any

of us? I'm Dan Katroser and this is the last step episoda of sted Lana Steed 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 again. Act one. I did it my way. Sped Lana had spent the last few years trying to reconnect with her family, with her roots, and find a place that felt like home. Now she found herself back to square one in Wisconsin, or more like square eight.

I don't know. I'm not one for numbers. Here's Rosemary, you know it's It's a story that is unbelievably structured because everything echoes every thing else. Spent Lana is back in Wisconsin again. Olga is back at boarding school in England again. Spent Lana's two Russian children are lost to her again, and now she's alone in a hunting lodge

in the woods that she bought for cheap. Some newspapers report that she's got fifteen hundred dollars to her name, and when she reaches out to friends to ask for money, a very normal communist thing to do when you need help. Her American capitalist friends are embarrassed for her, and the

press has a field day. I'm looking at this one clipping now where Spet's wearing eighties wire frame aviator glasses with the headline Stalin's sad daughter has to beg Jesus in the past, when speed Lana's been this confused, down and out, overexposed, underappreciated, She's fallen back on her writing. She's reclaimed her voice and she got rich doing it,

so she tries again. Steed Lana writes another book, a memoir called A Book for Granddaughters about her time back in Russia, and if you recall, stet Lana had also written a book while living in England, a memoir called The Faraway Music about her time it's Holly Esen. So she's got these two books, two books that I love so much. We built this podcast around the stories they contain, and yet no one gives a shit about them because

they aren't about her father. The only interest in Svetlana was that she was Stalin's daughter, so she wasn't talking about Stalin. They weren't interested, So she decides she needs help from someone with a bit more agency, and who might have more agency why an agent, perhaps Steed. Lana gets connected with Helen Brand, a famous literary agent to

such icons as Maya Angelou and fran Leibowitz. And in the archive at Amorous College which houses feed Lana and Helen's letters, I was stunned by the shall we say, emotionally charged correspondence between these two women. I'm going to force my mic shy producers to read these letters for me. The relationship with Helen Brand begins cordially and sweetly. Here's Helen. You write beautifully about nature, about faith, about people. I love your descriptions. This is not a political book, but

a hunting memoir. You can feel speed. Lana's surprised, refreshed, ready to engage deeply with a collaborator and a champion. For a long time, I have not heard anyone praising my work and good things owas make me pray. Helen's going to make set the talk of the town again. She has a game plan. She has connections. She's going to use them. All have to find the best editor and the best publisher. She goes on to list editors she knows at Random House, Harper and Rogue, nah FSG

a double day. Spent Lana is thrilled. She sees the whole world opening up to her again. She even makes plans to buy a new house with what she is sure will be a nice advance. This is all going so well, so smoothly. The trajectory is up, up, up, But what goes up, according to science, must inevitably come down. Early on, editors start passing. Here's W. W. Norton and co. The past, which propelled spent Lana into the limelight seems

so distant and really used up that it doesn't resonate now. Basically, according to this guy, Spent Lana's old news. Then there's the actual critique of her manuscripts. He regretfully calls them one damned thing. After another Random House agrees set Lana has to be massively edited. But it's not just her story that's turning publishers away. It's well her I also know too much about how difficult she can be, how paranoid. Okay, that's not fun. But Helen, good old Helen is not

willing to give up on her client just yet. She's going to wrap up their critiques into one big constructive burrito and hope that's Svetlana will bite. Here's the thought. Set Lana ought to condense all four of her memoirs into one big, best selling autobiography. Yum is that Soviet cilantro I taste. I think a book titled set Lana

a Life would sell and sell and sell. Now, before we get to set Lana's response to this, I want to say that I understand the suggestion, yet I also totally understand the feeling of having written something you're really proud of and the person who is supposed to be your advocate tells you that's great, But why don't you write it completely differently? This is the reason I'm bald. Each follicle of hair I've lost is from someone not

clapping at my work. But I've never had the ovaries to do what sveet Lana does next, and that is to clap back. The whole notion about condensing my whole body of working one sounds like eskuing a composer to write one big symphony. Spetlana is downright insulted, and as this conflict between agent and client is brewing, spet Lana puts a down payment on a house with money from

an advance that was not advanced. PS. I am still not quite out of a met so I have gotten into thanks to your promises, that I quote can buy a house. She sends Helen Brand and her agency a legal bill for five hundred and ninety two dollars and thirty six cents. Would your office reimburse me? I think it should. Helen is astounded by this quote soap opera. She believed in speed Lana's extraordinary story and was only trying to help, but it blew up in her face.

When Spetlana first came to America in nineteen sixty seven, she did so on a work visa with a one point five million dollar book deal. If you recall, she was getting so much mail from her readers, America loved her. Listen to how young and hopeful she sounds. Have you any idea how many letters you've received? Well? I think I have received hundreds and hundreds of them. Have you read most of them? Oh? Yes, of course, And I keep most of them because they are really very nice

and very kind and warm letters. Now Svetlana is not receiving letters from adoring readers. She's getting rejection after rejection, and rejection just sucks, especially when it's your life story that people are rejecting. That's personal, and for someone so studied in politics, it's frustrating to me that spet Lana could not have been less diplomatic in how she received constructive feedback. She was alienating her allies. But maybe she

was just over it. Maybe after everyone twisting her intentions, her words, her story, maybe after East and West had yanked her around, Maybe after being robbed of her money at Taliessin and emptied of her heart in Russia, maybe she was just like, fuck all, y'all. The problem is all those people who had fuck spet Lana over in the past had seduced her because they want did something from her. Helen Brand is just an agent who set Lana's never met in person and who is merely trying

to help. Yet set Lana is so over people's input on her life story that she sees a suggestion as an attack, critique as a betrayal. The final letter from helen Brand, which included her returning all of set Lana's manuscripts, was dated November ninth, nineteen eighty nine, the fifty seventh anniversary to the day of her mother's death, the exact day the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The world was changing rapidly. Could set Lana keep up more? After the

Break Act too? The Last Laugh? June nineteen ninety one, A dreary day in London. After all the rejection in America, Svetlana has returned to Great Britain once again, and on this overcast morning, Svetlana gets herself dressed and takes the tube to London Bridge. When she gets off the train, it's raining. She has her umbrella, but it keeps flying up and turning inside out. When she reaches the bridge, she finds it deserted, nobody cloud and the water was

muddy and brown and dreadful. She's laughing in this interview, recorded a few years after the fact, but this is a grim moment, the lowest low. She Shimmi's up onto the rail, struggling in her pencil skirt. There was nothing particularly wrong with my wife on that day, but on this particular day I thought about it in the very dark terms. What am I My book farm has published, like Sienies Lucky escape from that yeah, and it was

very dark, Queny holds. At this time, Stetlana is living in a charity hostel in what the Evening Standard dubs the shabby end of town, a group home where the bathroom is shared and residents cook their meals communally. She just lost a couple of close friends, including fame novelist Jersey Kazinski, who died the month before by suicide. Stetlana is reminded of her own mother's suicide, and she thinks, if Jersey has nothing to live for with his literary fame,

then what chance does she have. As she stands there on the edge of the bridge, perhaps she feels ready to join her friends her mother in what she maybe imagines as a more peaceful place. But as she's struggling in her pencil skirt, somebody gretnam that they at be done and pulled me back. Steed Lana is saved by a man she thinks must be an angel, and as he pulls her back to safety, speed Lana struggling in his grasp, he shouts, oh, these godless people as I

was fighting are off. I am nobody us and she was holding me there. The police take her home and make her promise not to do it again. As far as suicide attempts go, speed Lana relays this one with a surprising amount of irony and humor. And that's what I love so much about her. It's so characteristically set to be able to look back at her most vulnerable moment, a moment when she was willing to actually end at all, and well, laugh. Of course, now I think they last

next day, not maybe last next day. Maybe yah. Yeah. That laughter. It was something she'd been taught by many people in her life. It was her antidote to tragedy. It's a saving grace, yes, but it was always that. It was always on the version you could lay, you could laugh, and you could, but the last thing would be laugh. You could cry, you could laugh, but the last thing would be laugh. You can hear it, can't you? In her laughter, spet Lana was able to take a

step back from the pain. In nineteen ninety seven, speed Lana, now seventy one, returns to Wisconsin for the last time to live with her twenty six year old daughter, and for the rest of her life she'll do something she's never done. She'll stay put. Mother and daughter wouldn't live together long, but Olga would always be her closest friend, her confidant, her protector, and with help from those who loved and cared for her, set Lana would get to

live out the rest of her days somewhat anonymously. I think many people did not even realize who she was. I mean, she was private. We called her Lana. That's Bridget Roberts, who works at the community library in downtown Spring Green. After we visited Taliessen, my producers and I wandered around, hoping to get a glimpse of what spet

Lana's day to day might have looked like. When we spoke to Bridget, who was just as friendly, chipper and hushed as a Midwestern library administrator should be, we asked her if she knew spet Lana. Yes, she came in on this library many times. Oh, I definitely knew her, and she would come in. She loved to sit over in the reading area and just read books. I took her home a few times because I said, Lana, you can't walk all the way home, you know, with it.

But a very very sweet lady and really private. I love that image of spent Lana Aluyeva or I guess Lana Peters a short, quiet woman in our seventies, spending her days in the library, reading and reading and reading until closing time. She's sort of an older Russian Matilda, someone seemingly ordinary who was in fact extraordinary. I think she felt comfortable here and safe, and like I said,

many people just knew her is Lana. I don't know if they really knew what the connection was, but I think really everyone who knew that connection really respected her because she did not like the limelight or any of

that kind of stuff sped. Lana had always claim she didn't want the limelight, though I'm not convinced that that was always true yet certainly by this time in her life she worked very hard to stay anonymous, so much so that even now when I meet people who knew her, they feel like it is their duty to protect her. Like when my producer Alison and I were interviewing Allen

historian Kieren Murphy and uncovered her connection to set. Towards the end of our conversation, I'm just curious, since you recounted that memory of Lana, what the context was of you getting to know her. I lived above spet Lana Kieren admitted she'd been purposefully hiding this detail. She had a house with a second floor, and I lived up in that apartment. During these years, people would sometimes enquire

about fet Lana's whereabouts. It was just in the air because people had heard that she was back from Europe, and so they would ask me if I knew her, if I met her. Kieren would always say, I don't know where she is right now to throw them off the scent. My joke was always like, I did not know. Was fet Lana in her living room? Was fet Lana at the library? Was Fetlana getting her mail? I don't know. Even though Karen lived in the same house as Lana,

she kept a polite distance. She knew that set Lana was wary and weary of people oggling her. The first time that I met her was very sweet, but in my head, I'm going, oh my god, you're Stalin's daughter. Oh my god, you're Stalin's daughter. Like that's screaming in my head, you know, while I'm talking to this very nice woman, but it's overwhelming. Just what did set Lana say at one time? Like nobody can control who their parents are. And she was like, I wish my mother

had married a carpenter. To her Spring Green neighbors. Launa Peters was this sweet old lady who spent her days quietly reading in the library. To her daughter, she was still the hilarious, big, complex personality that she had always been in our conversations. Her daughter told me that she and speed Lana dressed up as the Golden Girls Dorothy and Sophia Petrillo for Halloween. That sped Lana would curse

in Russian at her typewriter. She was a terrible typer, yelling the Russian equivalent of motherfucker or more literally, mother raper at the keys if they got stuck. That speed Lana was always writing, always reading, always brewing some witchy old world salth that was good for aches and pains. But to the outside world, Speed Lana had become something of a legend, a fun fact. Have you heard Stalin's

daughter lives in bumble Fuck, Wisconsin. Journalists, filmmakers, biographers all tried to reach out to speed Lana, but at this point in her life she felt so burned and harassed that she put up a wall. Right. My first letter heard said, Hey, an Nick, I want to write about your life she'd be run it away because she didn't want the attention. That's Nicholas Thompson. Nick is now the CEO of the Atlanta. Back in two thousand and six, he was writing a book about George Kennon and reached

out to spet Lana as a source. They soon became penpal's traded phone calls, and when Nick eventually visits her in Wisconsin, he meets an older Spetlana, a quieter one. Her hair has gone white, she walks with a cane, and she's living in a senior citizen's home, her father's Russian English dictionary on the bookshelf. He recalls her having the welcoming energy of someone who hadn't told her story in a long time. Their conversations were long and numerous.

Spetlana gifted him poignant insights about Kennon, the subject of his book, and didn't hold back from giving him personal advice either. They became friends. I feel lucky that I met her. I felt lucky that I got to talk to her. I really like I enjoyed those years a letter, not just as a writer or as a reporter Jack sometimes gone in the way, but just as a person so I was very grateful to have had her as

like an older friend. Nick would eventually pen a wonderful piece in The New Yorker called My Friend Stalin's Daughter. It was one of the first pieces I ever read about her. She was an extraordinary mix of emotions and intensities and passions in a way that I found utterly compelling. Like Nick and so many others, I too have found her wildness, her daring, her thoughtfulness, her impulsiveness, all of her contradictions intoxicating. She's a cocktail I want to keep

drinking forever. I don't know if the inner turmoils that Lana had experienced in her life was ever resolved, whether she had quieted down because she finally found balance, or that she had just gotten older. She still struggled with money. She's still cycled between senior homes. She never forgave her father and saw and repurposing his playbook, but still, by her daughter's account, she found some sense of peace end of laughter in her final years. By twenty eleven, speed

Lana is diagnosed with colon cancer. Sensing she's at the end of her days, speed Lana pends a letter and gives it to her lawyer, and in November, of course, she passes away at the age of eighty five. This letter, written by speed Lana to her daughter, her last great story, is delivered in the aftermath of her death from beyond the grave. It's a loving letter about how she's joining her ancestors and how she's now watching from the other side.

She ends it with a scribbled note saying sorry for the bad typing, alas it did not improve even from here. Whatever you want to call all her spet Lana Aluyeva, Luana Peters, you have to admit she got the last laugh. Actually, her daughter got the last laugh when she threw a party on the beach to scatter her mom's ashes into the Pacific Ocean, hoping no one would notice and issue her a fine. It was a fitting end laughter and tears, a group of friends in the sand drinking wine, casting

stet Lana out to sea. More after the break, Act three curtains Scheherazade was able to stay alive through her storytelling. She'd cleverly chop her stories in half, finishing one and starting the next in the same night, making her bloodthirsty husband salivate. For the end of the tale, instead of the end of her life. It's in this way that Scheherazade created a kind of never ending story, And though that was certainly not spet Lana's intention, I kind of

feel like she's done that for me. Each chapter of her life oddly linking to the next one in a way that makes you want to be a detective, understanding the links, piecing them all together. Why did she defect to the US, Why did she go to tally Esen, Why did she marry wes Why did it have to happen so fast? Why did she return to the USSR? Why did she come back? She writes about all of these big life moves in separate books, but she doesn't

connect the dots. I don't disagree with the editor who said, it's quote one damn thing after another. So the why keeps me searching. Looking back on her eighty five years of life, it's easy to see her as a tragic figure. A New York Times obituary calls her life a quote bewildering road ending in decades of obscurity, wandering and poverty. That is so mean, you guys, And look, it's true. Everything that she had gained by defecting in nineteen sixty seven. It seems that she had lost by the end of

her life. Before Roger and Harold met up with spelt Lana, they were warned by her friend how poor she was. It's the end of the month, and her welfare check will ever run out, and you know she probably will not offer you any drinks or you think to eat. So yes, by some standards, American capitalist standards twenty first century, everyone wants to be famous, standards where there are winners and losers in life. Sped Lana had lost it all.

That's how I was characterizing her to Nicholas Thompson when I sat down with him, and I was blown away when he corrected me. She seemed like a great American immigrant, right like, Yeah, just came here and became something entirely new. I think. I mean she broke out of one life, created a new one, had a whole bunch of ups and downs. But I don't think of her story as a tragic one at all. It had tragic elements, but was not a tragic story. She lived a very full life.

She lived a fascinating life. She lived an emotionally invigorating life. She had a fulfilled life. There were lots of upslots and downs, massive regrets, but I certainly don't think of it as a tragedy. As a writer trying to understand her, it's easy to get lost and sped Lana's life. He sped Lana. Herself got lost in it too. But Thompson is right. Sped Lana story may have tragic elements, but it's not a tragedy. At one point, she even said

so herself. Sometimes, if you are interested to listen to one of the most funny stories of our time, my paradoxical life, I would be glad to tell you more. It is your saga, an irony, is the tire and the tragedy all in one. I'm glad I have survived it all, and I'm still an optimist, but I do laugh a lot at myself, and if I lose that mess of tupacity, my end will come fast. A saga,

an irony, a satire, a tragedy. That was what drew me to spetlana story in the first place, the tale of a woman who did everything in her power to shuffle off the shackles of one life, only to thrust herself into the cage of another. And then to do it over and over again, each time intersecting with the most bizarre ca arcters of history. This is what made me want to write her into a play, a play that itself would be all of the things that she was,

all of the things that I am. When I started the process of writing about set Lana, I knew that that was where I wanted to take the story. What I didn't expect was where the story would take me on trips to Scottsdale. Welcome to the Terminal three, a Phoenix International Airs on tours of Wisconsin. Your destination is on the left, we see. Thank you so much this. Yeah, I'd become friends with authors Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman. Oh, Roger,

you sound beautiful. I want you to read me the Bible. I'd be happy to you know that, Sodom and Gomora Parts and Sharon. The love for stet Lana with biographer Rosemary Sullivan. Your affection for Steve Lana moves me. I mean she really matters to you. Yeah, she does. I get to meet people who knew stet Lana funny, smart, interesting. She always had like a funny quip. You know, she

had great stories. It's just a total pleasure to talk with her, and I'd get out of a trap that I and stet Lana and so many writers always fall into. I'd find a gang of artists who were not only my champions, but my collaborators, my comrades, Adam Webber, Alison Joy, and Catherine Isaac, the Stetlanits as I call us as. Someone pick a tone and we're all gonna harmonize. Wait no, yeah, yeah,

not sound terrible. All right, Alison, you go again. Yeah, I feel like this is Ultimately We've told this tale with humor. It was honestly the most reverential way I could tell it, and I hope, against hope that spet Lana would get the joke, or maybe not. The woman certainly had lots of opinions, but I wouldn't have her any other way. It's because of our fearless storytellers, our spet Lana's are Shahrazads, that we have these never ending

stories to tap into. It's been more than ten years since she died, and spet Lana's life story and her writing have changed me. I'm calmer now, just kidding, I'm really not. I'm still the same messy person I always was. I just know that you can leap fearlessly into the next chapter of your life and rest assured that you'll retain all of your glorious, fabulous flaws. That, among many other things, is what her life means to me. I hope spent Lana's life has meant something to you. It

would seem that she hopes so too. She closes her last book, a Book for Granddaughters, with this parting thought, The hope of this writer is that the memoirs of my generation will be appreciated by those who never knew our times. Our books will help them to understand not only another era, but different people. And granddaughters of all colors and creeds not only mine, will then find on these old fashioned pages strange and unreal situations, but also

some familiar faces. So the next time you have an impulse to throw your life up into the air, blow it up, crash into a new chapter, think of spent Lana and know that, sure you just might lose everything, but you'll have one hell of a story. Let's drink to that, but not vodka. Svetlana preferred a gin and tonic. Vodka she said was for peasants. My name is Dan Katroser, and this was spet Lana spent Lana. St Lana spent Lana is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the documentary group.

I'm your host, Dan Katroser. The show is written and produced by me and my friends Adam Webber, Alison Joy, and Katherine Isaac. We also serve as executive producers at the documentary group. Our executive producer and all around fairy godmother is job A Silhouettes. Production oversight by Stacy Kleiger, additional support from Tom Yellen and Gabrielle Tenenbaum. Our iHeart team is supervising producer Casey Pegram and executive producer Maya Howard.

Editing assistants from producers Christina Loranger and Joey pat These folks went above and beyond and were forever grateful. Original music by Elan Izakov, Your Brilliant Buddy. Production counsel by slas Ekhouse, Dasty Haynes Lockoe, Clearance counsel by Ballard Sparr Jay You're Our Hero. Fact checking assistance by Meghan Trout. Excerpts from spit Lana Alujeva's book, A Book for Granddaughters

are performed by Cassie Greer. Cassie, along with Alyssa, Josh Luanne, Sean, Sherry Beth and Line Storm Playwrights, helped me develop my play and we're some of my earliest partners in crime. Thank you all. Big thanks to parents Neil and Diane for taking me on the best trip to Amherst, and my cousin Jenny and her fiance Jared for going on multiple tours of tally Esen West with me and show furring me around Arizona. I'm so glad I don't drive.

And thank you to the partners of our writing and producing team who have added so much to this project emotionally, spiritually and creatively Jeff Wooker, Jonathan Willen, and Lena Vaughan. Lena, you are the one who said this story should be a podcast. So grateful for all of your support. And lastly to my husband Jordan Siegel. You've been there with me every step of the way during this project. You must be exhausted. Thank you.