Book Review: Twenty Letters to a Friend
Mar. 7th, 2022 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerFor obvious reasons, scholars tend to mine Svetlana Alliluyeva’s Twenty Letters to a Friend for tidbits about her father, Stalin (always referred to in the book as “my father”). Alliluyeva wrote this book in 1963, on her dacha in the Soviet Union, and published it upon her defection in 1967; it is a family memoir, with both the intimacy and the limitations that this implies.
Stalin seems to have been genuinely fond of his daughter, which is not a feeling he extended toward many other people, including for instance his sons. One of the things Alliluyeva is grappling with in this book is the stark contrast between his affection for her and his treatment of the rest of the country in general, but also, more specifically, her mother Nadya and her mother’s family, the Alliluyevs. Nadya killed herself when Alliluyeva was six (though until she was sixteen, Alliluyeva thought her mother had died of appendicitis), and almost the entire extended Alliluyev clan was arrested, and in many cases shot, during the repressions in the late thirties.
Alliluyeva toggles between what is clearly the view of the extended Alliluyev clan, that Beria poisoned Stalin against them, and her own uneasy feeling that Stalin repressed the family to try to repress his own guilt over Nadya’s death: their presence reminded him of her, and reminded him of his own neglect of her and also the political differences that (Alliluyeva believes) ultimately led to Nadya’s death.
The family legend is that Nadya left a suicide note in which she bitterly criticized some of Stalin’s policies, particular the grain confiscations that led to famine in Ukraine; apparently Stalin destroyed it, if it ever existed. But it certainly throws a new light on Stalin’s comment at the funeral (which is well-attested) that “She left me as an enemy.”
But, as Alliluyeva states, the book is a family memoir. Yes, there’s lots about her father, but she also devotes whole chapters to her mother (there’s a particularly charming chapter where she includes some letters her mother wrote as a schoolgirl: such a interesting glimpse of Petrograd just before and during the Revolution). The Alliluyev clan get multiple chapters as well, as do each of Alliluyeva’s brothers: her gentle half-brother Yakov, born of Stalin’s first marriage, and her erratic brother Vasily, eventually destroyed by alcohol and shameless hangers-on who used him for his position.
But ultimately, Alliluyeva gives pride of place to Alexandra Andreevna, the centerpiece of the final chapter, the thought that Svetlana wants to leave lingering in her reader’s minds. She’s the person who raised Svetlana, who stood by her through the terrible years when so many of her relatives were arrested. Alexandra Andreevna’s steadfast love taught Svetlana the humane values that animate this book.
“She was like a healthy, sheltering tree of life that rustles its leaves in the sun, that is washed by rain and gleams in the sunlight; that blossomed and bore fruit in spite of all the storms that beat and tried to break it.”
Stalin seems to have been genuinely fond of his daughter, which is not a feeling he extended toward many other people, including for instance his sons. One of the things Alliluyeva is grappling with in this book is the stark contrast between his affection for her and his treatment of the rest of the country in general, but also, more specifically, her mother Nadya and her mother’s family, the Alliluyevs. Nadya killed herself when Alliluyeva was six (though until she was sixteen, Alliluyeva thought her mother had died of appendicitis), and almost the entire extended Alliluyev clan was arrested, and in many cases shot, during the repressions in the late thirties.
Alliluyeva toggles between what is clearly the view of the extended Alliluyev clan, that Beria poisoned Stalin against them, and her own uneasy feeling that Stalin repressed the family to try to repress his own guilt over Nadya’s death: their presence reminded him of her, and reminded him of his own neglect of her and also the political differences that (Alliluyeva believes) ultimately led to Nadya’s death.
The family legend is that Nadya left a suicide note in which she bitterly criticized some of Stalin’s policies, particular the grain confiscations that led to famine in Ukraine; apparently Stalin destroyed it, if it ever existed. But it certainly throws a new light on Stalin’s comment at the funeral (which is well-attested) that “She left me as an enemy.”
But, as Alliluyeva states, the book is a family memoir. Yes, there’s lots about her father, but she also devotes whole chapters to her mother (there’s a particularly charming chapter where she includes some letters her mother wrote as a schoolgirl: such a interesting glimpse of Petrograd just before and during the Revolution). The Alliluyev clan get multiple chapters as well, as do each of Alliluyeva’s brothers: her gentle half-brother Yakov, born of Stalin’s first marriage, and her erratic brother Vasily, eventually destroyed by alcohol and shameless hangers-on who used him for his position.
But ultimately, Alliluyeva gives pride of place to Alexandra Andreevna, the centerpiece of the final chapter, the thought that Svetlana wants to leave lingering in her reader’s minds. She’s the person who raised Svetlana, who stood by her through the terrible years when so many of her relatives were arrested. Alexandra Andreevna’s steadfast love taught Svetlana the humane values that animate this book.
“She was like a healthy, sheltering tree of life that rustles its leaves in the sun, that is washed by rain and gleams in the sunlight; that blossomed and bore fruit in spite of all the storms that beat and tried to break it.”
no subject
Date: 2022-03-09 02:47 am (UTC)For obvious reasons, scholars tend to mine Svetlana Alliluyeva’s Twenty Letters to a Friend for tidbits about her father, Stalin
It feels like a shame to see a vibrant, complex woman’s life reduced in the public consciousness to “relative of so-and-so”. Of course, without the Stalin link, it’s unlikely anyone would be reading her memoir in the first place, so it’s understandable. But it sounds like she’d much rather people leave the book thinking about Alexandra Andreevna or Nadya than Stalin.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: