Lana Peters, Stalin's Only Daughter Dies at 85

By: Megan Gosch
Lana Peters, only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and best-selling author, died on Nov. 22 at the age of 85.
Peters died at a care home in Wisconsin of colon cancer, County Coroner Mary Turner said, reported MSNBC.
Peters' denouncement of the Soviet Union in 1967 caused a public relations scandal for the United States and outrage in Russia. Peters also wrote four books throughout her lifetime, including two best-selling memoirs, reported the BBC.
Svetlana Alliluyeva, born in 1926, was Stalin's "little sparrow," and was originally very close to her father. Her brothers Jacob and Vasili, died in a Nazi concentration camp and as an alcoholic at the age of 40, respectively.
Alliluyeva graduated from Moscow University in 1949 and then worked as a teacher and translator. She left the Soviet Union in 1966 to spread the ashes of her first husband in India, where she brought herself to the U.S. embassy for political asylum and was brought to the United States.
In the United States, she married an architect William Wesley Peters and took the name Lana Peters. Her and Peters had a daughter, Olga, together and later divorced in 1973.
After her divorce, Peters returned to Russia to see her two children from previous marriages but returned to the U.S. after fights with family members.
Even as a U.S. citizen, Peters had trouble escaping her father's legacy and reputation, and spent the last few decades of her life in seclusion.
She is survived by her daughter Olga, also known as Chrese Evans, and her son Yekaterina, also known as Katya, a scientist studying an active volcano in Siberia.