Stalin's Daughter

by Rosemary Sullivan

  Svetlana had managed to establish one very close friendship in Spring Green with a woman named Elizabeth Coyne. Coyne had a child at the late age of forty-five and knew what Svetlana was coping with as an older mother. Svetlana made one last gesture of rebellion before she left Taliesin. There was a piano at Taliesin that no one seemed to use. Because supposedly nothing belonged to any individual fellow, Svetlana played the innocent. The piano was public property. She asked Coyne if she wanted a piano. The movers showed up at Taliesin, loaded the piano, and took it away. When Herb Fritz, the actual owner of the piano, showed up, his piano was gone.32

  Wes decided not to accompany Svetlana to their new house. He now said she had deserted him and taken his child, though she was only fifteen minutes away. He was soon demanding that she either come back to the Fellowship or divorce him. “I am not fit for any compromise,” he said.33 On her doctor’s advice, Svetlana sought out a psychiatrist, who, having talked with the two of them, told her that she and Wes were completely incompatible and that Wes wanted out.

  Svetlana’s psychiatrist counseled that she never return to Taliesin, however much she might be tempted. Of course, she was unable to hold out. She drove there one night. Parking a short distance away, she walked via the back route and noiselessly entered Wes’s apartment through the terrace. She stood watching him.

  Then I came close and touched his shoulder, weeping. He stood up, his face just as it was when I had seen him for the very first time; very sad, with deep vertical lines down his cheeks. He looked pale, exhausted, and could not talk. “You must go,” he said, fearing that someone might see me. “You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t.” He was unable to say anything more. He started towards the door in his dressing gown, and I followed. He knew which way I had come, and he walked with me towards the car, parked amidst rocks and cactuses. No one was around, only the stars were shining. We did not talk; what was there to say?

  I drove slowly away, still crying; I could see him in the driving-mirror there by the roadside. The same beautiful desert road cut amidst savoaras and choias through which I came the first time. A bumpy, rocky road, leading to Taliesin from the asphalt highway. That was the last time I saw it.34

  At the end of February, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation issued a statement that Wesley Peters was seeking a divorce. Reporters descended on Svetlana. To their questions, she replied that she didn’t want a divorce; she simply could not live at Taliesin. “I believe in private property. They live a communal life at the foundation. They share their incomes, their food, their living. Everyone works, including the children [presumably she was referring to Iovanna’s two adolescent children]. That’s why I left Russia.”35 The Danville Register and the New York Times both had the headline STALIN’S DAUGHTER LEAVES HER HUSBAND.

  In the Danville Register, Wes retorted, “I’m afraid her mind has been conditioned by years of Communist training to the point she rejects the highly individualized life. She views [Taliesin] with the eyes of one conditioned to reject the real principles of democracy in operation.”36 He added that Svetlana “came here and was anxious to marry me too fast.”37

  In a second article in the New York Times, STALIN’S DAUGHTER DISPUTES HUSBAND ON SEPARATION, he showed a little more grace, saying, “The last thing I want to do is say anything against Svetlana. I’m very fond of her,” and “It was a mistake on my part to allow her to marry a person such as I am.” Their separation was “one of the great tragedies of my life.”38 Wesley maintained that Taliesin was “the quintessence of democracy. Frank Lloyd Wright taught a higher degree of individuality than anyone I know. . . . Of course there is leadership.”39

  Positioned right beside this second article, the Times ran a piece called “Custodian of a Tradition: Olgivanna Lloyd Wright,” in which Olgivanna is quoted as saying, “Our Taliesin life is based on the democratic principle—young people are treated according to their merit. With those few of wealthy or aristocratic background we have more difficulties.” Foreigners with titles, Olgivanna explained, found it hard “to submit to the orders of people whose backgrounds are much more modest than theirs.” The Times then identified Svetlana as having grown up “in effect a Soviet princess, daughter of Stalin.” Svetlana was trumped.

  When Olgivanna’s daughter Iovanna was interviewed much later, she claimed, “Nobody rejected her at all. It was she who rejected and was so suspicious.” And then she added gratuitously that Svetlana’s book “had been shadow written by somebody in the government. She was a murderer’s daughter.”40

  As news of their separation spread, friends came to comfort Svetlana in her new home. When the Hayakawas visited, Wes came too and stayed for an hour. Perhaps for reinforcement, he also brought an old friend from Munich and a couple from Switzerland. He sent flowers at Easter. She wrote to Joan Kennan:

  Dearest Joanie,

  I feel so sad. I feel pity for [Wes]—he is a weak man, he cannot lead his own way. This is his nature. He depends on “mother” complex. I can only hope & pray that old witch will die one day. Then he’ll have a sort of rebirth of his own. Love to you dear.

  Yours, as ever,

  Svetlana41

  According to Walter Pozen, at this stage it was Svetlana who actually wanted a divorce and Wes who was delaying. In Pozen’s opinion, “He wasn’t about to give up this woman.” He was refusing a settlement agreement because it would have prevented him from having access to Svetlana’s future earnings, and he was continuing to write checks on their joint account, already overdrawn by $1,000.42 Pozen soon had their bank accounts separated.

  Walter Pozen tried to make Svetlana understand her financial position, but he despaired, saying she had no concept of money. As part of the Soviet elite, she hadn’t needed to understand it. When she finally had money, she gave it away—to found the Brajesh Singh Hospital, as donations to charities for children, and to support literary endeavors. According to Edmund Wilson, she was also sending $300 a month to Nina, the widow of her translator Paul Chavchavadze, who had recently died and of whom she had been so fond.43 She gave her money unconditionally to Peters and his son. Joan Kennan would say, “It seemed to me the wealth from Twenty Letters had never been real to her—just one more turn of Fortune’s wheel. The village in India, Wesley’s troubled son on the farm, all those animals, the expensive gifts to friends.”44

  Pozen managed to get Svetlana a small loan from the Valley National Bank on the strength of future earnings from her books. In consultation with Cass Canfield at Harper & Row, he found out that Greenbaum had terminated the Copex Establishment, and all accrued earnings from her books had already been disbursed. In Canfield’s judgment, her potential earnings over the next five years would total approximately $15,000. Clearly, she was in a mess.

  Pozen was certain there had to be some way of working things out. If Wes and his son had taken all her money, she was owed that money back; the farm really belonged to her, or at least she had a legal interest in it, though of course Brandoch was fighting this. Pozen finally found a solution, a friend of Brandoch who was willing to lend him the money to buy Svetlana’s interest in the farm. He concluded that Wes would probably sign a settlement agreement for a divorce and future child support in exchange for settling the debt. This at least would leave Svetlana with some money, which, if properly invested, would provide an income.

  It had taken Pozen about ten months to negotiate the agreement. Numerous lawyers were involved. Svetlana continually phoned Pozen in Washington, to the point that he dreaded to hear that Mrs. Peters was on the line. She would say, “Walter, I don’t know . . .” Finally an agreement between Wes and Svetlana was ready to be signed the next day. Pozen was having dinner with Joan when the phone rang. It was Svetlana. Pozen recalled her words: “Oh, Walter dear, do you think we are doing the right thing? And this and that, and I don’t need the money, and so on and so forth, and I’ll give him this and I’ll give . . .” Pozen would always regret his exasperated response. He said, “Svetlana, you can’t buy t
his man back.” She hung up the phone.45 No agreement was signed.

  Though his remark about buying Wes had been unkind, he was astonished that Svetlana could give up ten months of effort in a fit of pique when she might have had the money that would have liberated her. But this is not how Svetlana saw things. She complained to Joan Kennan that all Americans talked about was money. Ending this marriage, she “wanted no conflicts, no hatreds, no claims.”46

  When Joan replied with a reassuring letter, Svetlana wrote again to explain why she had changed her mind at the last minute. She knew that Walter had acted wisely and that they might indeed have “won the game.” “We were just 5 minutes from it.” But she insisted, “I have to save as much as possible friendship and peace with Wes because of Olga. . . . I cannot fight him.” On the morning of Olga’s birthday, she told Joan she had attended the service at the Greek Orthodox church in Phoenix. “I cried for him, for myself, for our small child, and gradually I felt that all my hatred—or whatever it was—was leaving me. . . . I’ve lost the game, in a way. But from the other point of view I’ve won something, too. One day Wes will recognize that, if he is not able to do that now.”47

  When she finally signed a settlement agreement with Wes in July, Svetlana renounced any interest in the farm and did not demand income or child-support payments. What was the point? No one at Taliesin, not even the lead architect, Wesley Peters, received a personal salary. All monies from projects went directly to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which paid the architects’ expenses. Olgivanna claimed they were well compensated with accommodations, a car, and health benefits, and anyway the survival of Taliesin came first. No one complained. To demand support payments from Wes would only have meant ongoing acrimony.

  When Wes finally filed for divorce a year later, Svetlana did not appear in court. She said she still had money in investments that would provide her a comfortable income. In fact, according to Walter Pozen, she may have salvaged between $200,000 and $300,000 in sheltered investments, though Pozen believed it was probably less and would not generate enough money to live on.

  Svetlana decided her only option was to return to the familiar ground of Princeton. As her possessions were loaded into the moving van and she looked at the For Sale sign on her house, occupied for three months, she felt only a cold devastation. Wes had agreed to fly with her and Olga to Philadelphia. On the flight, they barely spoke. What was there to say? When her Princeton taxi arrived, Wes kissed her and then was gone. It felt like a defeat, but ironically, out of the whole debacle had come her greatest gift—her daughter. Without Olga, it is questionable whether Svetlana would have survived.

  Chapter 26

  Stalin’s Daughter Cutting the Grass

  Joseph, the son Svetlana left behind, poses with his passport in 1975 in this photograph that George Kennan received from an anonymous American journalist.

  (Copyright © George Krimsky. Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, George F. Kennan Papers [MC076])

  When Svetlana and Olga arrived in Princeton in early August 1972, the Kennans, who were in Europe, lent Svetlana their home until her furniture arrived from Wisconsin and she could move back into 50 Wilson Road. Her first glimpse of her old house was disappointing. The interim owners had painted the white house red and added a screened-in porch and a two-car garage, which cut into the lovely terrace and backyard, ruining them. But this was the house where she had known comfort and safety, and she wanted it back. She still had doubts—had she left Wes too soon? She wrote to Annelise Kennan that she was still in love with him. “Only now I can see the full size of my unhappiness.”1 Wes kept promising to visit. He was always friendly on the phone.

  Svetlana was now a forty-six-year-old single mother bringing up an infant. These were the cards she had turned up in her last gamble, and she was determined to make the best of them. Mostly, she feigned contentment. She told Annelise, “We are quite happy on our Wilson Road.”2

  For Olga’s second birthday, Wes sent magnificent flowers and toys but, to Svetlana’s shock, did not appear. She wrote to George Kennan:

  After he [Wes] “won” the divorce, I phoned him to ask if he is happy now; he talked to me as a bitten dog, complaining that he is terribly unhappy, etc. But about visiting Olga he said “perhaps in the summer.” So she will never, I guess, have much attention from a daddy like this. I feel terribly unhappy about the whole thing, too. All my life I was used to idealize and romanticize a man I loved, and it always took me a long and painful time to be able to see a man as he really is; only then I would have relief. Although Wes showed us that he does not care about us too much, and in many ways he was not kind to me even when we lived together, I still cannot get rid of the good memories I do have.3

  Now she told Kennan, “The only goal of my life is to bring up this precious child the right way—the right American way—about which I truly do not know much.”4

  Svetlana could no longer afford a housekeeper and a gardener. She went back to Urken Hardware, where Mrs. Urken greeted her warmly, to purchase the cleaning supplies she needed. As the newspapers announced that Wesley Peters was seeking a divorce, she was buying a lawn mower and joining the noisy chorus of husbands cutting the lawn on weekends. All her neighbors pretended it was not Stalin’s daughter cutting the grass.

  Everything about American domestic life had to be learned from scratch. Hella McVay, a teacher at a local private school, the Stuart Country Day School, remembered running into Svetlana at the Acme grocery store. Svetlana was standing in the aisle with Olga in the shopping cart, looking completely lost. McVay must have seemed approachable. “Svetlana came up to me and said, very shy, very quiet, ‘Excuse me. I would love to make ice cream cone for my daughter. Tell me how to do this?’” McVay hid that she knew who Svetlana was and took the task very seriously.

  So I said, I like cones for my—I have two daughters—and I like sugar cones. Maybe she likes sugar cones too. I knew the little one’s name was Olga but I didn’t use it. She wanted to give her little daughter something that was American. And I showed her the cones and then I took her to the ice cream. Look, oh my God, how much ice cream we have here! All the flavors. Just pick your favorite flavor. Maybe you want to put vanilla at the bottom and maybe raspberry on top, or maybe chocolate and then vanilla, and make little scoops and then just let her lick and have fun and get messy all over. And she just thought it was so wonderful! And thanked me up and down and then picked up several packages, and then we kissed good-bye.

  Hella McVay and Svetlana became friends.

  I felt very strongly not to violate her privacy because one always read about the fear Svetlana had that she was only Stalin’s daughter. I mean I think women in general know that we are always in the shadow of a man up to a point, but being in the shadow of a monster who killed more people, I mean ten times more people than Hitler did . . . Svetlana wanted to disappear. And she always said she had two children but they were not free children. She wanted a child late in life here, a child born in a free country. . . . That was the phrase she used. I remember that.5

  When Olga turned two, Svetlana took her to the Presbyterian Cooperative nursery school and served happily as a “helping mother.” The younger mothers frowned upon her age—it was somehow unseemly to have a child in one’s midforties. Svetlana had begun to go under the name Mrs. Lana Peters and believed that no one knew it was she, Stalin’s daughter, who was changing the children’s diapers. But in small-town Princeton everyone, down to the local taxi drivers, knew who she was.

  Of course she was lonely. Old friends like Paul Chavchavadze and Edmund Wilson had died, but there were still the Kennans and a few new friends as well. And she continued her voluminous correspondence. She had met the writer Jerzy Kosinski in Princeton in 1970; they had talked for hours, and she had felt that, because he was Polish, he understood her and she him. She wrote to him:

  When it comes to talk—the way we, useless Russian intellectuals are used to talk—
then I have to knock my head against the wall. I am trying my best to become “Americanized” in that—that is not to talk (or think) in those old, outdated Russian intellectuals way. I made some success. I can have a good American cocktail—chat by now pretty well. But sometimes I miss that luxury of talking-for-an-hour-with-someone-who-understands. I had plenty of this luxury in Russia—nothing else, but a lot of this. . . . It was very refreshing, you know. I have had a bit of the same luxury with George Kennan, with Alan.6

  She joked that if their conversation in Princeton had continued, she might have fallen in love with him, but “God saved us both from that. I’m afraid that would be quite a mess.” She had heard he was unwell. Her closing was charming. She wished him “luck (the writers need luck). What else? Much laughter, which gives good health. Some inner peace, if you like that (some people don’t)” and reminded him he had freedom, even more than she.

  In his novel Blind Date, Kosinski introduced Svetlana as a character, and caught perfectly the shock that any expatriate Russian would have felt meeting her. By chance, his fictional character, Levanter, becomes a next-door neighbor to Stalin’s daughter in Princeton:

  Her name alone, even over the telephone, was enough to call up visions of his Moscow past, and for him she became a direct link to the awesome power that Joseph Stalin had wielded. Levanter had to remind himself again and again that he was a lecturer in Princeton now, not a student in Moscow, and that he was talking with a woman who was just another neighbor and only happened to be the daughter of Stalin.