Name Nadezhda Alliluyeva | ||
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Children Svetlana Alliluyeva, Vasily Stalin Grandchildren Joseph Alliluyev, Alexander Burdonsky Similar People | ||
Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva (Russian: Наде́жда Серге́евна Аллилу́ева; 22 September 1901 – 9 November 1932) was the second wife of Joseph Stalin.
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Early life
She was the youngest child of Russian revolutionary Sergei Alliluyev, a railway worker, and his wife Olga, a woman of German and Georgian ancestry, who spoke Russian with a strong accent.
Sergei Alliluyev was Russian but had found work and a second home in the Caucasus. During Stalin's time of exile, the Alliluyev family was a source of assistance and refuge, and in 1917, Stalin lived from time to time in their apartment.
Stalin
Nadezhda first met Stalin as a child when her father, Sergei Alliluyev, sheltered him after one of his escapes from Siberian exile during 1911.
After the revolution, Nadezhda worked as a confidential code clerk in Lenin's office. She eschewed fancy dress, makeup, and other trappings that she felt un-befitting for a proper Bolshevik.
The couple married in 1919, when Stalin was already a 40-year-old widower and father of one son (Yakov), born to Stalin's first wife (Kato) who died of typhus in 1907. Nadezhda and Joseph had two children together: Vasily, born in 1921, who became a fighter pilot (C.O. of 32 GIAP) at Stalingrad, and Svetlana, their daughter, born 1926.
According to her close friend, Polina Zhemchuzhina, the marriage was strained, and the two argued frequently. She also suffered from a mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder; Vyacheslav Molotov recalled that she suffered from mood changes that made her seem like a "mad woman".
Death
On 9 November 1932, after a public spat with Stalin at a party dinner over the effects of the government's collectivization policies on the peasantry, Nadezhda shot herself in her bedroom. The official announcement was that Nadezhda died from appendicitis.
Accounts of contemporaries and Stalin's letters indicate that he was much disturbed by the event.
Svetlana, Nadezhda's daughter, defected to the US in 1967, where she eventually published her autobiography, which included recollections of her parents and their relationship. Svetlana became a British citizen in 1992, and died at the age of 85 in 2011.
In popular culture
Alliluyeva was portrayed by Julia Ormond in the 1992 television film Stalin.