Letters from Svetlana
Miriam Gross
In September of last year, 1 wrote a letter to Svetlana Peters asking her whether she would be interested in writing an article for the Observer about a book, All Stalin's Men by Roy Medvedev, which was about to come out. I had been told that she was living a somewhat isolated life in Cambridge and that she might enjoy some serious journalism. She replied by return of post: No. I cannot be persuaded to talk about that Stalin subject. Perhaps you have noticed that during my 16 years abroad I never did so, except in my two books. Believe me, there was no lack of invitations like yours, includ- ing TV. radio etc etc from all over Europe. The only time I gave in was with Malcolm Muggeridge on his BBC programme in 1981; I regret about that ever since and am not on talking terms with Mugg. That was HIS SHOW . . . and I hated it. But I owe you an explanation: I have left USSR because I hated it. . . ALL MY LIFE THERE has been rejected and forgotten by me. . . My father was not my hero — my mother was: hers was quite a different story. Do you know that she shot herself at age 31 because life of the Soviet first lady was too much for her? What all Soviet defectors write in their books (including that crazy Solzhenytsin) has no value for me whatsoever. . . I have my own concept of history, but it is mine, and not for TV shows and interviews. I am sorry to be so blunt and bad-mannered but I react the same way whenever I receive invitations like yours — based on total ignorance and the wrong assumptions about 'Stalin's daugh- ter' — assumptions which I sincerely hope you will change after this my letter.
I wrote back a suitably apologetic letter in which I also drew her attention to a passage about her mother in Paul John- son's History of the Twentieth Century. To my surprise, I soon received another much friendlier reply:
He [Paul Johnson] over-politicised her, alas: she was never a politician. She simply had good sense about people and did not like to see them oppressed, "liquidated", etc etc. . . I hate to be referred to as Stalin's
daughter and would appreciate if you could (could you?) see me as the daughter of Nadya Allilueva: I tried to convey this message to the world since 1967, but I guess I have failed.
It seemed (and still seems) to me ex- tremely bizarre that I had somehow drifted into a correspondence with the daughter of one of the most powerful and murderous tyrants in history. It also seemed quite obvious that, although she greatly resented being thought interesting merely because she was her father's datikhter, Svetlana had a very strong impulse to communicate her own political opinions and attitudes. Clear- ly, these had dramatically changed since she wrote her two marvellous books, Twenty Letters to a Friend (written six years before she defected) and Only One Year (1969), which Edmund Wilson de- scribed as 'a unique historical document, which will take its place. I believe, among the great Russian autobiographical works: Herzen, Kropotkin, Tolstoy's Confession' (A Window on Russia, Macmillan 1973). So I asked her whether she would agree to do a general interview with me about her life before and after she left Russia. She said she would, but with conditions: the interview was to be chiefly about public issues and about her mother; her father was not to be mentioned. She wrote:
The worst thing we could produce would be a long story about 'Svetlana and how she lived and lives in Freedom', that sort of thing. What I am concerned about is THE UTMOST DANGER OF OUR TIMES — danger is NOT being understood either by rulers or by public — cheap propaganda floods everyone's brains. . . Tape-recording, is essential: I expect to be quoted verbatim. We must avoid all 'kitchen' subjects and topics. . . I need to speak out with extreme frankness. . . we need not an 'approval' from anyone.
My heart sank. It wasn't just the obvious difficulties of dealing with this highly emo- tional, headstrong and prickly woman — Malcolm Muggeridge and Isaiah Berlin 'Come on you bugger! Get started!' had both warned me that she would sooner or later start abusing me (they both, however, seemed still to like and admire her); I also knew that the editors of the Observer would be unlikely to approve an interview which altogether steered clear of 'kitchen' subjects. So that it was with as much relief as regret that I received her next letter (21 December):
I know it might seem foolish, but I have come to the conclusion that I should not do our interview after all. My views might seem too controversial. . . neither Tory. nor Labour; both liberal and conservative at the same time; certainly NOT profeminist: -
neither in support of the 'male showinists [sic]; for PEACE, but not in favour of CND, and so on without end. . . at the present time we, my daughter and I, are still very shaky and uncertain in our temporary stay in Great Britain; and frankly I do not know your society at all. . . the hatred and the misunderstanding I might call upon my own head might be much more than I can presently endure, in this country where I want to stay for several years to come. • • I feel that this is all too early. . . I do not want to create a false impression that I really want publicity. I don't. Then, in late January, she telephoned: would it be all right, after all, if we did our interview in the near future? She was so sorry about all this chopping and changing. We arranged that she should visit me in London in mid-February (her landlady In Cambridge, Svetlana felt, would not like journalists coming to the house). She arrived at exactly the appointed time. She was shorter than I expected and stockier than in those famous photographs taken 17 years ago, but still attractive. She wore a simple grey jacket and skirt and a neat white blouse. Her manner was rather shy, even anxious, but she was unmistak- ably dignified. I took to her immediatelY• She, on the other hand, was distinctly mistrustful — which was hardly surprising: 'Poor Svetlana', Edmund Wilson had wilt: ten in 1969, 'has been subjected to an all but overwhelming vulgarization which iS.8 disgrace to the Western press.' Her maul worry was that I would turn out to be the, 'kind of Ladies' Home Journal reporter whose articles, she felt, had so trivialised her story when she first lived in the West. During the week that followed this first meeting, she wrote to me nearly every day. 'On the way home and this morning,' the first letter began, 'I feel that I have missed a few important points in our conversation. I regard our talk as a very important one for myself, probably just as important a.s, in 1969, my talk with Sir Robin Day. • • in both cases I was, and am, on the cross- roads; and I am not sure that yesterday I was able to convey the change of the times, the whole résumé of my defection.' The longest of these letters runs to sever' closely-spaced pages of typewriting; it is an impassioned tirade, often very humorouslY expressed, against the people who, she thought, had exploited her in America her lawyers, her publishers, the CIA; it ends: 'Enough now, or I'm going to have a heart attack.' The main theme of the letters, though, is that she now felt that there was far less difference between East and West than when she had first 'looked through the haze of my idealistic pink glasses'. The word 'obsolete' occurs again and again, as it did in our conversation: It is too late for hatred; it is time to love your enemy. . . all our attitudes, ideas, compari- sons are OBSOLETE. . . the time for coop- eration in EVERY WAY is here. . . I would not call this PEACE MOVEMENT because the words have been misused and even considered to be 'communist propaganda' — even paid for by KGB. I assure you I am not paid by KGB, and frankly I do not know WHO IS — apart from those professional Spies etc whom USSR hires, but I never heard that those characters call for peace in the world!. . . Yes, there has been Gulag. Yes, there has been many other horrid things performed in some degree or other all over the world. . . Kremlin is not the centre of world evil; HUMAN SOUL is. . . We must. change NOW — by WE I mean intelligent, educated people who are for some reason absolutely silent. . . I do not think immedi- ate disarmament is the answer. . . we must recognise that this Briton, that American, those Russians were FORMER ALLIES. We are preoccupied with Gulag- PLEASE do not think I had some tad Personal experiences' in the US and there- fore I talk now about 'they are both alike'. 1 had and I will have bad experiences every- where — this is my lot and luckily I know
that. Yet worldwide cooperation is a matter of survival of all our children. NOTHING else is more important today.
And more in the same vein. Looking back, it seems to me clear that during this period she was already preparing the ground, psychologically, for her return to Russia. (And putting out feelers?) She still gave every sign, though, of hoping that she would find the kind of life and community in England which she had so depressingly failed to find in America.
When I had completed the interview we met again to go over it — as I had promised — and it was at this point, predictably, that our friendly relations came near to break- ing down. It took a whole afternoon to persuade her that some of the personal touches in the interview had to stay there if it was to be of interest to the ordinary reader. She seemed to think that I wanted to tone down her message and there were moments when I felt tempted to reply that if I had simply strung together her more naive and contradictory statements she would have sounded like a complete idiot. After the interview was published (25 March) I received this letter: The text itself is quite good I think. . . but I am outraged with the photo — as any woman would be — from that angle even Liz Taylor would look ugly. But you are telling me that the picture is nice. Please stop talking to me as if I am a little girl. . . The public got wrong impression of my supposed 'loneli- ness' — and now ladies and gents are pushing to be friends. How sickening. . . Please do not send me the money — I do not want to be paid. Please stop pitying me: this is certainly not what I am able to appre- ciate. . . Freedom is INSIDE, and I have it. You do not Understand that, because your talk was all about Democracy, Gulag etc. I will never have a pretty house like yours in good part of London — but HOME I have inside me. I take it with me, like a snail, wherever I go. . . Do not pity me; it might turn out that I should pity you. . . but I don't. I wish you well.
I wrote back something to the effect that having a nice house did not automatically mean that I could not understand her predicament, and she replied right away: 'Of all people, I did not want to hurt you. A friend of mine (one of those special ones in Moscow) who went through all circles of hell, told me once, "I divide all human beings into two large categories — the harmless ones, and those who are harmful. Nothing else matters." You are definitely among the harmless ones.'
Svetlana certainly seemed to me to belong to the category of the harmless herself. She also seemed to me to be brave, impulsive and deeply unhappy, as though her experiences were increasingly more than she could bear.
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