Latest / Ridiculous History / Svetlana! Svetlana! The Strange Life of Josef Stalin's Daughter, with Dan Kitrosser

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Svetlana! Svetlana! The Strange Life of Josef Stalin's Daughter, with Dan Kitrosser · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
0:31
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give it up for the one
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Speaker 1: and only super producer, mister Max Williams. Yes, they called
0:39
Speaker 1: me ben Uh George Noel. Still still we try to
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Speaker 1: be consistent with our our our names. I guess we've
0:47
Speaker 1: got that going for us. Personalities different story, but yeah,
0:51
Speaker 1: names remained the same they are. Zeppelin might say they didn't,
0:54
Speaker 1: that was the song. They remained the same for them.
0:56
Speaker 1: But you get the out there, and today we are
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Speaker 1: bringing a very special story to the world. This is
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Speaker 1: something that one of our colleagues, our pal Maya, had
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Speaker 1: introduced us to a while back. There's a brand new
1:13
Speaker 1: podcast out in the world of iHeart. If you love
1:17
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History, you're gonna love this. And we decided instead
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Speaker 1: of just us talking about it, we would talk to
1:25
Speaker 1: the source, Noel, the person who made the whole thing happen.
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Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians join us in welcoming Dan kit Roster.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, what an entrance. Thank you so much, what
1:44
Speaker 1: an introduction. I'm so I'm very happy to be here.
1:47
Speaker 1: I have to add too, you didn't do this alone.
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Speaker 1: You have some help from our former superproducer, Casey Pegram.
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Speaker 1: That's right, Casey brings it every time. I am merely
2:02
Speaker 1: the announcer, but Casey is the whole football team getting
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Speaker 1: the podcast to the end zone. And thus that's a
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Speaker 1: great sports metaphor. I totally understand what you mean. Thank you,
2:12
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. More sports metaphors to come from
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Speaker 1: this homosexual throughout the podcast. Look, I learn all my
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Speaker 1: sports metaphors from listening to podcasts on the Ringer Network
2:22
Speaker 1: where they talk about movies but can't help themselves but
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Speaker 1: make everything relating back to sports. So that's how I learned.
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Speaker 1: The lingo is from listening to the watch. Oh that's great,
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Speaker 1: And I am going to recuse myself from the sports
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Speaker 1: conversations because our pal Max has gotten me weirdly into
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Speaker 1: curling and that's the only thing I know about now. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's don't worry about We've got a two part episode
2:46
Speaker 1: on it. Everything you want to know. I want to
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Speaker 1: know everything about curling I could get into. I like
2:52
Speaker 1: being the other guy. I really want to be the
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Speaker 1: other guy. I like sports where there's somebody is definitely
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Speaker 1: the athlete and then there's like another guy you know,
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Speaker 1: and that I feel like that's me and I appreciate
3:04
Speaker 1: that relationship. Now, now it's it's interesting that you're talking
3:08
Speaker 1: about team sports and there's a cool analog there with
3:12
Speaker 1: your latest projects, feed Lana's fed Lana. But what some
3:16
Speaker 1: people might not know is that before you ever got
3:19
Speaker 1: into podcasting, you were you were and are an award
3:23
Speaker 1: winning playwright as well as screenwriter. Could you tell us
3:28
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit about whose fed Lana is and
3:32
Speaker 1: how you encountered this story and what led you to
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Speaker 1: explore this in multiple formats? Well, um, I would be
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Speaker 1: happy to um so because otherwise, okay, otherwise I just
3:47
Speaker 1: you know, would I don't know, talk about my dog.
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Speaker 1: So stet Lana Alieva was the first and only daughter
3:54
Speaker 1: of Joseph Stalin, who your listeners might know as Joseph
3:59
Speaker 1: Stalin Um and the guy who was Stalin remember, the
4:05
Speaker 1: Secretary General of the Soviet Union. So uh. Stet Lana
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Speaker 1: was born in the twenties, it's the nineteen twenty six
4:15
Speaker 1: or nineteen twenty four, forgive me, and she was the
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Speaker 1: pride and joy of Joseph Stalin Um. And she also
4:21
Speaker 1: had a mother, as you know, it tends to happen,
4:25
Speaker 1: and her mother was Nadia Nadeshda Allelujeva and she committed
4:31
Speaker 1: suicide when stet Lana was but six years old. Stealana
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Speaker 1: didn't know this. She was told at the time that
4:38
Speaker 1: it was a pendicitis and she would find out ten
4:42
Speaker 1: years later, and that would sort of start at the
4:44
Speaker 1: beginning of sort of distancing from her dad, but she
4:47
Speaker 1: would still pinball back and forth. And it wasn't until
4:51
Speaker 1: you're saying Joseph Stalin wasn't entirely honest, So you know,
4:56
Speaker 1: he was known to being kind of an ass but
5:00
Speaker 1: to everybody, and in fact, you know, stet Lana wrestled
5:04
Speaker 1: with that in her writing. And that's one of the
5:06
Speaker 1: things that's so interesting about her as as a as
5:09
Speaker 1: a person in history is that she knew the ills
5:12
Speaker 1: and the terrors, and she also had this father figure
5:15
Speaker 1: who she did love, and she wrestled with that and
5:18
Speaker 1: she was very honest about that. That led her defection
5:22
Speaker 1: when she finally left the USSR in nineteen sixty seven. Now,
5:26
Speaker 1: the fun, weird, crazy dare I say, bizarre story about
5:31
Speaker 1: stet Lana that got me really interested is. You know,
5:35
Speaker 1: she had come to the United States. It sort of
5:38
Speaker 1: right in the midst of the Cold War, and she
5:41
Speaker 1: was an instant celebrity. She had a one point five
5:44
Speaker 1: million dollar book deal. Her name was in all the papers,
5:47
Speaker 1: and then she started receiving ovations, letters, telegrams, even gifts.
5:53
Speaker 1: Very strange, very mysterious woman all the way from a
5:58
Speaker 1: magical place called scott Still, Arizona. This woman really wanted
6:05
Speaker 1: Speltlana to come and visit. And her name was Olgavana
6:10
Speaker 1: Lasovich Hinsenburg Lloyd Wright, and she was the widow of
6:15
Speaker 1: the deceased famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. And she really
6:19
Speaker 1: wanted spel Lana to come and visit their desert compound.
6:23
Speaker 1: And this is where Frank Lloyd Wright's disciples as architects
6:26
Speaker 1: still lived in communion, making art and having a blast.
6:31
Speaker 1: It's a little culty. Well this, I mean, you could
6:34
Speaker 1: say one could say that, and one could get in
6:36
Speaker 1: trouble saying that. I think that's like, that's a big word,
6:41
Speaker 1: and I've got certainly got in trouble for saying it
6:43
Speaker 1: as well. But pretend you didn't know that word. Pretend
6:47
Speaker 1: you it come without judgment, and you show up, you're
6:51
Speaker 1: in the You've you've fled Soviet Russia, and you are
6:55
Speaker 1: now in the middle of the desert, in the middle
6:58
Speaker 1: of Arizona. And there is a woman named Olga Vanna
7:01
Speaker 1: who believes then you are the reincarnation of her dead daughter,
7:07
Speaker 1: because her dead daughter's name was also spet Lana and
7:11
Speaker 1: old and spet Lana's grandmother's name was Olga, and Olga
7:14
Speaker 1: Vanna actually is Olga Ivanova. And so Frank Lloyd Wright's
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Speaker 1: widow is believes that Joseph Stalin's daughter is the reincarnation
7:22
Speaker 1: of her dead daughter, and then lures her into her
7:25
Speaker 1: architecture compound and then marries her off to her dead
7:29
Speaker 1: daughter's ex husband named William Wesley Peters, and so she
7:34
Speaker 1: then becomes spet Lana Peters. Not that spet Lana Peter
7:38
Speaker 1: is not the first one, the second one. So it
7:39
Speaker 1: gets very it gets it gets very confusing. This whole
7:42
Speaker 1: thing is just an exercise and confusion, and that confusion
7:47
Speaker 1: is what I've spen like close to a decade immersed in.
7:50
Speaker 1: So that's sort of that's that's that's the overarching story,
7:55
Speaker 1: and it must have been this I imagine that led
8:00
Speaker 1: that led you to recognize set Lana as your greatest
8:03
Speaker 1: muse is that you read about this and you were like,
8:06
Speaker 1: I get it. That's everybody's been in that situation. Well, well,
8:12
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of the opposite, is like I
8:14
Speaker 1: have I don't get it. I don't get why you
8:17
Speaker 1: would like flee Soviet Russia only find yourself basically giving
8:23
Speaker 1: up your identity subsumed inside of, you know, a community
8:28
Speaker 1: where everybody is living and working together. I mean, you
8:30
Speaker 1: left socialism to you know, become a success in capitalism,
8:34
Speaker 1: and now you know her money was drained by it,
8:36
Speaker 1: so now you're giving it all a way to be
8:38
Speaker 1: part of this other thing. So I was just mystified
8:42
Speaker 1: by spet Lana. And I think like as a writer,
8:45
Speaker 1: you know, you go you walk towards characters and stories
8:49
Speaker 1: where you just have like the biggest questions, you know,
8:51
Speaker 1: because if you know the answer, it's kind of like, oh,
8:54
Speaker 1: I know why someone would do that, Like I know
8:56
Speaker 1: why someone wading a sandwich, you know, like they're hungry
9:00
Speaker 1: and so there's no story there. Well, actually getting a
9:03
Speaker 1: sandwich can be kind of sandwich is pretty good. Let's
9:07
Speaker 1: stay on that. Sandwich guy for a second. No, but
9:10
Speaker 1: do you think maybe you ask why, um, going from
9:14
Speaker 1: the socialist country to a commune, which isn't communism exactly,
9:20
Speaker 1: but there is a one for all kind of mentality.
9:22
Speaker 1: Do you think there that was a comfortable thing for Svelana.
9:26
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily comfortable, but she did. And she writes
9:30
Speaker 1: about this um in an unpublished book that we were
9:34
Speaker 1: able to find. She writes about how it wasn't necessarily comfortable,
9:38
Speaker 1: but she recognized it and that was sort of this
9:45
Speaker 1: that recognition was something I'm sure actually you know, when
9:48
Speaker 1: she writes about it, it's it's in retrospect, so a
9:52
Speaker 1: lot of crazy stuff happened, and so she, uh, that
9:56
Speaker 1: chapter of her life was not one that she looked
9:58
Speaker 1: on fondly, although there are elements, there are amazing things
10:01
Speaker 1: that happened, But at any rate, she's critical of tally Esen,
10:05
Speaker 1: which is the name of the frankly right fellowship world
10:10
Speaker 1: tally Esen, which literally means shining brow for all of
10:13
Speaker 1: your Welsh listeners, uh you know, hashtag Welsh listeners, hashtag Welsh.
10:21
Speaker 1: So you know, um, I think it was probably like
10:27
Speaker 1: maybe not comfortable, but like if you're in I don't know,
10:30
Speaker 1: if you've ever dated someone who sucks and then you
10:33
Speaker 1: go ahead and like date the same kind of person again,
10:36
Speaker 1: and you're like, I've learned nothing like That was probably
10:41
Speaker 1: her experience, Like she knew how to be inside of
10:44
Speaker 1: a subservient universe and she was probably kind of tired
10:47
Speaker 1: of it. Now we also know, and this is I
10:57
Speaker 1: hope this isn't too big of a spoiler, but we
10:59
Speaker 1: also just even from the first episode, from the jump,
11:03
Speaker 1: as they say that Svetlana is being pursued by a
11:09
Speaker 1: very powerful intelligence agency, but some what we would recognize
11:15
Speaker 1: as the KGB. Obviously we referred to that in English.
11:19
Speaker 1: Do you feel that there was um a serious threat
11:24
Speaker 1: to her from the KGB? Were they just monitoring her
11:28
Speaker 1: and if if whether or not that was a real threat.
11:32
Speaker 1: Did she perhaps feel some sort of sense of protection
11:35
Speaker 1: by entering this this commune out there in Arizona. Yeah,
11:39
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, so when she first arrived, So
11:42
Speaker 1: aside from just getting out of Russia, which is its
11:46
Speaker 1: own insane story, um, which is an episode one and
11:50
Speaker 1: it's three continents and it's it's insane. We've got to
11:54
Speaker 1: hear it though, now that now that you brought it
11:56
Speaker 1: out there, we got to hear just just like a
11:58
Speaker 1: just like some of the high level, the high level.
12:01
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So she has three husbands in Russia
12:05
Speaker 1: and then she divorces them all, and then she falls
12:08
Speaker 1: in love with an Indian communist by the name of
12:11
Speaker 1: Brajesh Singh, and she is not allowed to marry him
12:16
Speaker 1: for all sorts of fabulous racist reasons. This is in
12:20
Speaker 1: a period of in Russian history called the Thaw, and
12:24
Speaker 1: there's anyway Krushchev doesn't let her marry, but she does
12:29
Speaker 1: marry him spiritually. She feels as though she's married to him,
12:33
Speaker 1: and I there's some questions whether they actually got married
12:37
Speaker 1: in a church or not, but at any rate, she
12:39
Speaker 1: considers him her husband. And and then he dies, and
12:44
Speaker 1: where the Soviet government was not gonna let her marry him,
12:48
Speaker 1: they do let her go to his Indian village called
12:51
Speaker 1: Kalankar Khala lan Kankar at the floor of the Ganches
12:56
Speaker 1: River in India. This will be the first time that
12:58
Speaker 1: Stetlan has ever left Soviets oil. So she has been
13:02
Speaker 1: pushed around by the Soviets a lot in her life.
13:05
Speaker 1: She has two kids, but she's okay. She's going on
13:08
Speaker 1: a trip to India, and that's all she thinks about.
13:11
Speaker 1: She lands in India and she thinks she's going straight
13:14
Speaker 1: to this village, straight to meet Singh's family, but instead
13:17
Speaker 1: she's hold up in a hotel room with no telephone
13:20
Speaker 1: for two weeks. She's pushed around. She really is like,
13:25
Speaker 1: she's up to here, you know what I mean, Like
13:27
Speaker 1: I mean, and listeners, I am gesturing to my neck,
13:31
Speaker 1: so you know, I mean, you don't want to get
13:35
Speaker 1: a Soviet up to hear. So she finally makes it
13:38
Speaker 1: to the Gangie sprinkles her lover's ashes, and she is
13:42
Speaker 1: feeling so at peace in India. She wants to stay there,
13:46
Speaker 1: but they, the Soviets, want to get her back. She
13:48
Speaker 1: is still Stalin's daughter, She still is a totem, she
13:51
Speaker 1: still means something, and so she kind of now just
13:53
Speaker 1: wants to, you know, get out of there, and so
13:56
Speaker 1: she toys around with various places to go. Finally lands
13:59
Speaker 1: on America. It happens to be like a day or
14:01
Speaker 1: two before she's supposed to leave. She sneaks out of
14:04
Speaker 1: her hotel room. She hails a cab and she goes
14:07
Speaker 1: fright up to the US embassy and she says, my
14:09
Speaker 1: name is Steblana Aliyev, I'm Joseph Stalin's daughter, and I
14:13
Speaker 1: want to defect to the United States of America. What
14:16
Speaker 1: ends up happening from that moment is batch or feastings.
14:22
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're saying, because she ends up
14:25
Speaker 1: being flown the US doesn't water because they're in the
14:28
Speaker 1: middle of an arms deal with Russia, so she ends
14:31
Speaker 1: up being flown to Rome. But then the Romans don't
14:33
Speaker 1: want her, so she's never actually allowed to touch Roman soil.
14:36
Speaker 1: So she sits in like this weird apartment for a while,
14:39
Speaker 1: and then they fly her off to Switzerland. But while
14:43
Speaker 1: she's the paparazzi is all over her. She's stuck in Switzerland,
14:47
Speaker 1: and then she finally makes it all the way to
14:50
Speaker 1: the US un day, where she arrives this instant celebrity,
14:54
Speaker 1: all the while smuggling this memoir of life growing up
14:58
Speaker 1: under Stalin called Twenty Letters to a Friend, which winds
15:00
Speaker 1: up being the way that she gets into the US
15:02
Speaker 1: under a work visa. It's an even nuttier story than that,
15:06
Speaker 1: So I A'm gonna say, like, listen, listen to the
15:09
Speaker 1: pod dude. But you know that is like the that's
15:14
Speaker 1: I mean, every chapter spell on his life has these
15:17
Speaker 1: like highs and lows that are just mesmerizing. I mean,
15:20
Speaker 1: she accomplished a lot in her life. Well, I mean,
15:22
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned how doting her father was on her,
15:26
Speaker 1: and there's pictures you can find online of him like
15:29
Speaker 1: cradling her when she was, you know, in her like
15:31
Speaker 1: early teens or maybe you know, a little younger than that.
15:35
Speaker 1: But this obviously must have been a huge betrayal or
15:39
Speaker 1: perceived as that from Stalin. Can you talk a little
15:42
Speaker 1: bit about how he reacted and you know what this
15:45
Speaker 1: was like and how it kind of up the stakes? Yeah,
15:48
Speaker 1: I mean, well he was very dead at the time,
15:50
Speaker 1: but I'm sure that he was pissed, but he's not
15:55
Speaker 1: gonna let the scheduling of mortality getting no timeline. Like, yeah,
16:00
Speaker 1: it is okay, of course that was a stupid not
16:03
Speaker 1: a stupid question, not a stupid question at all. Um. Yeah,
16:08
Speaker 1: because also, like, while Stalin may have been dead, Stalinism
16:12
Speaker 1: certainly did not die. Um. And so you know, Stalin
16:16
Speaker 1: dies in nineteen fifty three, as famously depicted in the
16:19
Speaker 1: Death of Stalin UM and Uh, it's it's nineteen sixty seven.
16:24
Speaker 1: Once that wanna makes her way over to the United States,
16:29
Speaker 1: I might be getting if it's sixty seven and sixty
16:31
Speaker 1: eight when she it's either sixty seven sixty eight or
16:34
Speaker 1: sixty sixty sixty seven. Um, better than me. I didn't
16:37
Speaker 1: even know Stalin was dead. Well well, to your defense,
16:39
Speaker 1: thole that like that was a closely guarded secret as
16:42
Speaker 1: we also Yes Stalin, yes, okay, we got the reference
16:47
Speaker 1: in we were talking about that off air. They got me,
16:49
Speaker 1: They tricked me. That's I blame the Soviets. But but
16:52
Speaker 1: the original question was you know, the kg the threat
16:55
Speaker 1: of the KGB and um. You know, so the KGB
16:58
Speaker 1: was definitely involved in all aspects of stet Lana's life,
17:03
Speaker 1: who she could marry, where she could go, who she
17:06
Speaker 1: could be friends with, um, and certainly after she left.
17:10
Speaker 1: You know, we don't talk about this much in the podcast.
17:13
Speaker 1: Excuse me, I just burped on a podcast first time
17:16
Speaker 1: for everything Ring the Bell SI nickname ding Um. But
17:23
Speaker 1: you know, one of the unintended consequences of stet Lana
17:27
Speaker 1: leaving was that she had a lot of very close
17:29
Speaker 1: friends and stet Lana also partied down with all of
17:33
Speaker 1: the dissidents. She was interested in people of all walks
17:36
Speaker 1: of life. She was interested in artists and writers and
17:39
Speaker 1: academics and thinkers. And so when she left, the people
17:43
Speaker 1: who who are really targeted were were her close friends
17:48
Speaker 1: who also didn't have a lot of capital themselves to
17:51
Speaker 1: sort of stay out of the limelight. So there's this
17:53
Speaker 1: fascinating I mean, this is a ridiculous history. I'm sure
17:56
Speaker 1: that I offer because I would love to know more
17:58
Speaker 1: about her. There is half black, half Jewish tennis champion
18:06
Speaker 1: ethno musicologist named Lily Golden who love me. Stop by
18:12
Speaker 1: Lily real quick, because one thing I love about the
18:15
Speaker 1: natural course of this story is that at points it
18:19
Speaker 1: does sound like mad lib improv, you know, like we're
18:23
Speaker 1: pulling from a hat. So could you give us the
18:26
Speaker 1: rundown of this person again? Their descriptors, So this is
18:29
Speaker 1: set Lana's who. I believe Set Lana's best friend is
18:32
Speaker 1: who she refers to as Bertha in her book, which
18:36
Speaker 1: is a great chosen name. But her name was Lily Golden,
18:39
Speaker 1: and Lily was Her parents were both American, they were socialists.
18:46
Speaker 1: Her her father was black, her mother was Jewish. I
18:49
Speaker 1: guess during like uh, you know, the at some point,
18:55
Speaker 1: like during a Red scare in the thirties, they ran
18:58
Speaker 1: off to Russia. Had Lily she became like a Soviet
19:03
Speaker 1: tennis champ and then became like an ethno musicologist and
19:08
Speaker 1: what and then became Joseph Stalin's daughter's best friend. And
19:11
Speaker 1: she's just one of you know you look, uh. Spetlana
19:15
Speaker 1: was also like dear dear friends with Pulstoy's grandson um
19:19
Speaker 1: and all sorts of really interesting people that intersected with
19:23
Speaker 1: history and a lot of fascinating ways. And so these
19:26
Speaker 1: were the people who the KGB targeted, like Lily Golden
19:29
Speaker 1: like wasn't able to get on a flight after spet
19:32
Speaker 1: Lana defected, and certainly speed Lana's children. She left a
19:35
Speaker 1: twenty year old son and a sixteen year old daughter, um,
19:38
Speaker 1: and she didn't give them any warning. They found out
19:43
Speaker 1: like uh from the KGB that the that their mother
19:46
Speaker 1: had defected. So they were also targeted and watched, and
19:52
Speaker 1: that was a horrible unintended consequence um that you know,
19:55
Speaker 1: for spet Lana to flee, you know, she did leave
20:00
Speaker 1: people sort of vulnerable. And then you know there's stories
20:05
Speaker 1: that we hear it, and they don't feature so heavily
20:09
Speaker 1: in our podcast, and not because they weren't true, but
20:12
Speaker 1: they're sort of hard to verify. There was shortly after
20:16
Speaker 1: she had come to the United States. She was staying
20:20
Speaker 1: at the house of George Kennon, who was an ambassador
20:25
Speaker 1: to Russia during Stalin's era, and Kennon was considered the
20:29
Speaker 1: architect of the Cold War. He is a major figure
20:33
Speaker 1: in history, and he kind of became spelt Lana's godfather
20:36
Speaker 1: when she arrived in America. And so he is no
20:40
Speaker 1: longer alive. He's just as dead as Stalin is, but
20:43
Speaker 1: his daughters are very much alive. Joan and Grace, and
20:46
Speaker 1: I got to have a couple of zooms with Joan
20:49
Speaker 1: and Grace who each had wild stories and they're like
20:54
Speaker 1: they both had very different relationships with Spetlana. Joan was
20:59
Speaker 1: like buddy buddy, Grace had this like, uh, Stetlana sort
21:04
Speaker 1: of treated her a little bit like the maid m
21:06
Speaker 1: So it's funny to hear like the different experiences. But
21:10
Speaker 1: both Grace and Jone told me that while Stetlana was
21:12
Speaker 1: staying with them, on one day in particular, you know
21:16
Speaker 1: this farm in the middle of central Pennsylvania. All of
21:19
Speaker 1: a sudden, these men in black coats just started like
21:22
Speaker 1: coming to the door and knocking on it, and they
21:25
Speaker 1: asked if stet Lana was there, and and then quickly
21:28
Speaker 1: like fled back. So Stelana was always sort of haunted
21:32
Speaker 1: by the prospect of KGB agents, And certainly later in
21:36
Speaker 1: the podcast, we're going to get to a period of
21:39
Speaker 1: time where stet Lana gets wrapped up in a KGB plot,
21:44
Speaker 1: which is on internet and in history and certainly featured
21:48
Speaker 1: in Rosemary Sullivan's amazing book Stalin's Daughter, which everyone should read.
21:51
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to spoil it for our podcast.
21:53
Speaker 1: You'll have to tune in. Not yet. You have to
21:55
Speaker 1: go on the ride with this. Also also peek behind
21:58
Speaker 1: the curtain. Okay, I know we gotta get to the the character,
22:05
Speaker 1: but peak behind the scenes then, folks, we also hear
22:09
Speaker 1: ridiculous history. We don't know how all the story shakes out.
22:14
Speaker 1: We are going to be riding along with you, but
22:16
Speaker 1: I like, I like where you're going with that, Noel,
22:19
Speaker 1: because we talked about it a little off air. There's
22:21
Speaker 1: a thing. There's a part where you describe dan Um.
22:25
Speaker 1: You describe speed Lana as like the most famous defector
22:30
Speaker 1: at least as far as as the Western world is concerned,
22:33
Speaker 1: which makes sense, you know, it's it's the daughter of
22:37
Speaker 1: a ruler basically. Uh, but what what was the typical
22:42
Speaker 1: I don't know what's the best way to phrase this, Noel.
22:44
Speaker 1: What do we need to know about the island? Maybe
22:46
Speaker 1: just a little scene setting for the time, um as
22:50
Speaker 1: to what it would have meant um to be a defector,
22:53
Speaker 1: h and why maybe someone less famous than speed Lana
22:56
Speaker 1: would have defected, And it's what relations were like and
22:59
Speaker 1: kind of this historical period we're talking about. Yeah, I
23:02
Speaker 1: mean I want to say that, like when it comes
23:05
Speaker 1: to I just want to preface my own ignorance, which
23:08
Speaker 1: I think is important in life. I know a bit,
23:12
Speaker 1: but that's our whole thing on this show. So I
23:14
Speaker 1: want to preface my own ignorance and also my own subjectivity. Right.
23:18
Speaker 1: So I'm coming to this as like an American who
23:21
Speaker 1: was like schooled in the fact that like America is good,
23:24
Speaker 1: Russia is bad. America win and Russia is lose, you know.
23:30
Speaker 1: But to be fair, there were a lot of terrible
23:34
Speaker 1: things about the Stalinist regime and essentially coming out of
23:41
Speaker 1: life from the Czars. So this is going back a
23:43
Speaker 1: little bit in nineteen seventeen or nineteen sixteen, nineteen seventeen,
23:48
Speaker 1: when the Bolsheviks the Revolutionaries took power and knocked out
23:52
Speaker 1: the Czars, people's lives were really really terrible. Nicholas A
23:55
Speaker 1: consolidated power in a way that like gave such little
24:01
Speaker 1: freedom to the average Russian. UM. And they were, I
24:04
Speaker 1: mean the peasant they were starving, UM, they were uneducated,
24:08
Speaker 1: even though they were they were very literate, but there
24:11
Speaker 1: there was not schooling and it was it was a
24:14
Speaker 1: very horrible place to grow up. UM. And so the
24:17
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks really wanted to share the wealth. And I have
24:19
Speaker 1: to say, like, as like, you know, as a lefty, progressive,
24:23
Speaker 1: socialistic kind of kind of person, I'm like, that's awesome.
24:27
Speaker 1: But what ended up happening is um, in order to
24:32
Speaker 1: lead you know, more than a hundred countries with more
24:35
Speaker 1: than a hundred languages and uh and uh consolidate like
24:40
Speaker 1: the ussr UM, they really everyone had to. They realized
24:44
Speaker 1: the way to do it is through you know, fascism,
24:46
Speaker 1: were not fascism really but like totalitarianism and falling behind
24:50
Speaker 1: one big face and that one big face with Stalin
24:53
Speaker 1: and um that was built by Stalin and also by
24:56
Speaker 1: as Politburo. So there's all these people who our feature
25:00
Speaker 1: and hilariously and Death of Stalin who are also like
25:04
Speaker 1: the reason that we know Joseph Stalin and that we
25:07
Speaker 1: think communism is really bad because there was the currency
25:11
Speaker 1: was betrayal. If you were a dissident, if you spoke
25:15
Speaker 1: out against the government, you were sent to the gulags,
25:17
Speaker 1: you were killed, your family was watched, they were killed.
25:21
Speaker 1: And not to mention the fact that they're just also
25:24
Speaker 1: it was there were a lot of people. There was
25:26
Speaker 1: a ship ton of people, and so in order to
25:29
Speaker 1: make sure that there was like a potato for everybody,
25:33
Speaker 1: Stalin made sure there was a potato for sometimes nobody.
25:36
Speaker 1: So there were just famines everywhere in order to make
25:41
Speaker 1: sure that Moscow was able to lead this communism for
25:46
Speaker 1: the first time. So it was nineteen eighty four. It
25:50
Speaker 1: was neighbors spying on neighbors. Information was this currency that
25:54
Speaker 1: you could use against people, and so even folks who
26:00
Speaker 1: who made it inside of the government were subjected to this.
26:04
Speaker 1: And so you see it in Death of Stalin, but
26:06
Speaker 1: you also see it inside of Stalin's own family, so
26:09
Speaker 1: stet Lana's uncles and aunts are subject to being locked
26:14
Speaker 1: up in the gulagh or even murdered. Um. Stet Lana's brother,
26:18
Speaker 1: her older brother who she loved the most, named Yakov,
26:22
Speaker 1: enlisted in the Russian Army during World War Two. He
26:26
Speaker 1: was captured by a Pow camp when Stalana was sixteen
26:29
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two, and Stalin was given the option
26:32
Speaker 1: to trade for him, and Salm was like, no, definitely not.
26:36
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone thinking that I treat my family
26:38
Speaker 1: any differently. And Yakov was murdered in the Pow camp,
26:42
Speaker 1: you know, and you know that's something. Maybe there's some
26:46
Speaker 1: honor there, maybe maybe there's not, but you just get
26:49
Speaker 1: the sense that you know, Stalin was there was paranoia,
26:54
Speaker 1: there was vindictiveness, and the country was sort of ruled
27:00
Speaker 1: out of for you know, for better or for worse.
27:03
Speaker 1: It was ruled out of his image and his likeness
27:06
Speaker 1: to the point where when he dies, there's like, uh,
27:10
Speaker 1: there's I forget how many people want to be killed.
27:13
Speaker 1: But like there was a a march, you know, in
27:17
Speaker 1: honor of Stalin Um, but there's there was some traffic
27:21
Speaker 1: jam and like thousands of people were killed in this
27:25
Speaker 1: traffic jam, and it wasn't even a protest against him.
27:28
Speaker 1: It was just like these people are everywhere, to kill them, um.
27:31
Speaker 1: And so it's something really hard to imagine. But what's
27:35
Speaker 1: fascinating about also such a suppressive government is that nothing
27:43
Speaker 1: breeds art like suppression. And there are artists who are
27:49
Speaker 1: making work, who are smuggling stories out, um, not on
27:55
Speaker 1: mass I'm not saying that, like, I'm not saying that
27:58
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, there's all this great Soviet era descendent
28:02
Speaker 1: art like there isn't but there. But people were writing things,
28:06
Speaker 1: as they said, for the drawer. So Stelana was one
28:09
Speaker 1: of them. She wrote this memoir about growing up under
28:12
Speaker 1: Stalin's rule and coming to terms with the fact that
28:14
Speaker 1: her horrible was that her horrible huh yeah, that her
28:18
Speaker 1: horrible was you know, a father um. And that to
28:23
Speaker 1: me is also really interesting. You know that, like there's
28:26
Speaker 1: a resilience amongst the Russian people for you know, centuries
28:30
Speaker 1: of creating creating art in these extreme circumstances, and that
28:35
Speaker 1: is that is also part of the story. It's interesting too,
28:45
Speaker 1: just that whole concept, and Casey Pegram would be happy
28:48
Speaker 1: with this topic. Um. You know, filmmakers, for example, like Tarkovsky,
28:53
Speaker 1: you know, we're getting financing from the government to make
28:57
Speaker 1: these films that were supposedly insert us of the state,
29:01
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of the image that they were projecting,
29:03
Speaker 1: but secretly there were these hidden messages you know in
29:07
Speaker 1: films like Stalker or even the Silaris that that were
29:11
Speaker 1: kind of patently anti uh Russia. Uh. And they eventually
29:16
Speaker 1: kind of caught on and then he had to get
29:18
Speaker 1: out of dodge as well. Yeah, I mean, well, and
29:20
Speaker 1: that's also you know, and and that's what Tartakowsky has
29:24
Speaker 1: when is he the fifties, sixties, like like through the seventies,
29:28
Speaker 1: I mean through yeah, you know, yeah, into the eighties. Sorry,
29:31
Speaker 1: you even think of like Nilosh Foreman, who was you
29:34
Speaker 1: know in uh he was? Who is check? I think?
29:38
Speaker 1: Or I forget, But like even our modern filmmakers were
29:40
Speaker 1: still running away from it and like inserting their messages inside.
29:44
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean there's a kind of bravery that
29:49
Speaker 1: I you know that as an American artist, um, in
29:53
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, you know that I take in
29:56
Speaker 1: my in my place of freedom, there's there is pushback
29:58
Speaker 1: and there are people who don't like your work. But
30:02
Speaker 1: I haven't experienced that that kind of suppression coming at
30:06
Speaker 1: me and finding those ways to still get my voice
30:09
Speaker 1: and my story out there. And so you know, I
30:11
Speaker 1: looked at those writers and those artists with real admiration. Absolutely,
30:16
Speaker 1: I mean, how well said, because that's something where, you know,
30:20
Speaker 1: it always strikes me. One of my old professors a
30:23
Speaker 1: long time ago, I don't always say how long ago
30:26
Speaker 1: told me that told me that it. How did they
30:30
Speaker 1: put it? They said? You know, I've always found it
30:34
Speaker 1: hilarious that Russian authors are better writers in English than
30:40
Speaker 1: most English authors. And that's and that's because many times
30:45
Speaker 1: they had a life on the line situation like one
30:49
Speaker 1: could die or be a race for the sin of
30:52
Speaker 1: creative expression? Does that Russian pros also like translate really
30:57
Speaker 1: well into English in a sort of unusual or uncann
31:01
Speaker 1: art form. Man, for sure, I mean all translation is
31:04
Speaker 1: and fellow ridiculous historians, I think, uh, null you and
31:09
Speaker 1: Max and I are we're having a little bit of
31:12
Speaker 1: a tough time with this because we don't like, we
31:15
Speaker 1: don't know the strokes of the story that have yet
31:19
Speaker 1: to been have been told. Uh, And we're having a
31:22
Speaker 1: hard time, not asking for spoilers, right, So we have
31:27
Speaker 1: to say, you know, this is something that a lot
31:30
Speaker 1: of a lot of people are not aware of, and
31:33
Speaker 1: it's so strange to realize, you know, how close history
31:37
Speaker 1: is to the present and how many you know, to
31:39
Speaker 1: look back and say, okay, the most famous defector in
31:42
Speaker 1: the world at the time, and now you know what.
31:46
Speaker 1: I first heard about this story. It was through your
31:51
Speaker 1: podcast and I thought, okay, who is fed Lata. I
31:55
Speaker 1: didn't even know, you know, I had I understood that
32:00
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin was a bad guy, you know,
32:03
Speaker 1: but that was like my Wikipedia paragraph of knowledge. Well
32:08
Speaker 1: interesting enough, when spelt Lana defects in India, she goes
32:12
Speaker 1: up to you know, she goes up to them, to
32:15
Speaker 1: a marine at the US embassy and she's like, I'm
32:19
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin's daughter, and like, does Joseph Stalin have a daughter?
32:23
Speaker 1: They didn't know? I mean, it's like they didn't know then,
32:27
Speaker 1: we don't know now. Um. You know, I find myself
32:30
Speaker 1: to be really grateful to be part of like a
32:32
Speaker 1: small group of people who are excited by the story
32:36
Speaker 1: of Joseph Stalin's daughter. So plugging Rosemary Sullivan and her
32:39
Speaker 1: book Stalin's Daughter, plugging Roger Friedlan and Harold Dalman's book
32:43
Speaker 1: The Fellowship, which covers Tally Essen and they and their
32:47
Speaker 1: encounter with spelt Lanaum. But also like just two days ago,
32:51
Speaker 1: I got a DM because now I'm on Instagram, I know,
32:54
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, just it's uh, yeah, you know, she's
32:57
Speaker 1: this thing I do. UM. But I got a DM
33:01
Speaker 1: from like a playwright in San Francisco who was like,
33:05
Speaker 1: I love your podcast. I wrote a play that had
33:07
Speaker 1: spel Lana and it years ago. And so there's this like,
33:12
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not I am not the first person
33:14
Speaker 1: to be interested in spe Lana, but we are like
33:17
Speaker 1: a small little tribe, and it's really fun to you know,
33:22
Speaker 1: be meeting people who also encountered her or or also
33:27
Speaker 1: think that the story is worthy. So oh and also
33:30
Speaker 1: a huge plug to the first article that I ever
33:32
Speaker 1: read about it, which is by a guy named Nicholas
33:35
Speaker 1: Thompson who was who was a freelance writer at the
33:38
Speaker 1: time and now as the editor in chief of The
33:40
Speaker 1: Atlantic magazine, which is really cool. And I got to
33:42
Speaker 1: meet him. You know, it's like it's like, oh my God,
33:45
Speaker 1: like everybody loves Spelana. Um so, and now we have
33:50
Speaker 1: joined that tribe. You are in it. You are set
33:54
Speaker 1: one nights. Here we go nights and we want we
33:58
Speaker 1: want you, we want you to check out this show
34:01
Speaker 1: to folks, because I think it's safe to say that
34:04
Speaker 1: Dan tells the story unique way, in a way that
34:07
Speaker 1: personally I never could. So along for the ride, Dan,
34:12
Speaker 1: Can you tell people where to learn more about your work,
34:16
Speaker 1: where to where to find you, perhaps on that shiny
34:19
Speaker 1: new Instagram and uh and can you tell people maybe
34:24
Speaker 1: where to find the podcast as well? Yeah, So the
34:26
Speaker 1: podcast is called set Lana stet Lana. The name is
34:29
Speaker 1: so nice. We say it twice and it's got exclamation
34:31
Speaker 1: points after each name because I'm loud. Um and uh.
34:37
Speaker 1: And you can find that on Iheartraate, the iHeartRadio app,
34:40
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You can
34:43
Speaker 1: follow me on Instagram at Dan's Stories. Um and more
34:49
Speaker 1: about my work I have UM. I'm working on the
34:52
Speaker 1: adaptation of Eduard Louise memoir History of Violence that was
34:57
Speaker 1: just announced that it's a beautiful, powerful mem and that's
35:00
Speaker 1: going to be a shot at the end of this year.
35:02
Speaker 1: It'll be in German, and so that'll be a thing.
35:07
Speaker 1: And I don't speak German. I don't speak German, but
35:11
Speaker 1: someone's translating it and I'm gonna imagine that they're gonna
35:14
Speaker 1: do it a decent job. And what else am I doing?
35:18
Speaker 1: I don't know. I do a lot of theater. I
35:19
Speaker 1: moved to Philly and which is my hometown, and I'm
35:24
Speaker 1: just excited to like meet other writers and theater artists
35:28
Speaker 1: who are just trying to like understand the universe by
35:33
Speaker 1: bringing us all together through stories. So I'd like to
35:36
Speaker 1: connect to people and say I and you can DM me,
35:40
Speaker 1: and my husband Jordan is getting me to respond, so
35:45
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't hear from me, Jordan is saying, damn,
35:47
Speaker 1: respond and I'm saying, yes, I will, and then he's saying, no,
35:51
Speaker 1: you're gonna do it now or later. And he's probably
35:53
Speaker 1: listening to me right now because he's downstairs and I
35:55
Speaker 1: love him very much and just he's a part of this.
35:58
Speaker 1: So if you're messaging me your message, Jordan, you know,
36:01
Speaker 1: and that's that's your choice. Well, um, I for one,
36:05
Speaker 1: I'm excited to dig in to the podcast. I think
36:07
Speaker 1: what is episode three is publishing Round about the time
36:11
Speaker 1: of this episode, episode five. So we are we are
36:15
Speaker 1: five of ten and then we're gonna take a week
36:17
Speaker 1: off and then we'll be back with UH with with six, seven, eight,
36:20
Speaker 1: and nine and ten um afterwards. I imagine it probably
36:26
Speaker 1: ends on a pretty there's a cliffhanger there, so I'm
36:29
Speaker 1: excited to experience that for myself as well. Um. Well,
36:34
Speaker 1: thanks again for for joining us and sharing Svetlana story
36:38
Speaker 1: with us and UH and the world. Dan, Kate roster
36:42
Speaker 1: Uhtlata Lata, you can find it anywhere. As Dan said,
36:48
Speaker 1: we want to thank you Dan, and we also want
36:50
Speaker 1: to thank our super producer, mister Max Williams. We gotta
36:53
Speaker 1: thank the one and only Casey Pegrom. I'm so glad
36:59
Speaker 1: that like, we can't get away from him, Noel, we can't.
37:02
Speaker 1: We can't get away from k Casey is perpetually on
37:04
Speaker 1: the case. Well we're not around. Yeah, he can't get
37:06
Speaker 1: away from us. I guess if we're being fair, we're
37:09
Speaker 1: probably the pursuers in that, in that relationship. But but
37:14
Speaker 1: thank you to everybody tuning in. We'd love to hear
37:17
Speaker 1: your opinions of the show. Yeah, and if you want
37:19
Speaker 1: to give us your opinions. We're still in kind of
37:21
Speaker 1: social media limbo for the show, but you can find
37:24
Speaker 1: me and Ben and Max as individuals. I am exclusively
37:27
Speaker 1: an instagrammer. You can find me at how Now Noel
37:31
Speaker 1: Brown and I am calling myself in a burst of
37:34
Speaker 1: creativity at Ben Bolan on Instagram and Eppen bollin hsw
37:39
Speaker 1: on Twitter. That's where you can get it beside behind
37:41
Speaker 1: the scenes, look at the various ill advised secret projects
37:44
Speaker 1: misadventures I'm always cooking up. As Elon Musk would say,
37:48
Speaker 1: the biggest advantage of Twitter, of course, is that Max
37:52
Speaker 1: Williams is on it, and that's where you can find. Yes,
37:55
Speaker 1: you can find my technically not dead Twitter account at
37:58
Speaker 1: etail on to score Max Williams. There. It is more
38:01
Speaker 1: sports metaphors for for the people who bring it home
38:04
Speaker 1: hal halftime Dubs. That's my new nickname for you, curly
38:09
Speaker 1: get it in the hole. There we go. Do do
38:11
Speaker 1: the do the sports so well? Do the sports. That's it.
38:17
Speaker 1: That's all. Yeah, that's all everybody can ask for our Well,
38:23
Speaker 1: we will see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
38:33
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
38:36
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,