Experimental Blog # 225

Notes and comments on and quotations from "Twenty Letters to a Friend" by Svetlana Alliluyeva, translated by Priscilla Johnson McMillan; "Only One Year" by Svetlana Alliluyeva, translated from the Russian by Paul Chavchavadze; and "The Faraway Music" by Svetlana Alliluyeva, author and translator.

   The first book, "Twenty Letters to a Friend", was written by the author in the summer of 1963, about 10 years and 4 months after the death of her father, Joseph Stalin. At the time Svetlana had no ideas about publishing her manuscript as a book, or ever leaving the Soviet Union.
   Svetlana left the USSR on December 19, 1966 to go to India with her late husbands ashes. She, and everybody else, expected that she would return in a month, or so; but she managed to extend her stay in India to March 1967. At that time Svetlana wanted to stay in India permanently, "forever", she says; but the government of India was afraid to let her do that, so Svetlana felt that she had no alterantive but to ask for help at the American embassy. After secret detours of a month, or so, she arrived in America in the middle of the international sensation that her defection, "the daughter of Stalin", had created.
   During this time Svetlana had signed several documents that she very poorly understood that resulted in that she was completely deprived of any interference, or any other rights, over her manuscript, including the translation into English. Although her book became an international best seller, it produced many unpleasant and persistent "boomerang" effects for her.
   Svetlana's second book, "Only One Year", was written within 2 years after her arrival in America; and this time she made very sure that she kept possession of the copyright, and she also approved of the translator.
   The third book, "The Faraway Music", was written about 14 years later, in 1983, in Cambridge, England; where Svetlana had gone to live and to put her American daughter into a private school. Somewhat surprisingly, Svetlana wrote this book herself first in English.
   It seems that soon after Svetlana wrote this third book, she and her daughter actually went back to the Soviet Union, where they restored Soviet citizenship to her, However, things did not work out for her, and her daughter, there either, and she was allowed to leave again after staying less than 2 years. She never says a word about this long trip.
   In 1987 Svetlana herself translated her third, and apparently her last book, "The Faraway Music", into Russian.

Quotations from "Only One Year":

"...although I lived "at the top of the pyramid," < > my whole life, like that of the entire nation, became divided into two periods: before 1953 and after."
" ...in my early years, Communism was an unshakable stronghold. Unshakable remained my father's authority and the belief that he was right in everything without exception."
"Sometimes my father would suddenly say to me, "Why do you associate with children whose parents have been arrested?"
"In September 1957 I changed my name from "Stalina" to "Alliluyeva" - under Soviet law children could bear either their father's or their mother's name."
 "My first impression of America was of the magnificent Long Island highways. < > The second thing I noticed < > was the number of women driving cars. < > it was the variety of feminine types at the wheel that struck me: pretty young girls, < > many Negroes, young and old; women in furs and extraordinary big hats  ..."
Other sources say that Joseph Stalin was always reading, up to 400 pages a day. Although Svetlana relates an incident where Joseph Stalin is showing somebody his library and he says something like that although he is 70 years old; he is still learning.
""My father made up for his poor education only in the field of technical knowledge."
"He had a certain acquaintance with languages, dating back to his seminary days when he had studied Latin and Greek. He could read Georgian < > He knew Russian well in its simpler, conversational form < > With the help of a dictionary he could make out a simple German text."

   Svetlana very distinctly complained about the translation of her first book, "Twenty Letters to a Friend", that was translated by Priscilla Johnson McMillan. However, a very amatuer comparison of the English and Russian editions of this book reveals that, although this English translation is not a very literal translation that some people prefer, it always seems that the translator was trying to say the same thing in American English that the original text says in Russian. Perhaps the translator was in a hurry to "get the job done", for some reason.
   Svetlana also repeatedly makes it very clear that she has a very low opinion of all public schools; no matter that they are in America or the Soviet Union or anywhere else.That was why she moved to England. She seemed to think that Switzerland, where her daughter could not be accepted, and then England had the best private schools.
   However, wouldn't many people say that no country, including America, can really be better than its public schools?