Experimental Blog # 226

Comments on "A Book for Granddaughters - Travelling to the Homeland" by Svetlana Alliluyeva

   It turns out that the book "The Faraway Music", mentioned in the last blog # 225, was not Svetlana Alliluyeva's last published book. Her fourth and last published book, apparently, is this one, "A Book for Granddaughters - Travelling to the Homeland"; which was written in 1988 in Wisconsin.
   It is mostly about her return to the USSR from England in October of 1984 with her American daughter Olga, who was about 13 years old. It is also true that they had gone to England, and not to Switzerland, which Svetlana preferred, not because Olga was not accepted in school there, but because Svetlana, herself, could not be a permanent resident in Switzerland.
   Svetlana's decision to return to the USSR was provoked by telephone conversations with her son that were unexpectedly resumed from England in 1982.  
   Although Svetlana apparently happily, more or less, met other relatives and friends in Moscow, after an absence of 17 years, her hopes of reconnecting with her son and daughter, Katya, were not fulfilled; so Svetlana and her daughter, Olga, soon leave for Tbilisi, Georgia on December 1, 1984.
   In Tbilisi matters go much better, especially for Olga, who easily makes friends and learns both Russian and Georgian fairly well in a year's time.
   By December of 1985, however, Svetlana has decided that since she has been unable to reestablish friendly relations with her Russian son and daughter, who lives and is a scientific worker in Kamchatka, she wants to leave the USSR, again.  
   After travelling from Tbilisi to Moscow, and back again; and experiencing many difficulties, including very serious, and mysterious, health problems, they are allowed to leave on separate days and to separate destinations. In the spring of 1986 Olga goes first back to her school in England, and Svetlana, with Olga's dog, Maka, returns to the USA in Wisconsin.
   Svetlana has written this book in 1988 in familiar surroundings in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
   It seems that Svetlana Alliluyeva had been discouraged from writing any more books. When she finished writing this book she was around 62 years of age; but she will live for another 23 years to be 85 in different places in England and Wisconsin; and perhaps visiting other places as well.