"Nov. 29, 2011 -- The only daughter of brutal Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin -- who defected to the United States in 1967 and became a vocal critic of the Soviet Union -- died of colon cancer at age 85 on Nov. 22 in Richland Center, Wisc.
Born Svetlana Stalina on Feb. 28, 1926, she led an epic and complex life that ended in obscurity and poverty after decades of wandering.
Her two name changes reflected her shifting fortunes. She took her mother's last name, Alliluyeva, after Stalin's 1953 death and fall from grace.
She then became Lana Peters in 1970 after her defection and brief marriage to American architect William Wesley Peters.
But she could never escape her father's shadow.
In a 2010 interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Peters said of her father: "He broke my life."
"Wherever I go," she said, "here, or Switzerland, or India, or wherever -- Australia, some island -- I always will be a political prisoner of my father's name.""
Born Svetlana Stalina on Feb. 28, 1926, she led an epic and complex life that ended in obscurity and poverty after decades of wandering.
Her two name changes reflected her shifting fortunes. She took her mother's last name, Alliluyeva, after Stalin's 1953 death and fall from grace.
She then became Lana Peters in 1970 after her defection and brief marriage to American architect William Wesley Peters.
But she could never escape her father's shadow.
In a 2010 interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Peters said of her father: "He broke my life."
"Wherever I go," she said, "here, or Switzerland, or India, or wherever -- Australia, some island -- I always will be a political prisoner of my father's name.""
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