Who would want to be Stalin’s Daughter?

A Short Book Review of her Biography by Rosemary Sullivan.

Caeona Murdoch
4 min readSep 15, 2022
Svetlana in the USA, Image from History.com

I never had read a biography before I read this book… Why? they always have seemed sort of boring to me. Maybe its because I am selfish, and living my own life seems more interesting to me then reading about someone else…. Which honestly, is still the case for the most part.

But I made a big exception, and it might have turned me onto biographies and memoirs. I made an exception for Stalin's Daughter, which is one huge 600 plus page heap of a book. Svetlana's life will always be much more interesting then my own anyways.

I came upon it well looking for books to contextualize the Russian revolution and cold war, after I devoured the revolutions podcasts (by Mike Duncan) new series on the Russian revolution. It left off pretty much when Stalin took over, and I am curious in a morbid sort of way, and wanted to know more.

But a lot of history books are so… impersonal.. I like to learn through stories. I came across Stalin's Daughter and thought, heck, that has to give a lot of context to this subject, and by its nature must be very personal.

I was right, in that regard. Although, surprisingly, it really had little to do with Svetlana in Russia, or politics, or her father at all. I…

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Caeona Murdoch

Mother and Aspiring Householder. Shield-Wife. Book Reviews, Art & History, Homesteading & Food. The meandering musings of my mind exposed for you to read.