movie How Stalin's daughter Svetlana caused a stir in Switzerland

A woman walks down a flight of stairs. An excerpt from an amateur film that couldn't be more ordinary. But the shot, which was taken 60 years ago, has it all: the woman's name is Sventlana, she is the daughter of Josef Stalin and lives in Switzerland.

Swiss documentary filmmaker Gabriel Tejedor ("Kombinat") has unearthed a story that is unknown to the general public. At the end of the 1960s, Sventlana Stalin, the daughter of the Soviet dictator, went into hiding with nuns in western Switzerland - at the instigation of US President Lyndon Johnson. Her escape from what was then the USSR caused a diplomatic stir in both the West and the East. In his film "Naître Svetlana Staline", which is now showing in cinemas, Tejedor allows a handful of historians to speak, including Magali Delaloye from the University of Fribourg.

Favorite of the father Stalin

Delaloye was confronted with the figure of Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva while researching her doctoral thesis, as she explains in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency. She analyzed Joseph Stalin and his environment from an anthropological and gender-specific perspective. "I left the political analysis and put the spotlight not only on the Stalinist leaders, but also on their relatives, i.e. their wives and children," she says.

The film, which is structured chronologically, tells the story of a child who grows up well protected, is loved by her father and plays a game with him. He calls her "little boss" because she gives him instructions in letters - for example, to go on a boat trip with him. He obeys.

Letters were also the starting point for the historian's work. Letters from Stalin to his children, to his housekeeper, to his teachers. The first thing she noticed was: "The difference between Svetlana and Vasily. Unlike his sister, he is not a particularly good pupil. Stalin leaves his son to the care of his chauffeur and his bodyguard." He was hard on his sons and let Svetlana get away with everything.

Gradually, Stalin also turned against his own family and had relatives shot. When his daughter got together with a man 20 years her senior at the age of 16, she was slapped in the face for the first time - and her boyfriend was sent to the Gulag. The daughter learns what her father is capable of.

Stalin's daughter in Switzerland

Joseph Stalin dies in 1953 and goes from being the "greatest man in the USSR" to the "man responsible for the darkest times". The daughter takes her mother's name, turns her back on the Communist Party, becomes Orthodox and finally arrives in Switzerland in the mid-1960s, via detours, in "the small, neutral country", as it is called in the film.

The news spreads like wildfire: Stalin's daughter is in Switzerland. An anti-communist in the foreign ministry is standing up for her. At the same time, Switzerland is afraid of possible reactions from the USSR and also that the daughter could be a spy.

As a result, Switzerland finds itself in the middle of diplomatic wrangling, which the film deals with in an understandable and entertaining way. "This story is still interesting today," says the historian, "because it shows how difficult it is for a woman to break out of what is expected of her." Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva was a rebel who wanted to emancipate herself, but who remained trapped in the image of the "daughter of..." had remained trapped. "Besides," says Delaloye, "she is an interesting case for showing the general public the complexity of the Cold War and moving away from a black-and-white portrayal."

When asked how much gender played a role in this story, the academic is reticent: "I don't like to engage in historical fiction." Nevertheless, she says: "She certainly wouldn't have had the same upbringing as a man, her father would never have accepted her sometimes authoritarian behavior and would have treated her more harshly as a boy."

Switzerland during the Cold War

According to Delaloye, the case exemplifies Switzerland's position and actions during the Cold War. "On the one hand, there are hesitant authorities who don't want to upset anyone and want to maintain the illusion of neutrality. On the other side, we see the role of federal officials who were die-hard anti-communists and who wanted to support Stalin's daughter without questioning whether she had really given up her communist ideals."

The dense documentary film "Naître Sventlana Staline" shows this complexity impressively, also with the help of efficiently animated scenes. Incidentally, Stalin's daughter died impoverished and lonely in a social home in the USA in 2011.

*This article by Raphael Amstutz, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.

SDA