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Mildred Harford Correspondence with Lana Peters (Svetlana Alliluyeva)
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Held at: Princeton University Library: Public Policy Papers [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Princeton University Library: Public Policy Papers. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Lana Peters was born Svetlana Stalina, the only daughter and last surviving child of the Soviet ruler Josef Stalin. She changed her last name to her mother's (her mother was Nadezhda Alliluyeva) after her father died in 1953.
Svetlana Alliluyeva married twice in the Soviet Union (in 1943 to Grigory Morozov and in 1949 to Yuri Zhdanov) and had two children. Both marriages dissolved quickly, and she met the Indian Communist Brajesh Singh in 1963. After his death in 1967, Alliluyeva approached the United States embassy in New Delhi and stated her desire to defect from the Soviet Union. She lived in Princeton, New Jersey, assisted by former ambassador to the USSR George F. Kennan. In 1970, she married William Wesley Peters. Mr. Peters had been chief apprentice to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and spent sometime in Scottsdale, Arizona, before divorcing and moving back to New Jersey.
In Princeton, Alliluyeva (now Lana Peters) met Mildred Harford, her daughter Olga's teacher. The two maintained a friendship via correspondence as Peters and her daughter moved to California, England, and in 1984, back to the Soviet Union where she publicly denouced the west.
In April 1986, they returned to the United States, with no opposition by the Soviet authorities. Peters died in Wisconsin in 2011.
This collection contains five files of correspondence, clippings and photographs sent from Lana Peters (also known as Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Josef Stalin) to her friend Mildred Harford.
These letters were donated by Mildred Harford in January 2013.
At the time of accessioning, photographs were put into mylar and letters were placed into archival folders. This collection was processed by Maureen Callahan in 2013. Finding aid was written by Maureen Callahan in 2013.
No materials were separated from this collection at the time of accessioning.
- Publisher
- Public Policy Papers
- Finding Aid Author
- Maureen Callahan
- Finding Aid Date
- Published in 2013.
- Access Restrictions
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Collection is open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
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Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. For quotations that are fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. For those few instances beyond fair use, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold the copyright and obtaining approval from them. Researchers do not need anything further from the Mudd Library to move forward with their use.
Collection Inventory
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