Nadezhda Alliluyeva spent 14 unhappy years with Joseph Stalin. According to the official version, she committed suicide in 1932. The dictator was accused of the death of his wife, although he most likely did not trigger the gun.
16-year-old Nadezhda (Nadia) met 38-year-old Józef in 1917, at the house of her father, also a revolutionist. However, there is a more romantic version of their first meeting. When Nadezhda was 2 years old, she lived in Baku and one day, while having fun, she fell into the Caspian Sea. The present Stalin threw himself into the water and saved his future wife.
Most likely, this is just a romantic family legend. In real life, Nadezhda was mostly accompanied by sadness…
Misalliance and rape
At the time of meeting Stalin, Nadia was a student at a girls' gymnasium (high school). As the girl's diaries testify, her head was occupied with thoughts about everyday matters. On October 1, 1917, Alliluyeva wrote:
High prices everywhere, although there are plenty of eggs, bread and meat [...] I am generally bored. Fortunately, the day before yesterday we were with our theater teacher and we watched the Fair in Soroczyniec [a play by Mikołaj Gogol - V.W.].
It is hard to imagine what fascinated the young Nadia in the gruff and gruff Józef whose face was covered with traces of smallpox.
After the Bolshevik revolution, the man became a commissioner, that is, the minister of nationality. Did the authorities make him attractive in the eyes of a young girl?
As Irina Gogua, a friend of the Alliluyev family recalled years later, Siegiej (Nadezhda's father) was against this relationship. In early 1918, panting and desperate, he burst into Irina and shouted: "Stalin took Nadia to the front!".
According to the version of Anna, Nadezhda's sister, this strange relationship began with… rape.
In 1918, Nadia traveled by train on a delegation to the city of Tsaritsyn with her father, Stalin, and some party companions. At night, Sergei Alliluyev heard his daughter scream and rushed to her compartment. It turned out that Nadezhda was raped by Stalin a moment ago.
His father wanted to shoot him, but he fell at his feet and asked for Nadia's hand. Stalin did not fulfill his promise until the fall of 1920, when Nadezhda was five months pregnant with their first child, son Vasily.
Black clouds
Stalin and Nadia took up residence in the Kremlin. The man hired her at "his" nationality police station. The couple lived very modestly; the young woman wore faded skirts and sweaters with patches under the arm.
Alliluyeva quickly became disappointed in her chosen one. It turned out that Stalin has an explosive temperament, suffers from mood swings and often acts like a bastard . The politician did not take into account Nadia's age or the fact that she needed more time to get used to her new role as a wife.
He expected Alliluyeva to be humble, economical and obedient, but she was too independent to submit to her husband:after marriage, she stayed with her maiden name and did not intend to clean or cook.
Over time, Nadia got a job at the secretariat. Lenin.
Stalin with children
Joseph believed that his wife should devote all her time to him and even demanded that she stay at home. The woman found an advocate in the person of Vladimir Lenin, who called Stalin "Asian" and ordered Nadezhda to ignore her husband's grunts and come to work every day. In Alliluyev's office, she had access to top-secret documents, but did not disclose their contents despite her husband's insistence.
In 1926, the spouses had a second child, daughter Svetlana. Nadia got pregnant 10 more times, but she had an abortion at Stalin's request.
When Józef became the head of the state, Alliluyeva still wanted to live modestly and not to show prosperity. In 1929, she began studies at the Industrial Academy. When she was driving to college in a government car, she had the driver drop her off a block from the college building. She demanded that no personal bodyguards were hanging around her side, naively thinking that no one knew who her husband was.
She did not hesitate to tell Joseph that she did not support his persecution of "enemies of the people." In 1930, a show trial began in Moscow against eight engineers allegedly involved in "sabotage and pestering." Alliluyeva met the accused and their family members while studying at the Industrial Academy. After the conviction of the engineers, she maintained relations with their relatives and openly stated that she did not agree with the court's sentence.
The atmosphere in Stalin's Kremlin apartment was so tense that Nadia left her husband's house several times and took her children with her. At that time, she lived with her relatives in Leningrad. The spouse called her and asked her to come back. Alliluyeva resisted and only her own family's persuasions made her return to the Kremlin.
Suicide or homicide?
Late in the evening of November 7, 1932, on the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution, a party was held at the house of Kliment Voroshilov, attended by all party dignitaries and their wives. During it, Stalin mocked Nadia and threw bread balls at her . Clearly upset, Alliluyeva left Voroshilov's apartment, and a day later she was dead. She committed suicide by shooting herself in the head. She was only 31 years old.
Stalin was devastated, but his despair was caused not by love for his wife, but by ... anger.
He felt insulted, because by leaving her husband, Nadia destroyed his reputation and dishonored his family! Svetlana, the couple's daughter, recalled that, saying goodbye to the deceased, sharply pushed the coffin away and left .
Nadezhda Sergeyevna Alliluyeva - funeral in Moscow, 1932
The politician was not present at the funeral and was never at her grave. At the same time, he ordered not to investigate the death. Was he afraid of being suspected of being involved? Or maybe he commissioned the murder of his wife to a trusted associate?
Years later, the memoirs of the ladies who were preparing the body of Nadezhda for the funeral appeared in print. The diaries claimed that there were fingerprints on the deceased's neck . In turn, Nikita Khrushchev expressed this view:"I am sure that something Stalin said or did led to Nadia's death."