Stalin's Daughter Dead at Age 85

On November 22, 2011 Josef Stalin's sole surviving child, Lana (formerly Svetlana) Peters (her married name following her 1967 defection from the Soviet Union and marriage to her third husband - an American) died of cancer. Born on February 28, 1926 she was 85 years old. Though when younger adored by her father they had a horribly strained relationship during and following World War II (particularly after her father interfered in her career choices and had her first love deported to Siberia). In the decades that followed Josef Stalin's death she led a whirlwind public and private life that took her across the globe in what seems to have been an effort to escape her past (albeit after publishing two enormously financially successful autobiographical books in the US following her defection).