Biography of Svetlana Alliluyeva

Svetlana Alliluyeva was the only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. She defected to the West after his death.

Alliluyeva was born February 28, 1926 in Moscow. Her mother was his second wife. She was raised by a nurse and only occasionally saw her parents. Her mother died when Svetlana was only six. (There are various theories as to how the mother met her death).

Svetlana’s first love was a Jewish filmmaker Alexei Kapler. Her father disapproved of the romance and Kepler was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp in Siberia. A year later, when she was 17, she fell in love with Grigori Morozov, a fellow student at Moscow University. They married and had a son, Joseph, in 1945 but divorced two years later.

She married her second husband, Yuri Zhdanov, in 1949 the same year she graduated from Moscow University. They had a daughter, Ekaterina in 1950 but divorced soon afterwards.

In 1953 her father died and Svetlana adopted her mother's maiden name. She worked as a teacher and translator in Moscow. She first met Brajesh Singh, an Indian communist when he visited Moscow in 1963.

He returned to Moscow in 1965 to work as a translator. Although the two became close they were not allowed to marry. A year later he died and she was allowed to travel to India to take his ashes back so that his family could scatter them in the Ganges River.

On March 6, 1967 she went to the US Embassy in New Delhi and formally asked the American Ambassador for political asylum. She left India immediately and moved via Switzerland to the United States. Upon her arrival in April 1967 Alliluyeva gave a press conference denouncing her father's regime and the Soviet government.

She settled in the United States in April 1967 and published her memoirs, Twenty Letters to a Friend, (1967), and later Only One Year (1969). She later became a United States citizen and married William Wesley Peters, an American architect in 1970.

Shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Lana, the couple separated. She moved to Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1982 but two years later returned to the Soviet Union and settled in Tbilisi.

She left again in 1986 and returned to the United States. In the 1990s she moved back to England but unable to settle she returned finally to the United States. She lived in a retirement home in Wisconsin until her death on November 22, 2011 at 85.

Twinkie-Maker Hostess Files for Bankruptcy

By David McLaughlin

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Hostess Brands Inc., the maker of Twinkies snack cakes and Wonder bread, fell back into bankruptcy less than three years after completing an earlier restructuring.

Fear not...their crap has enough preservatives to keep us in Twinkies til the year 2020.

The baker ended an earlier trip through bankruptcy court in February 2009.  Lenders took control of Interstate Bakeries Corp., which was renamed Hostess Brands.

Hostess in a statement today blamed the latest bankruptcy on a weak economy and costs tied to pension- and medical-benefit obligations. The Irving, Texas-based baker intends to withdraw from pension plans and modify collective-bargaining agreements with unions, according to court documents.

Get it? It’s the generous pension and medical benefits obligations what did us in. And collective-bargaining agreements? Oy, don’t even mention.


"This company has tremendous potential if we can remove barriers to success," Chief Executive Officer Brian Driscoll said in the statement.

Hmm, wonder how much dough Driscoll sucks from the company.


Hostess listed assets of as much as $1 billion and liabilities of more than $1 billion in its bankruptcy petition.

Yep. That’ll do it. $1 billion in assets minus $1 billion in liabilities equals bankruptcy.


The Chapter 11 case was assigned to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York.

Judge Drain? Oh, that’s too easy.

Interstate Bakeries was created through the merger of Schulze Baking Co. and Western Bakeries Ltd. in 1937, and grew by acquiring other companies, according to court documents filed in the first bankruptcy case. It acquired its biggest rival, Continental Baking Co., in 1995 for $330 million, according to the company's website.

The company's products include Hostess Twinkies.

The company's products include Hostess CupCakes, Ding Dongs, Drake's Devil Dogs and Nature's Pride breads. It employs about 19,000 people, of which 83 percent are union members, according to court papers.

It’s those evil unions what did it.

The majority are members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters or the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International Union, the company said.

In September 2004, burdened with declining sales combined with high labor and ingredient costs, Interstate filed for bankruptcy in Kansas City, Missouri. During the case, it closed plants, cut delivery routes and eliminated jobs.

The company exited bankruptcy in February 2009 with a restructuring plan backed by New York-based Ripplewood and lenders including Silver Point Capital LP, according to court documents.

Ripplewood invested $130 million for stock and convertible notes. Silver Point and other lenders also received shares in the company, according to court papers.

Wow. Ripplewood has some very expensive wallpaper. Hope they enjoy. I don't mean to sound callous, it's just that we seem to be in a race to the bottom in this country.