Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's only daughter, whose defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author, has died. She was 85.
Lana Peters - who was known internationally by her previous name, Svetlana Alliluyeva - died of colon cancer November 22 in Wisconsin, a state where she lived off and on after becoming a US citizen, Coroner Mary Turner said.
Her defection in 1967 - which she said was partly motivated by the poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, by Soviet authorities - caused an international furor and was a public relations coup for the US.
Peters, who left behind two children, carried with her a memoir she had written in 1963 about her life in Russia. Twenty Letters to a Friend was published within months of her arrival in the US and became a best-seller.
Raised by a nanny with whom she grew close after her mother's death in 1932, Peters was Stalin's only daughter.
She had two brothers, Vasili and Jacob. Jacob was captured by the Nazis in 1941 and died in a concentration camp. Vasili died an alcoholic at age 40.
Peters graduated from Moscow University in 1949, worked as a teacher and translator and travelled in Moscow's literary circles before leaving the Soviet Union.
She was married four times - the last time to William Wesley Peters, after she came to the US, and she took the name Lana Peters.
The couple had a daughter, Olga, before divorcing in 1973.
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