Nadezhda Alliluyeva

Svetlana Parshina was deeply moved by her childhood reading of Twenty Letters to a Friend by Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin's daughter. Years later, learning that the now 82-year-old was living incognito in a Madison, Wisconsin retirement home, Parshina phones and requests an interview. After repeated denials, and only after insisting upon certain conditions, the now-82-year-old Alliluyeva finally consents to a rare filmed interview in which she discusses her education, marriages, her children, the development of her own humanistic philosophy, her CIA-assisted defection to the U.S., and her skeptical views on the competing Cold War ideologies. In more intimate moments, she discusses her childhood, her nanny, the suicide of her mother, her brothers Vasily and Yakov (who died in a Nazi concentration camp) and, of course, her famous father, who most Soviets saw as "a living God."

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At the tender age of sixteen Nadezhda Alliluyev married Joseph Stalin, twenty three years her senior. Throughout their fourteen years of family life, Nadezhda stood by as Stalin transformed from the ordinary revolutionary into the unlimited dictator of Russia - a semi-god, whose portraits replaced Christian orthodox icons in the corners of peasant's huts. One morning she was found dead in her bed, revolver by her side. Up to this day, historians continue the heated debate as to whether she had killed herself or was murdered by Stalin. Tsukerman's film is an attempt to solve the riddles of the not-so-distant past, weaving stories within stories and blending commentary from remaining relatives, friends, and historians with rare archival footage. The film provides a fascinating overview of the early history of the USSR while simultaneously exploring the myriad questions surrounding this complex relationship.

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This controversial documentary created a storm in Russia by taking the cloak off a violent, repressive period of Soviet history. Filmmaker Semyon Aranovich found the last surviving personal bodyguard of Joseph Stalin, Alexey Robin, who began working for the dictator in the 1930s.

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