How Stalin’s daughter became a Catholic
At Aleteia, John Burger observed that “The importance of grandparents in one’s life cannot be underestimated. It can be clearly seen in the life of Svetlana Alliluyeva” – better known as Stalin’s daughter.
Born in 1926, Svetlana “grew up in an atmosphere where God was never mentioned”. Her father’s party and government “did its best to minimise religion’s role in people’s lives – or use it to advance communist ideology”.
But her maternal grandmother “spoke to us gladly of God: from her we have heard for the first time words like soul and God”. That example stayed with her – and in 1962 she was secretly baptised by a Russian Orthodox priest.
