Joseph Stalin’s second wife, Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva, was a Bolshevik revolutionary. Since most of the pertinent records are lost forever and the remaining ones merely conflict with one another, Nadezhda’s existence and eventual death continue to be shrouded in mystery. She was raised in a working-class family, and her father—a Russian revolutionary—had a significant impact on her. The Alliluyev family first encountered Stalin in 1904. Nadezhda was later saved from drowning in the Caspian Sea by him. The future dictator of Soviet Russia became very close to the family over the ensuing years. In reality, there were rumors that Stalin had an affair with Nadezhda’s mother. Stalin frequently complained in letters to the Alliluyevs during his four-year exile in Siberia. Nadezhda started working as a clerk at Lenin’s office in 1917, following the October Revolution. Stalin was then given the assignment of her. They soon began to interact physically, and in 1919 they got married. This union resulted in the birth of two kids. However, due to Stalin’s frequent extramarital affairs and Nadezhda’s declining mental health, the marriage was unhappy. They got into a passionate dispute while commemorating the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution, which caused Nadezhda to feel humiliated. The next morning, her body was discovered by housekeepers in her bedroom, where she is thought to have shot herself with a gun her brother had given her.
Early Childhood & Life
Nadezhda was born on September 22, 1901, to Sergei Alliluyev and his wife Olga Fedorenko in Baku, Azerbaijan. Her father was a railroad worker from Russia who eventually relocated to the Caucasus for employment. He rose to prominence during the Bolshevik revolution. Her mother spoke Russian with a heavy accent and was of German and Georgian origin.
She was an independent woman with a strong will. Pavel and Fyodor were Nadezhda’s brothers, and Anna was her sister.
Sergei and his family were introduced to Joseph Stalin when he visited Tiflis, now known as Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in 1904. It’s quite likely true that Olga and Stalin did have a relationship. Her marriage to her spouse was tense. Family lore claims that Pavel, Nadezhda’s brother, once saw his mother in an intimate setting with Stalin. Additionally, Svetlana, Nadezhda’s daughter and Olga’s granddaughter, later recalled how Olga frequently referred to Russian men as “boors” and had a “weakness for southern guys.”
This relationship was not unusual because revolutionaries frequently engaged in casual sexual encounters. The assertion that Stalin was Nadezhda’s father, however, is untrue. Nadezhda was already three years old when he first met the Alliluyev family. Olga adamantly objected to the relationship and eventual marriage between Stalin and her daughter despite the supposed closeness and having a “soft place” for Stalin, mostly due to the 22-year age gap.
Stalin soon prevented Nadezhda from drowning in the Caspian Sea while he was staying in Baku, the current capital of Azerbaijan. He was extremely close to the entire family over the ensuing years, frequently using their house as a source of support and safety during his exile in 1911. Stalin fled to St. Petersburg the next year and started working on turning the weekly Bolshevik newspaper Zvezda (“Star”) into a daily, Pravda (“Truth”). He was detained in February 1913 and given a four-year exile sentence in the isolated Siberian city of Turukhansk.
Stalin quickly realized that this time, escaping was very impossible. He became agitated and resentful of his situation. He nearly sounded miserable in his letters to Sergei and Olga when he wrote, “Nature in this terrible place is shamefully impoverished.” With the words “I’m wild with longing for nature scenes if only on paper,” he begged them to send him a postcard.
The Russian monarchy inexorably fell in February 1917 as a result of military errors and a food deficit, and a provisional government took charge. After getting over their initial shock at the unexpected turn of events, the Bolsheviks moved quickly and without delay. The Council of People’s Commissars (“Sovnarkom”), headed by Vladimir Lenin, Stalin’s mentor and a close friend of the Alliluyev family, had been established by the end of October.
After the “October Revolution,” Nadezhda began working for Lenin as a secret code clerk. She was a devout Bolshevik who avoided fanciful clothing, make-up, and other trappings. Later, Stalin hired her to serve as his secretary.
A union with Stalin
Stalin had previously been married. He wed Ketevan “Kato” Svanidze, a teacher and small Georgian noblewoman, in 1906. She gave birth to his son Yakov Dzhugashvili before passing away 18 months later from either typhus or TB.
Before becoming married to Nadezhda and following Kato’s passing, Stalin had a number of sex affairs. At least three of his children were born during this time. Maria Kuzakova, who served as Konstantin Kuzakov’s landlady during his exile in Solvychegodsk in 1911, gave birth to him (1911–1966). Additionally, he fathered two kids with Lidia Pereprygia, who was only 13 years old when they first met in Serbia in 1914.
In the months that followed, Nadezhda provided him with unwavering allegiance and traveled with him as he began his duties as the People’s Commissar for Nationalities. The Russian Civil War brought them both to the city of Tsaritsyn. They quickly fell in love and was married in 1919.
On March 21, 1921, she gave birth to a baby they called Vasily, who would become her first child. Svetlana, her daughter, was born on February 28th, 1926.
She began to feel suffocated by her life in the Kremlin during the ensuing years. Her marriage to her husband deteriorated. The man who she had thought represented the prototypical Soviet “new man” turned out to be a squabbling bore. He drank a lot, brazenly flirted with his coworkers’ spouses, and even had relationships with a number of them.
She struggled with persistent depression and dramatic mood swings in the late 1920s.
Nadezhda enrolled in a chemistry study in 1929 to escape the dullness she had become accustomed to in Kremlin. She declined to ride the state limousine and commuted to school each morning using public transportation. At the class, she made a number of acquaintances who, not knowing who she was, told her about the terrible consequences of Stalin’s collectivization policy. She was so appalled at this that she confronted Stalin and charged him with murdering his people. He then imprisoned her pals in retaliation.
Nadezhda confided in a friend only a few days before she passed away that “nothing made her happy,” least of all her kids.
Death of Nadezhda Alliluyeva
In honor of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin and Nadezhda hosted a meal in the Kremlin on November 8, 1932, in the evening. They would frequently dispute in front of people by that point since they had grown to hate one another. Nothing was different on that day. He was allegedly being disrespectful to Nadezhda. Stalin responded by addressing her as “Hey, you” and tossing smokes in her direction. Nadezhda, who was humiliated, walked out of the room with Polina Zhemchuzhina, Vyacheslav Molotov’s wife. Before Nadezhda went to her chamber, they had a little stroll together through the Kremlin grounds.
The following morning, the servants found her dead. Her brother, Pavel Alliluyev, reportedly gave her a pistol as a gift, which she used to murder herself. Her appendicitis-related death was the official explanation given. The identical story was given to Svetlana, who was six years old at the time, but she discovered the reality ten years later. There have been rumors that Stalin killed his wife. There isn’t any evidence for that, though.
On November 11, 1932, Nadezhda was buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, which was often reserved for nobles, artists, and writers, in contrast to the majority of Bolsheviks who were customarily interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Legacy of Nadezhda Alliluyeva
Pavel visited the Kremlin following Nadezhda’s passing to console his brother-in-law. Six years later, at the age of 44, he would pass away under mysterious circumstances. According to reports, Stalin ordered the majority of the Alliluyev clan to perish in the ensuing years. If her mother had been living, Svetlana questioned if her father would have arrested her.
Nadezhda wrote her husband a note. Svetlana said that it was filled with “reproach and accusations,” a critical reflection on Stalin’s political aspirations as well as personality, even though she had never seen it herself. Stalin appeared sincerely saddened by the passing of his wife. He was overheard suggesting that she committed suicide to get back at him. He waited till later to pay his respects at her grave and attend her burial.
Vasily Stalin, who served in the Red Air Force during World War II, was detained for divulging sensitive information to foreign diplomats following his father’s passing. On March 19, 1962, he passed away at the age of 40 from drinking. In 1967, Svetlana escaped to the US, got married four times, and released her autobiography, “Twenty Letters to a Friend.”
She received British citizenship in 1992 and died on November 22, 2011, perhaps as a result of complications from colon cancer.
Julia Ormond, an English actress, played Nadezhda in the HBO television movie “Stalin” in 1992.
Estimated Net Worth
The estimated net worth of Nadezhda Alliluyeva is unknown.