It is interesting, that after the collapse of the communist experiment in Russia, descendants of its builders did not go to finish the implementation of the Great Dream in China, North Korea or Cuba.
They all moved in U.S. or countries of Western Europe.
The woman on this photo is Chris Evans (40). She is an owner of a small antique and vintage store in Portland, Oregon. None of her Portland neighbors can even imagine that she is a granddaughter of Joseph Stalin.
Until recently she has never hosted journalists. However, the shock of the recent death of her mother, the only tyrant’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, removed her moral barriers and she gave an interview to a correspondent of French newspaper “Paris Match”.
Here is what Chris told about her American childhood and her attitude to her ancestry:
“When I went to elementary school, I could not bear that I was called Olga. One day, when the teacher asked if I had a nickname, I replied: “Christina.” Then I forced my mother to call me Chris. Finally the local press managed to figure out who we were. Then my mother and I had to go to England, to Cambridge. We were constantly running away …
“I consider us victims. Take the maternal line of my family. Alliluyevs were destroyed by Stalin: my grandmother Nadya committed suicide, her two brothers were arrested in 1938, and her sister a little later also [where sent to a concentration] camp. Stalin broke my mother’s heart when she was just 16 years old, imprisoning the man with whom she was madly in love. ‘He broke my life,’ she used to repeat. ‘Wherever I’ll be, I’ll always be a political prisoner of my father.’”
After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev ruled the USSR for many years.
His son Sergei Khrushchev now resides in the United States where he is a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter Nina lives in US since the 1990s. She is at the Faculty of International Relations at New School in New York.
Here is a quotation of one of her latest interviews to Russian newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”:
“I recently returned from my visit to Russia where anti-Americanism is raving – very big, just huge! … But, on the other hand, my study of the Russian political elite allows me to say that this elite is pretty cynical, and they hardly believe in what they say in public.
“Other times will come, and instantly all of them will turn to another direction.”
Tatiana Andropov, the granddaughter of the Chairman of the KGB and after that Communist Party General Secretary Yuri Andropov, is teaching choreography in Miami.
Her brother Konstantin Andropov lives with his sister.
Great-grandson of Leonid Brezhnev, Dmitri is now studying political science at the University of Oxford.
Lubov Brezhnev, niece of Leonid Brezhnev lives in California.
Maya Sumarokova, daughter of the late communist ideologue, ascetic Mikhail Suslov, lives with her husband and two sons in Austria since 1990.
The daughter of the last leader of USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, Irina Virganskaya lives in San Francisco, where the head office of “The Gorbachev Foundation” is located. She is the vice president of the foundation.
Mikhail Gorbachev (R), his daughter Irina Virganskaya and her husband businessman Andrey Trukhachev (L) attend the Gorby 80 Gala at the Royal Albert Hall on March 30, 2011 in London, England.
None of them should be allowed to wallow in the West given what their parents/grandparents did, which was enslave and murder millions of innocents, unless they make it very clear that they abhor the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet state and its willing servants.
Yes, these grandchildren and great grandchildren should be punished for what their ancestors did! Oh, wait, no, that would be morally reprehensible!
Seriously? How many generations do you think is enough punishment? 1? 2? 4? Or is the family damned for all eternity? Are all descending lines equally punished, or do you punish some more than others? How much dilution need to occur before no more punishment follows the line?
Enslaving people to be victims of their ancestors wrongdoings may not be worse than enslaving and murdering millions, but it is certainly not much better.
EDITOR: Agreed. That is what we must try to do. Nevertheless strong emotions remain. Perhaps it takes a very positive emotion such as German citizenry cheering the arrival of dark skin, non-Christian immigrants to offset feelings of horror about the past.
Gorbachev lives on a USA army base near San Francisco, head of the environmental fairy tale he and his worldly pal Maurice Strong dreamed up. He is still a Communist.
Horrendous Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana. is the most credible. She indeed did suffer with her mother dead and learning what her father did with the Ukraine holodomor, plus the innocent millions of others dead for the communist experiment.
Some of these individuals featured here live extremely well. Their ancestors, real Party Members, just as it is to this day in Muscovy, got their hands in the cookie jars, didn’t they?