Kirusya. Stalin's Niece

Suddenly, with sadness, Kirusya said: "I'm so tired of all this. Most of my interviews are distorted. I say one thing, but they print who knows what. Relatives also try, telling tall tales. And how can they know what really happened to us, the Alliluyevs, if they either were born much later or were so small that they can't remember anything! I am the oldest of the children in our family, and therefore the events from the late 1920s, not to mention the 1930s and 1940s, I don't just remember unlike them. I saw it, heard it, and will never forget it!"

Thus, the idea to record the memories of Kira Pavlovna Alliluyeva-Politkovskaya (1919–2009), niece of I.V. Stalin, was born. An unexpected find in the spring of 2025 – Kirusya's diary and her stories, like signs of fate, compelled me to sit down to write this book and immerse myself in an era that still raises many questions, to which there are no answers even now.

Among her characters are Alliluyev and his children – Pavel, Anna, Fedor, Nadezhda, their families, associates, acquaintances – both old and random, friends and foes: Lenin, Stalin, Svanidze, Kirov, Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Beria, Redens, Shaposhnikov, Bernes, Gelovani, Romm, Kapler, Gagarin, Raikin, Vysotsky, and many others.