Stalin’s Children

The post’s title sounds like I’m trying to be metaphorical but that’s not the case. This is about Stalin’s actual children.

Stalin had 3 children from his 2 marriages: Yakov, Vasily and Svetlana. There are also rumors of a fourth, illegitimate child, a son whom Stalin supposedly helped out and promoted on the sly.

Yakov, the son of Stalin’s early first marriage, always had a fraught relationship with his father. He was clumsy, shy, and married early. Stalin wasn’t happy about any of this.

Yakov was captured by the Nazis during WWII. They tried to exchange him for Friedrich Paulus, the Nazi who’d led the Stalingrad offensive but obviously Stalin didn’t even consider it. Yakov was killed by the Nazis.

Stalin cherished Vasily, his son from his second marriage. Vasily had everything he wanted given to him. He became a military general at the age of 24. After Stalin’s death, Vasily was jailed for a while for getting drunk with foreign diplomats and blabbering stupidly. After his release from jail, Vasily was treated royally but he soon died of alcoholism at the age of 42.

Stalin also adored his daughter Svetlana. She fell in love at the age of 15 with a 45 – year-old married journalist. Stalin was understandably appalled and sent the journalist to a concentration camp. After Stalin’s death, Svetlana kept getting married every two seconds. Finally, she ended up asking for asylum in the United States. She was a very bizarre person, constantly getting into weird religious and New Agey stuff. She had 3 children who hate her. Svetlana died 3 years ago.

All of Stalin’s children had children, so it isn’t like the story of that horrible family is about to end. With the revival of Stalin worship in Russia, the grandchildren have started crawling out of their holes to yell the world what a great statesman their grandpa was.