Soviet Union an Endless Odyssey

By Michael S. Serrill

When Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Joseph Stalin, defected to the U.S. almost 20 years ago and declared her homeland a "prison," the West enjoyed a huge propaganda coup. When she redefected to the Soviet Union in 1984, the Soviets could claim their own victory after she said that she had not been free for "one single day" while living in the U.S. Last week Svetlana again returned to American soil. But this time neither East nor West had much to say, perhaps in recognition that her restless wanderings are intensely personal and have little to do with ideologies.

Alliluyeva, now 60, arrived on a Swissair flight from Moscow to Chicago, where she disembarked without fanfare and headed for a friend's house near Spring Green, Wis. Her entry presented no problem, since she had retained the American citizenship she was granted in 1978.

Svetlana's trip came one day after her American-born daughter Olga, 14, left Moscow on an Aeroflot flight to London. She is resuming studies at a Quaker school that she had been attending when her mother abruptly took her to the Soviet Union. When asked what she had missed about the West, the girl gushed, "Just the whole thing." Nonetheless, she had nothing negative to say about the Soviet Union, describing her 18-month sojourn there as a "great experience." Olga's father is Architect William Wesley Peters, 73, who was divorced from the volatile Svetlana three years after they were married in 1970. He was her third husband.

* Svetlana told the Washington Post last week that she returned to the Soviet Union primarily to see her two older children, Joseph and Yekaterina, who were 22 and 17 when she left them in 1966, and her two grandchildren. She claimed that the Soviets directed the script for her return press conference. Said she: "They made me write texts in Russia, which they all approved. I felt very awkward. I wanted to say simply, 'I came to join my children.' "

Within days of her arrival she was reported to have fought bitterly with her son, a Moscow doctor. A few months later, her daughter, a geologist who spends most of her time on Kamchatka Peninsula in the Soviet far east, announced that she wanted no contact with her mother. Svetlana and Olga moved to Tbilisi, in Stalin's home republic of Georgia. In Gori, his birthplace, many still revere the dictator who brutally ruled the Soviet Union for 24 years.

Olga, whose mother had earlier refused to let her learn Russian, quickly picked up both Russian and Georgian, but she still had trouble adapting. She defiantly wore a large cross, to the annoyance of school officials charged with teaching the government's doctrine of atheism. She got little help from her half brother and sister. Said she: "We didn't know what to say to each other."

Authorities accorded the mother and daughter privileges reserved for the elite. They were given a large apartment, a car and a driver. In Gori, the museum honoring her father opened a section devoted to Svetlana, featuring letters and presents they exchanged in her youth. When she arrived in Moscow three weeks ago to arrange her departure, she and Olga moved into the Sovietskaya, a hotel where foreign dignitaries normally stay.

But by last December, Svetlana had become tired of the austere life in Georgia, and she wrote Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, requesting permission to leave the country. After a series of telegrams and meetings with Soviet officials, it was finally granted. Said she: "They really realized, I think, that there was no other way. And I think they just preferred to have me out."

Though she declared last week that she had to leave the U.S. to understand "how wonderful it is," Svetlana is not saying whether she will remain in America, though she has told Robert Graves, one of her friends in Wisconsin, that she would like to buy some property and live there. Said Graves: "She is just going to settle back and rest before she decides where to live. I think she has been under a lot of emotional stress." Svetlana Alliluyeva's endless, unhappy search for peace of mind is likely to continue.

With reporting by Nancy Traver/Moscow and Arturo Yanez/Madison