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“Among the great Russian autobiographical works: Herzen, Kropotkin, Tolstoy’s Confession.” —Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker

After the success of her New York Times bestselling childhood memoir Twenty Letters to a Friend, Josef Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva—subject of Rosemary Sullivan’s critically acclaimed biography Stalin’s Daughter—penned this riveting account of her year-long journey to defect from the USSR and start a new life in America.

The story of Only One Year begins on December 19, 1966, as Svetlana Alliluyeva leaves Russia for India, on a one-month visa, in the custody of an employee of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It ends on December 19, 1967, in Princeton, New Jersey, as she and two American friends join in a toast to her new life of freedom.

That year of pain, discovery, turmoil, and new hope reaches its climax with her decision to break completely from the world of Communism, to turn her back on her country, her children, and the legacy of her notorious father—Joseph Stalin. Why did she make such a drastic choice? This book, a detailed account of reality in the USSR, is her explanation.

Frank, fascinating, and thoroughly engrossing, Only One Year reveals life behind the Iron Curtain, the risks and subterfuge of defection, and one extraordinary woman’s fight for her future.

About the Author

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Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva (1926-2011), later known as Lana Peters, was the youngest child and only daughter of Joseph Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva. In 1967, she defected and became a naturalized citizen of the United States. She returned briefly to the Soviet Union in 1984, but then moved back to the United States and died in Wisconsin in November 2011.

Praise For…

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“Among the great Russian autobiographical works: Herzen, Kropotkin, Tolstoy’s My Confession.” — Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker, ORIGINAL EDITION

“It’s a rich and absorbing book that could be endlessly quoted, by…a woman who stands free in the sunlight.” — Saturday Review, ORIGINAL EDITION