It is indeed curious how some remarkably important historic events can vanish from the collec tive memory of people. Not many remember that exactly 50 years ago, the daughter of the most powerful communist dictator of USSR, Joseph Stalin, had landed in a small village of India at the height of USSR’s global dominance and the Cold War.
Svetlana Alliluyeva spent three months in Kalakankar, a sleepy village right on the banks of river Ganga in Pratapgarh district.
However, hardly anybody in India knows accurately the events surrounding the remarkable journey of Svetlana, who gave up on the famous surname of her father.
It was during a boating expedition organised by UP Police down the Ganga till Kalakankar that somebody mentioned to me about the extraordinary real life story of Stalin’s daughter having come and lived there. Even after living for so many years in the state, I had never read or heard of those extraordinary events.
As I explored later, I found that Svetlana had carefully and beautifully written about her stay on the banks of the Ganga in her memoirs, originally in Russian, and later translated into English as `Only One Year.’ In the mid 1960s, years after Stalin was dead and even after Khruschev was `dethroned’, that this remarkable lady, who by that time had two grownup children from her previous marriages, came in contact with an old, idealist, romantic Indian communist called Brajesh Singh, in Moscow. Brajesh belonged to the rich landlord family of Kalakankar and happened to be an uncle of the then-foreign minister of India.
Under extraordinary circumstances, they fell in love and despite protestations and forebodings, were `married’, though the marriage was never registered under Soviet law.
Brajesh, who was already very ill when the two met, tragically died soon after and Svetlana decided to take the ashes of her late ‘husband’ to Kalakankar. After all, Kalakankar was his home. Once in India, tasting `freedom’ for the first time, Svetlana began to toy with the idea of never returning to USSR. After a lot of prevarications, she finally picked up the courage to defect to the west–something that must have been big international news in those days of peak Cold War.
But for an Indian, the real value and beauty of Svetlana’s memoirs is the insightful observations made during her stay in Kalakankar, her meeting with then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi–she had stayed in Kalakankar during an election campaign–and her description of public figures like Ram Manohar Lohia and Dinesh Singh. She also talks of people’s growing disenchantment with politics even 50 years ago.
Her evocative descriptions of Magh Mela, travel in a crowded general category train to Lucknow, her warm appreciation of simple-minded generous villagers, her genuine respect and praise for Gandhiji and Nehru and most of all, her beautiful imagery while describing the rural Indian landscapes have both literary and historic value.
After Svetlana emigrated to the US, she sent money, a part of her royalty, to build a hospital at Kalakankar that is now a school. It was her way of paying homage to the memory of her late husband and his country.
Today, Brajesh Singh and Svetlana and their story are largely forgotten but not entirely. The memory of that kind, humane spirit and those few months, 50 years ago, still somehow lingers among the local populace at Kalakankar, where Stalin’s daughter stood, or otherwise, how would I come to know of her footsteps on the sands of time.The writer is a Lucknow enthusiast and an IAS officer. He also likes to read, is a sports enthusiast, and is also a keen nature lover.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Lucknow News / by Partha Sarthi Sen Sharma / TNN / November 05th, 2017
