" Twenty Letters to a Friend " by Svetlana Alliluyeva ( Stalin's daughter )

I picked up the paperback book " Twenty letters to a friend " at a used book store dear to me in downtown Providence , Rhode Island ( now 65 cents ) . Half way through the book I have a vivid image of personal experience of the Stalinist era nightmare. I can imagine this extraordinary woman, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter , as a character in a Dostoevsky novel like " The Possessed ".

This much is clear from numerous references to God and " Christian " feelings: the biggest mistake of the new Soviet Russia ( post 1917 ) was to make THEIR state " officially atheist" . There was the 1917 " Lady of Fatima " prophecy about Russia being " converted ". In post communist Russia the Orthodox Church is resurgent .

Yes, " if God does not exist , then everything is permitted ". Even anti-Stalinist Marxist parties today that still preach an effete militant atheism are on the brink of moral insanity and would open doors once again to nightmare totalitarianism .

I was shocked by Stalin's death bed scene  as  described by the daughter and eye witnesses. Was old Stalin cursing his slavish followers ? Or having a metaphysical hallucination of The Damned in Hell ?

I must find out more about the sad strange life of Svetlana Alliluyeva.

Stalin's daughter remembers