SOVIET UNION
Only two years ago she reminisced tenderly about her father, who called her his "little sparrow" when she was young and showered her with baby-talking letters. He was "courteous, unassuming and direct" to his underlings. His servants "loved and respected him for the most ordinary human qualities." Many of the misdeeds that had been committed in his time were due to the intrigues of others.
Such was the astonishing portrait of Joseph Stalin conveyed by his daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, in her first book, Twenty Letters to a Friend. Svetlana has since...