Stalin's Daughter Lana Peters
Outside The Iron Curtain
In the 1960s, long after her father's death, Svetlana fell in love with an Indian communist who was visiting Moscow; although she had already begun losing the privileges her father afforded her when he was alive, government officials still refused to let her marry him. However, after he died from illness, she was granted permission to leave the country to return his ashes to India. Once inside the country, she began famously seeking asylum, arriving at a U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. The United States granted her protection, and President Lyndon B. Johnson worked to transport her to New York with as little publicity as possible. The plan ultimately failed; here she stands at a press conference in New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in April 1967, where she publicly denounced the Soviet Union.