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Occasionally, Svetlana can still speak about Stalin with stupefying naivete: "Under no circumstances could one call him a neurotic; rather, powerful self-control was part of his nature." She argues that Lenin laid the foundation for terror and oppression in Russia, and that Stalin was merely the instrument of Leninism. She is no longer ready, however, to shift the bulk of the blame for her father's crimes to Beria. In 1941, Stalin railed to Svetlana about Beria, shouting obscenely, saying that he did not trust him; yet Beria remained in his post until Stalin's death. Moreover, she now asserts for the first time that the Bolshevik Revolution was "a tragic mistake." To reach such judgments in only one year surely requires a journey as long and as overwhelming as that between the Great Kremlin Palace and her current home in Princeton, NJ.