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The architect's widow perceived Stalin's daughter as a mystical representative, possibly even the reincarnation, of her own daughter, who had died in an auto accident in 1946. Mrs. Wright, a disciple of the Russian-born mystic Georgi Gurdjieff, was spellbound by some coincidences between the living and the dead. Her daughter, by an earlier marriage in Russia, had also been named Svetlana; moreover, she had been born in Georgia, the region from which Svetlana Alliluyeva's father hailed. Somehow it followed in Mrs. Wright's mind that Stalin's daughter should marry the first Svetlana's widower, William Wesley Peters, known as Wes, Taliesin West's chief architect.
Svetlana promptly went along with Mrs. Wright's desires: within days she was calling Taliesin West's matriarch Mother. She also fell in love with the distinguished-looking, 6-ft. 4-in. Peters, then 57. Soon Svetlana was pressing for an early wedding, and less than three weeks after her arrival in Arizona, she and Peters were married. Mrs. Wright was heard to exult, "Now I can say again, 'Svetlana and Wes!' "
But Svetlana's happiness was short-lived. The egalitarian atmosphere at Taliesin West--everyone was expected to share in the house and yard work--was not to her liking. It reminded her of Communism, she said. Less than a month ( after the wedding, clients of the architectural firm were shocked to see Svetlana slap her husband at a gala dinner party. At Taliesin West's summer headquarters in Spring Green, Wis., a resident recalls, Svetlana threw the contents of a highball glass into the hostess's face during a cocktail party and was forcibly escorted out.
Much of Svetlana's anger came to center on Mrs. Wright, who ran the residents' lives at Taliesin West with what she proudly called "invisible discipline." Mrs. Wright decided what they wore, what they discussed at dinner and whether they should have children. "I detested her power over others," Svetlana said. "The lady bore such a resemblance to my father's worst qualities that I shrank from her."
Svetlana's hostility was viewed a shade differently by her new brother-in- law, S.I. Hayakawa, who is married to Wes Peters' sister. "She and Mrs. Wright were like two empresses in the same empire," the semanticist and former U.S. Senator recollects. Overpowered, Svetlana tried to persuade Peters to leave Taliesin West, where he had worked since 1932 as Wright's disciple and chosen successor. Peters temporized, and after 20 months of marriage, Svetlana stormed out, cursing Mrs. Wright and all that she represented with a wrath that recalled Stalin's. Taliesin West, "with all its horrible modern architecture," Svetlana said, should be burned to the ground.
Svetlana often walked away from places with a malediction on her lips. Thus had she left the Soviet Union and thus would she eventually depart the West. Men and women who got to know her felt the lash of her leave-takings. Said one former friend: "If you didn't stop your life and devote yourself completely to hers, she would cast you out into utter darkness."