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  Personal History My Friend, Stalin’s Daughter How “the little princess of the Kremlin” became the Cold War’s most famous defector, then struggled to create a new life in the United States. By  March 24, 2014 In a childhood game, she would issue orders to her father. He’d answer, “I obey.” Photograph by Gasper Tringale Save this story On April 21, 1967, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Joseph Stalin, bounded down the stairs of a Swissair plane at Kennedy Airport. She was forty-one years old and wore an elegant white double-breasted blazer. “Hello there, everybody!” she exclaimed to the crowd of reporters on the tarmac. “I am very happy to be here.” Advertisement Svetlana immediately became the Cold War’s most famous defector. She was the only living child of Stalin, who had died in 1953, and she had been known as “the little princess of the Kremlin.” Until a few months earlier, she had never left the Soviet Union. But, at Kennedy, she talked of the freedom and opportunity...