Ekaterina Zhdanova Photo: ITAR-TASS

Forty years now, Yuri Demyanchuk, head of the Levinson-Lessing Kamchatka Volcanological Station, has been working at the foot of the Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano and talking to him. The researchers nicknamed Klyuchevskaya the Girl - for her capricious nature, clouds and poor visibility, which she creates around herself as if to spite scientists. “I often have to scold her,” says Demyanchuk. - Sometimes everywhere good weather, but it seems to attract clouds on purpose and does not allow us to work. Scold, scold, look - and the weather appeared. Every year the Girl kills several people, once she blew off the head of a Czech tourist with a stone. Klyuchevskaya Sopka is deceptive - it has the second climbing category, that is, easy, and it is believed that anyone can climb such a mountain. But halfway through, the weather can suddenly deteriorate: clouds and poor visibility, glaciers melt, stones break off, pick up speed and whistle down. If a person gets lost on a hill, then he can no longer be found.

Klyuchevskaya Sopka was formed 7 thousand years ago on the site earth cracks from a mixture of lava, ash and dust. The earth erupts lava, the lava solidifies, and the volcano grows with each eruption: today the Girl has reached 4835 meters, only the Chilean Ojos del Salado at 6893 meters is larger than her. It is believed that volcanoes bring only doom and death, but scientists like Demyanchuk are sure that this is not so - thanks to minerals, which break out of the bowels of the earth in the form of magma, thousands of new forms of life were born, and without eruptions, the atmosphere, hydrosphere and life itself on the planet would be impossible. For the first time, the Girl got into the chronicles in 1737, when the young explorer Stepan Krashennikov visited her and recorded the nature of the Klyuchi eruptions: prepared for death, waiting for death. Then Krashennikov returned to St. Petersburg, got a place in botanical garden at the Academy of Sciences and did not come to Kamchatka anymore. In 1934, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR adopted a resolution on the creation of a volcanological station in the village of Klyuchi, the following year a special volcanological team arrived at the construction site. It was very prestigious to come to work in a village where people used to prepare in horror for a painful death. The old people remember that the station had horses, dogs, and a chic store with scarce goods. The indigenous inhabitants of the Keys even climbed over the fence to the territory of the volcano town in order to get into the coveted store. In the 1970s, Yuriy Demyanchuk came to Klyuchi to escape from unhappy love: “So many did in those years, they came here to start all over again.” Fortunately, the village is nine hours from Moscow by plane and ten or twelve by car along a gravel road from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In 1977, another person came to the foot of the volcano to start all over again - Ekaterina Zhdanova, sister, daughter of Svetlana Alliluyeva, granddaughter of Joseph Stalin.

Ekaterina Zhdanova was born in 1950 from the marriage of Svetlana Alliluyeva and Professor Yuri Zhdanov. Ekaterina's parents separated early, as Alliluyeva found Zhdanov "cold and uninteresting". Ekaterina spent most of her childhood years traveling around the country with her father - to the Caucasus, Altai, Baikal. Ekaterina liked traveling and she decided to study geophysics.

Klyuchi village - December 21 - AiF-Kamchatka. December 21, 2012 is marked not only by the “end of the world”, which is now being talked about all over the world, but also by the 133rd anniversary of the birth of Joseph Stalin. His descendants - a granddaughter, a great-granddaughter, and two great-great-grandchildren - live in the Kamchatka outback - in the small village of Klyuchi. There, on the eve of the birthday of the "father of peoples", a correspondent of AiF-Kamchatka visited.

... The keys are famous for hunting and fishing, tourism, proximity to the highest volcano in Eurasia - Klyuchevskoy Sopka and the Kura missile range. Still close to the village Soviet times tested the lunar rover. All this attracts hundreds of tourists here. And the residence of the descendants of Joseph Vissarionovich here is special calling card Keys.

The leader's granddaughter came to Kamchatka in the early eighties. After graduating from the main university of the country - Moscow State University - with a degree in geophysics, she left the capital to work on the very edge of the earth.

Whether the young Katya Zhdanova then planned to associate her whole life with the Kamchatka hinterland is not known for certain. But, it just so happened that she connected.

… Her small wooden house stands almost on the outskirts of the village. Around - a tiny fence. There are many dogs in the yard. Ekaterina Zhdanova practically does not communicate with her neighbors. She doesn't have any friends either. And she doesn't even go to work...

"Closed, uncommunicative - a recluse," - everyone, as if by agreement, characterizes the granddaughter of the Soviet leader in the Keys in the same way ... Behind this woman difficult fate. “Betrayal” by a mother who left for America - Ekaterina could not forgive Svetlana Alliluyeva, her husband’s suicide, raising her daughter alone ...

I met Katya a long time ago, back in Moscow, at Moscow State University — at a banquet on the occasion of the successful defense of one of our volcanologists’ Ph.D. It was in the 70s. And a few years later she flew to Klyuchi - for work, - says Vladimir Ushakov, head of the local seismological station. Here she met my best friend— Seva Kozev. She was a very interesting girl - lively, sociable, played the guitar - Okudzhava, I remember, she sang ... Seva was carried away by her. He left his wife and children - his wife was a village teacher - and married Katya. As families, we visited each other and became friends.

Alone with myself

E. Zhdanova and V. Kozev. Photo from the site 1tvnet.ru

The young family lived in a house on the river bank, as if away from the village, their daughter Anya was born. The idyll, however, did not last long. After some time, Vsevolod Kozev began to drink: either the disease had such an effect - he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, or there was not enough communication with his former friends - many, after a divorce from his first wife, turned away from him.

I began to notice that Seva was completely different. There was a handsome guy, always cheerful, the soul of the company. And here ... - continues Ushakov. - Maybe he started drinking from a lack of friends and communication. He lost many friends, and unfortunately we did not often communicate with him. You understand, constant trips, overflights, research - volcanologists did not sit still at that time. In general, Seva shot himself with a gun ...

Ekaterina suffered the death of her husband hard ... After that, she began to close up, fence herself off from the whole world around her.

Katya, when Seva was gone, they changed it ... “I won’t give you this gun,” she told me, “and I won’t give you a boat,” recalls Ushakov. “God be with you,” I say, “why do I need them? I helped them with Anka for the first two years, and then all communication came to naught ... It's hard to get through to her.

The meaning of life for Catherine then became her daughter, Anya.

AT Soviet years Katya often went to work in the fields - before, a lot of money was allocated for science. Sometimes, on her trips, she left Anyutka with us, - recalls resident of Klyuchi, engineer of the seismic station Maria Demyanchuk. - Children - mine and Anya - grew up together, did not fight. Anyutka was a very good girl, funny, with big blue eyes. She was always very smart, reasonable - she talked all the time among adults.

Of the relatives, she once communicated only with her father - and corresponded with him, and came to visit him. Locals say that often Yuri Zhdanov helped his daughter financially. In 2006, Catherine's father passed away ...

... Now Ekaterina Yurievna lives in the same house. The authorities have repeatedly offered her apartments - both in Klyuchi and Petropavlovsk - she refuses everything. She also renounced the rights to her Moscow apartment. “In vain,” say the locals, “she may not need it. But she has a daughter, grandchildren ... "

Ekaterina Zhdanova. Photo from the site 1tvnet.ru

Stalin's granddaughter lives modestly. The house, according to the neighbors, does not smell of modernity - a stove with buckets standing on the stove, old furniture, it seems that there is not even a TV.

Now she is 62 years old. She is retired, but part-time is listed in one of the laboratories of the Kamchatka Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

She comes to work, but does almost nothing. She just lives, - colleagues comment. - Before scientific work wrote - she is a candidate of science, but now all this has sunk into oblivion. Sometimes he enters the volcano and seismic station - he will look at the seismograms and go further ...

kamchatka.aif.ru: - Does he communicate with journalists?

TO.:- What do you! It is better not to meddle with her!

Television and newspaper people often come in the hope of talking to Zhdanova. But she really does not favor journalists. A rare exception to the rule was communication with AiF-Kamchatka correspondents a few years ago. She does not let anyone into the house, she does not indulge in conversations. However, there is a reason.

A few years ago, TV crews of a well-known channel came to us ... - says Maria Demyanchuk. Katya didn't let them in. Well, I didn't and didn't. Everyone in the village has already forgotten to think about them. Suddenly, I go to work in the morning, and some men are hiding in the bushes. My heart almost skipped a beat... It turned out that the journalists were watching her to take at least a couple of shots. “Hush, Marya Vasilievna, hush! - whisper - Do not scare away! I then watched their program. I didn't like her. Lots of dirt thrown...

Those "sharks of the pen", by the way, offered local residents secretly take photos and videos of Zhdanova - they say, send materials, and we will pay you for it. There were no hunters for such money in the Keys ...

Dogs are unmeasured...

While in the Keys, we saw Ekaterina Yurievna herself once, and then from afar. A short, stooping, thin woman in a sheepskin coat and felt boots was on the street, accompanied by dogs.

Look! There she is, Stalin's granddaughter, - our guide pointed to her.

And then ... She did not answer the phone, and only her dogs answered the knock on the door ...

By the way, Catherine has enough dogs: both in the yard and in the house itself. They zealously protect their mistress and her home. The AiF-Kamchatka correspondents had to experience the strength of dog teeth on themselves. However, they themselves are to blame. The yard is the territory of Ekaterina Yurievna ...

And many complain about Zhdanova's dogs in the village. Somehow, the most enterprising even turned to the administration - they say, figure it out, it's a mess. Officials asked for a collective statement. As a result, signatures were never collected - either because of laziness, or because of fear ...

"Tired! .. "

We could not help talking to the great-granddaughter of the Generalissimo. We went to Anna in the late afternoon by taxi. From the Keys to the "twenty" - this is the name of the military town in which she lives - 5-10 minutes of travel.
On the way we talked to the driver...

Anya, Vovka's wife, Stalin's great granddaughter?! Yes, you are joking! - the taxi driver did not believe us at first. - I knew, of course, that Stalin's granddaughter lives with us, everyone knows about her, but that Anka is a great-granddaughter. Didn't even realize...

They have a good family,” the guy continues after a short pause. - Vova is a military man ... He wrote dozens of songs about Kamchatka. Many of us know and love them ...

We find Anna right at the entrance - the Gorshenin family lives in a five-story building, in the center of the town.

This is where the Gorshenins' apartment is located.

kamchatka.aif.ru: - Hello, we are journalists from Petropavlovsk…

Anna Gorshenina: - Girl, this is bad idea Anna doesn't let me finish. - Journalists wrote so much dirt about us that I don’t want to say anything ... Why is this? Standard questions, standard answers. Tired...

kamchatka.aif.ru: - We will not ask personal questions - we promise.

A.G.:- And then what to talk about?

kamchatka.aif.ru: - About the life of a young family in a military settlement ...

A.G.:- ... I won’t let you into the house, I have a small child, - the girl seems to agree.

kamchatka.aif.ru: Let's go to a cafe for a cup of tea?

A.G.:- No, girl, it's not worth it. I don't have much time, I'm in a hurry...

Further arguments of success also do not bring - Anna flatly refuses to communicate ...

About Anya, as well as about her mother, the media wrote more than once. Some journalists claimed, they say, “Stalin” buried herself in the Kamchatka wilderness.

However, the unfortunate and "buried" great-granddaughter of Joseph Vissarionovich does not look at all. Before talking to Anya, we managed to examine her: a young, pretty, well-groomed woman - happy, smiling and contented with life.

Short conversation with Anna Gorshenina

During our short conversation, a girl of 8-10 years old approached Anna - Vika - the eldest child in the Gorshenin family. The girl looks like her mother and grandmother. And recently, Anya gave birth to a boy ...

Don't need another

Ekaterina Zhdanova, they say, rarely communicates with her grandchildren. Anya used to bring Vika to her grandmother, but now they rarely come here. Some accuse Gorshenina that, they say, she does not take good care of her mother. But it's not for us to judge that...

You know, be that as it may, it seems to us that Katya is happy in her own way, people who know her share. - It is a pity, of course, that her fate was so difficult. But she does not need Moscow luxury, power and money. Here, in the Keys, she found her home, her happiness, albeit difficult. Here stands "her" volcano station. Next to her daughter and grandchildren. She doesn't seem to need anything else...

Photo by Natalia Panina and Evgenia Ignatsova

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Komsomolskaya Pravda phoned Stalin's granddaughter [photo, video]

Upon learning of the death of Svetlana Alliluyeva, we called the small Kamchatka village of Klyuchi, nestled at the foot of the highest volcano in Eurasia - Klyuchevskaya Sopka. A few years ago, Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote that here, in Klyuchi, lives the daughter of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's granddaughter. Her name is Ekaterina Yurievna Zhdanova.

In her youth, having received a diploma in geophysics, the determined girl left Moscow nowhere else - to Kamchatka. By that time her mother had already left Soviet Union, leaving Katya alone with fate. And this fate was Kamchatka, volcanoes and many years of work at the volcanological station in Klyuchi.

Over the past 40 years, Zhdanova left the village only once - she flew to Rostov-on-Don to her father, the rector of Rostov State University, Yuri Andreyevich Zhdanov (he is the son of Zhdanov, the closest Stalinist ally). Here, in Klyuchi, Ekaterina got married, gave birth to a daughter Anna - she and her family (her husband is a military man, serves in a military unit at the Kura training ground, two daughters) and today lives next door to her mother in a military town. The husband of Ekaterina Yurievna died in 1983. Since then she has been alone. She is 61 years old.

Svetlana with her father

I received the news of the death of Svetlana Alliluyeva via e-mail, - Yuri Demyanchuk, head of the volcano station in the village of Klyuchi, told KP. - My colleague American volcanologist Tom Miller wrote that on November 22 at 4.40 in the morning in the city of Vedansdey (Wisconsin), Svetlana Alliluyeva “died peacefully”. We, of course, immediately to Katya. Her reaction was inadequate: “This is not my mother. Don't interfere in my life."

How does Ekaterina Yurievna live? Working at the station?

Lives like a prisoner. He does not communicate with anyone except his numerous dogs. Her house is dilapidated, neglected, painful to look at. When the administration of the village offered to make repairs at the anniversary of the station, they did not let anyone inside. They patched up her housing only from the outside. Today she is a full-time employee of one of the laboratories of the Kamchatka Institute of Volcanology, but she practically does not go to work. Now she is on vacation - until January 12. In America ? What are you! Of course it's not going to. She should go to the hospital. I think she is a very unhealthy person.

It is almost impossible to get through to Ekaterina Yuryevna, Demyanchuk warned - Zhdanov rarely comes to the phone. But, apparently, my call was that rare case. Stalin's granddaughter picked up the phone. I asked her to say at least a few words in connection with the news from America. And heard:

Svetlana Alliluyeva is not my mother. It's some kind of mistake. I can't say anything about this.

"SORRY THAT MOTHER DID NOT MARRIED A CARPENTER"

The death of the famous fugitive became known on Monday evening. 85-year-old daughter of Joseph Stalin Svetlana Alliluyeva, known in the US as Lana Peters who lived last years in the American town of Richland County (Wisconsin), suffered from stomach cancer. And, according to the New York Times, she died on November 22, but local authorities reported this only now.

"Little Sparrow" - so affectionately called his only daughter Joseph Vissarionovich. When asked if he loved her, the former "Kremlin princess" sadly nodded her head:

“Yes, I probably had the same red hair and freckles as my mother ... But he broke my life. You cannot regret your fate. But I regret that my mother did not marry a carpenter.

And in her fate there were incredible intricacies: the luxury of the Kremlin, and a house without electricity in Wisconsin, and a nursing home in a wretched London quarter ...

As a child, the leader of the peoples showered Sveta with gifts, thousands of girls in the USSR were named after her, perfumes of the same name were released. At 18, she dined with Churchill himself. But she continued to lose loved ones - in 1932, Nadezhda Alliluyeva commits suicide, and little Sveta is told for another 10 years that her mother died due to appendicitis. Then the war, in which her brother Yakov dies - Stalin refuses to exchange him for a German general.

Her first love - a Jewish director - is sent to Siberia by her father for 10 years, and instead of literature, she is forced to study history at Moscow State University. Svetlana submits to ... ()

Elena Khanga: “Mom told Alliluyeva how to leave the country”

In her youth, the mother of TV presenter Elena Khanga was close friends with Svetlana Alliluyeva. Elena herself was then still quite small, but she remembers the stories of her mother Leah about a mysterious friend.

Mom met her, while still a student, in Leningrad visiting the composer Mitya Tolstoy. She didn’t know Svetlana’s last name then, ”Elena told KP. - Somehow they went to rest together and met a gypsy. She predicted to her mother whom she would marry and that she would remain a widow. " scary hand!” she said, looking at Svetlana's hand, and refused to guess.

The girlfriends then just laughed, and soon they told my mother who walks in her girlfriends. Alliluyeva always wanted to leave the country, but she understood that she would never be released. When her Indian "husband" Singh died, her mother advised her to ask permission to bury him in her homeland - maybe then they would release him. This is what happened ().

"IF MY FATHER KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, HE WOULD SHOT ME..."

Nikolay DOBRUKHA

They ask me why Stalin's daughter fled to the West. Why Khrushchev's son fled seems to be clear. But why did Svetlana run away?

Most likely - from the unbearable life that began with her after the exposure of the cult of personality at the 20th Congress in 1956. As she said, she was constantly haunted by the thought that when she walked down the street, they would say after her: here is the murderer's daughter! But one should remember who Svetlana wanted to be. She dreamed of becoming a writer. A writer with a name, to be recognized by her works, and not because she is Stalin's daughter.

However, as she repeatedly admitted in her interviews in the West, they did not want to perceive her otherwise than as the daughter of the owner of the Kremlin. Here it must be said that this is the misfortune of all the children and grandchildren of high-ranking people. I remember how the grandson of Anastas Mikoyan was always offended when we, studying at Moscow State University with him, called him Stasik Mikoyan. Because of this, he even changed his last name to Namin. To be known exactly as Namina, he organized the Flowers group, famous at that time.

That's how Svetlana wanted to become a writer with a name. Why am I talking about this? Then, that all her memoirs and especially the world-famous "20 Letters to a Friend" are more literary works than memoirs. By the way, she herself admitted it. We, forgetting about these words, accept her father, her life, drawn in these letters, for reality ().

"WHO DO YOU LIKE?!"

Of course, when Svetlana grew up, she repaid her father for the humiliation of childhood and youth: at the age of seventeen, she fell in love with the filmmaker Alexei Kapler, a man twice her age, and even of a nationality not particularly favored by Stalin. And then, when he was imprisoned (he served 10 years), she married another citizen of the same nationality. She gave birth, divorced, became the wife of the son of Stalin's colleague Zhdanov, divorced again ...

But even in those days, the father's requirements for the daughter's wardrobe were very strict:

More than once he brought me to tears by nit-picking my clothes: then he suddenly scolded why I wear socks in the summer and not stockings, “you go again with bare feet! That demanded that the dress was not at the waist, but with a wide hoodie. He ripped off my head with a beret: “What the hell is this? Can't you get yourself some better hats?" And no matter how much I assured that all girls wear berets, he was inexorable until it passed with him and he forgot himself ().

DOSSIER "KP"

Svetlana Iosifovna Stalina (02/28/1926 - 11/22/2011) graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, candidate of philological sciences. Worked as a translator from English.

In 1944 she married Grigory Morozov, gave birth to a son, Joseph. Became a cardiologist, died in 2008.

In 1949, she married Yuri Zhdanov, gave birth to a daughter, Ekaterina (she works in Kamchatka at the Institute of Vulcanization).

1956-1967 - Alliluyeva (Svetlana took her mother's surname - Ed.) Works at the Institute of World Literature. In 1962 she was baptized with her children in Moscow.

In 1967, she went to India for the funeral of Brajesh Singh, whom she called her husband in some interviews. And she became a defector. In the West, she published the memoirs Twenty Letters to a Friend, in 1970 she married the American architect William Peters, gave birth to a daughter, Olga, and changed her name to Lana Peters.

In 1982 she moved to England, sent her daughter to a boarding school and began to travel the world. In 1984, he returned with Olga to Moscow, received Soviet citizenship, and moved to Georgia.

In 1986, Gorbachev allowed her to return to the West. In recent years, she lived alone in Switzerland, England and the USA.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

DIRECT SPEECH

“For forty years of living here, America has not given me anything. I didn't even know how to keep my checkbook. But it’s too late to move… Here, in America, I’ll die.”

(From an interview in 2008)

AND AT THIS TIME

Svetlana's older children didn't even want to hear about her...

Svetlana fiercely hated the Soviet regime and own father not forgiving him the ruined life of his mother. She wrote a cruel memoir about her father. With sarcasm she called herself Pavlik Morozov, and meanwhile she herself found herself in her father's shoes - son Joseph (from her first marriage with former classmate Grigory Morozov) and eldest daughter Ekaterina Zhdanova (born from her second husband, son of the secretary of the Central Committee of the party Andrei Zhdanov), who remained on Motherland, abandoned it. To this day, they don't even want to hear about it.

“Svetlana has many maternal relatives in Moscow, we remember her, we know about her anniversary. I'm glad she's such a long-liver. But we do not communicate with her. It just so happened, ”said a year ago“ KP ”, when Svetlana celebrated her 85th birthday, her cousin Alexander Alliluyev.

Anna VELIGZHANINA

LAST SORRY

I tried to bury my brother next to my mother - they didn’t let me ...

In March 1962, Svetlana Alliluyeva was at the Arsk cemetery in Kazan at the funeral of her sibling Vasily. Later, she will write that almost the entire city gathered for the funeral, but eyewitnesses denied this information - only a few people came to the entrance of the house from which the coffin was taken out.

Alliluyeva personally applied to Khrushchev for permission to bury Stalin's son next to his mother Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva on Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow, but she was refused. More Svetlana did not come to Kazan to visit her brother's grave.

Alfiya ADIYATOVA (KP - Kazan)

READER FORUM ON KP.RU

"It's a heavy burden to be Stalin's daughter"

Readers discuss the news of the death of Svetlana Alliluyeva

Svetlana:

Svetlana Alliluyeva, like her children, is part of our history. Let's love and respect the past as it is.

Catherine:

I believe that Alliluyeva betrayed her Motherland, renounced her own father, smeared him with mud, abandoned her children. Does she deserve a good memory?

:

- Most likely, we will never know what made her leave the country and what was the true reason for such an act. Troubles in her personal life or political intrigues around Stalin's relatives... Unfortunately, people like her take all their secrets with them to the grave, never entrusting the most secret to others.

Ulyana:

Svetlana herself had no childhood, no youth - she lived as in a dungeon.

Elena:

The words of Svetlana's daughter, Ekaterina Zhdanova: "She is not my mother, this is a mistake" - do not honor her as a person. A mother is a mother, good or bad, but she gave birth, gave birth.

Nicholas:

If life gave, then immediately mother with a capital letter? Disagree. But what about alcoholic women, drug addicts who give birth 7-8 times? I think, then not every child can say that he needed just such a life! Mother - the one who loved, raised, raised.

The answer of the correspondent of the department of politics "KP" Yevgeny Lukyanitsa:

- This is a matter of moral choice of each person. I cannot condemn Ekaterina Zhdanova, but I cannot understand the betrayal of the mother of her children either. However, as they say: "About the dead, either good, or nothing."

Olga:

It is respectful that Stalin's heirs lived and live by their own labor, in contrast to the current "golden youth":

- Yes, indeed, almost all the descendants of Stalin worked in the usual specialties. However, after the “cult of personality” was debunked, they had no opportunity to use their name.

Tatiana:

The terrible fates of Stalin's children. But whatever one may say, the most worthy of them is Yakov, whom, by the way, Stalin did not like. In my opinion, he is the only one whom his father could be proud of - he died with dignity, defending the Motherland, like a soldier.

The answer of the correspondent of the political department of "KP" Yevgeny Lukyanitsa:

- And who said that he was not proud of him. After all, we don’t know what feelings Stalin was overwhelmed with when he said: “I don’t change a soldier for a field marshal” in response to Hitler’s proposal to exchange his captive son, senior lieutenant of the Red Army Yakov Stalin, for Field Marshal Paulus captured in Stalingrad.

Elena:

Would Svetlana be happier if she was born in an ordinary family? It is a heavy burden to be Stalin's daughter. Who can do it?

Maria:

If I were his daughter or granddaughter, I would be proud of such an origin. Stalin is a historical, powerful and unforgettable figure.

Anna:

She was shouted at every step: “The daughter of a murderer!” Could you live with it?

The answer of the correspondent of the political department of "KP" Yevgeny Lukyanitsa:

- Stalin had other children. But they did not leave the USSR. In addition, it is unlikely that at every corner the descendants of the “leader of all peoples” were shouted by “killer children”. The people remembered under whose leadership the most terrible war in the history of mankind was won.

It didn't become little sparrow» Stalin

The death in the United States of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva on November 29, 2011 brought to mind her daughter, volcanologist Ekaterina Zhdanova, who lives as a hermit at the foot of Eurasia's largest volcano, Klyuchevskaya Sopka. During her lifetime, she did not communicate with her mother - and tore up the letter with the news of her death. This demonstrative crossing out returned to the woman like a boomerang - her daughter Anna does not communicate with her mother either.

The great-granddaughter of the Generalissimo is married to a contract soldier who serves in the local military unit. We got through to the young woman. In her own words, she is quite happy and does not want to tell anyone about herself.

Stalin's granddaughter lives alone in little house in the village of Klyuchi in Kamchatka. This place is ideal for the definition of "end of the world": it is nine hours from Moscow by plane and another 10-12 by car on a gravel road. Spring and late autumn there is no road communication with a small village where a little more than 6 thousand people live. For the anniversary of her native Institute of Volcanology, Zhdanova was offered to move closer to civilization - to an apartment in regional center, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. But the woman refused. Colleagues managed only to slightly renovate the current dwelling.

“She is a sick person. She needs to be treated. But we, colleagues, cannot force it. And her daughter does not deal with it, ”say Ekaterina Zhdanova’s colleagues. Stalin's granddaughter is listed researcher at the Institute of Volcanology, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But he has not been engaged in scientific work for many years. Zhdanova is unsociable, she compensates for the lack of communication with people by caring for dogs, of which she has at least a dozen and a half. “Now she is very nervous, she can be rude. There are a lot of calls because of the death of the mother,” says Yury Demyanchuk, head of the Klyuchevskaya volcano station.

The administration of the village said that the famous hermit has not yet become the object of attention of social services: "She can serve herself, take care of animals." However, colleagues are not sure that she does not need care: “She is eager for field research, but there are unspoken order do not take her - she is uncontrollable, and anything can happen in the forest.

At the time of her birth, Ekaterina Zhdanova was the highest-ranking child of the USSR: the granddaughter of Stalin and the chairman of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Andrei Zhdanov. Her mother, the beloved daughter of the leader Svetlana Alliluyeva, by that time had already managed to be married to a classmate of her brother Vasily. From a quickly broken marriage, there was a son, Joseph, who was adopted by a second husband, a chemist Yuri Zhdanov. However, three years passed, the almighty grandfather died, and the cult of his personality was debunked with the same enthusiasm as it was created, and Zhdanov and Alliluyeva divorced ... The son of a party leader left for Rostov-on-Don, was engaged in scientific work in Rostov state university, and later led it.

Svetlana and the children stayed in Moscow. The eldest, Joseph, later became a well-known cardiac surgeon. And Ekaterina received a diploma in geophysics. In 1977, she was first brought to Kamchatka as part of an expedition. There she met Vsevolod Kozev, her colleague. It was not difficult for the charming and sociable volcanologist to attract the attention of a Moscow girl. After some time, he left the first family (where there were already two children) and married Catherine. In 1982, the couple had a daughter, Anna, and a year later, Vsevolod shot himself with a hunting rifle. Ekaterina Zhdanova did not leave Klyuchi even after the death of her husband.

Zhdanova did not communicate with her famous mother for almost half a century. When Svetlana Alliluyeva did not return from the funeral of her Indian husband Brajesh Singh, Katya was only 16 years old. The girl regarded this act as a personal betrayal. “Although later she invited her to the United States, sent gifts,” recalls Demyanchuk, head of the Klyuchevskaya volcano station. He tells that email about the death of Alliluyeva came to him from an American friend on November 22. He opened it and went to Zhdanova. But she tore the sheet of paper without reading: "This is not my mother."

Amazingly, Zhdanova's daughter, Anna Grishenina, also does not communicate with her mother. And if there were thousands of kilometers between Catherine and Svetlana and iron curtain, then Anna and Ekaterina live in the same village. In the village, they say that Zhdanova's behavioral problems began not even after her husband's suicide, but much later, after Anna became pregnant almost as a teenager, married a contract soldier from the local military unit (the Kura training ground is located nearby) and left her mother's house. However, no one condemned the girl - Zhdanova was not the best hostess, her house was always a mess.

Probably, Anna became the first woman in the family, whose personal life was more or less successful. She recently became a mother for the second time. Eldest daughter, Victoria, for more than 10 years. But Anna categorically refuses to answer journalists' questions, she only told that no one called her either about the death of her grandmother or about a possible inheritance. “I live happily. And I don’t want to answer any questions,” she said.

“It is as if a black circle has been drawn around the father - everyone who falls within it perishes, collapses, disappears from life,” wrote her grandmother Svetlana Alliluyeva in her book “20 ​​Letters to a Friend”. This fully applied to women from the Stalin-Alliluyev clan: the leader’s wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, shot herself, leaving little Svetlana in the care of her father. Svetlana herself traded her teenage daughter Ekaterina for endless wanderings around the world. By the way, Zhdanova's half-sister, American Olga Peters, light hand mother was brought up in a Quaker boarding school while she traveled. Catherine's share was the suicide of her husband and the spiritual wound from the betrayal of her mother, carried by her through her whole life. But even the blackest circle sooner or later fades, is erased and eventually disappears...
E. Mishina

Klyuchi village - December 21 - AiF-Kamchatka. December 21, 2012 is marked not only by the “end of the world”, which is now being talked about all over the world, but also by the 133rd anniversary of the birth of Joseph Stalin. His descendants - granddaughter, great-granddaughter, and two great-great-grandchildren live in the Kamchatka outback - in the small village of Klyuchi. There, on the eve of the birthday of the "father of peoples".

... The Keys are famous for hunting and fishing, tourism, proximity to the highest volcano in Eurasia - Klyuchevskoy Sopka and the Kura missile range. Not far from the village, in Soviet times, a lunar rover was tested. All this attracts hundreds of tourists here. And the residence of the descendants of Joseph Vissarionovich here is a special calling card of the Keys.

Away from Moscow

The leader's granddaughter came to Kamchatka in the early eighties. After graduating from the main university of the country - Moscow State University - with a degree in geophysics, she left the capital to work on the very edge of the earth.

Whether the young Katya Zhdanova then planned to connect her whole life with the Kamchatka hinterland is not known for certain. But, it just so happened that she connected.

… Her small wooden house stands almost on the outskirts of the village. Around - a tiny fence. There are many dogs in the yard. Ekaterina Zhdanova practically does not communicate with her neighbors. She doesn't have any friends either. Rarely goes to work...

“Closed, uncommunicative - a recluse”, - everyone, as if by agreement, characterizes the granddaughter of the Soviet leader in Klyuchi in the same way ... This woman has a difficult fate behind her. The “betrayal” of the mother who left for America - Ekaterina could not forgive Svetlana Alliluyeva, the suicide of her husband, raising her daughter alone ...

- I met Katya a long time ago, back in Moscow, at Moscow State University - at a banquet on the occasion of the successful defense of the candidate of one of our volcanologists. It was in the 70s. And a few years later she flew to Klyuchi - for work, - says Vladimir Ushakov, head of the local seismological station. - Here she met my best friend - Seva Kozev. She was a very interesting girl - lively, sociable, played the guitar - Okudzhava, I remember, she sang ... Seva was carried away by her. He left his wife and children - his wife was a village teacher - and married Katya. As families, we visited each other and became friends.

Alone with myself
E. Zhdanova and V. Kozev. Photo from the site 1tvnet.ru

The young family lived in a house on the river bank, as if away from the village, their daughter Anya was born. The idyll, however, did not last long. After some time, Vsevolod Kozev began to drink: either the disease had such an effect - he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, or there was not enough communication with his former friends - many, after a divorce from his first wife, turned away from him.

- I began to notice that Seva was completely different. There was a handsome guy, always cheerful, the soul of the company. And here ... - continues Ushakov. - Maybe he started drinking from a lack of friends and communication. He lost many friends, and unfortunately we did not often communicate with him. You understand, constant trips, overflights, research - volcanologists do not sit still. In general, Seva shot himself with a gun ...

Ekaterina suffered the death of her husband hard ... After that, she began to close up, fence herself off from the whole world around her.

- Katya, when Seva died, they changed it ... “I won’t give you this gun,” she told me, “and I won’t give you a boat,” recalls Ushakov. - God bless you, - I say, - why do I need them? I helped them with Anka for the first two years, and then all communication came to naught ... It's hard to get through to her.

The meaning of life for Catherine then became her daughter - Anya.

- In the Soviet years, Katya often went to work in the fields - before, a lot of money was allocated for science. Sometimes, on her departures, she left Anyutka with us, ”recalls resident of Klyuchi, engineer of the seismic station Maria Demyanchuk. - Children - mine and Anya - grew up together, did not fight. Anyutka was a very good girl, funny, with big blue eyes. She was always very smart, reasonable - she talked all the time among adults.
In the photo - Maria Demyanchuk

In the tenth grade, Anna became pregnant, and then married a military man. She moved from her mother - her adult life began. Ekaterina Zhdanova was left alone in her house ...

Journalists do not favor ...

When Svetlana Aliluyeva, Ekaterina’s mother, died in the United States in 2011, her daughter answered all questions from journalists: “Svetlana Alliluyeva is not my mother, you are confusing something.” Ekaterina, who left the Union abroad, apparently did not forgive Alliluyeva ... Zhdanov is not familiar with her younger sister, Olga, the second daughter of Svetlana, who lives in the States.

From relatives, she once communicated only with her father - and corresponded with him, and came to visit him. Locals say that often Yuri Zhdanov helped his daughter financially. In 2006, Catherine's father passed away ...

... Now Ekaterina Yurievna lives in the same house. The authorities have repeatedly offered her apartments - both in Klyuchi and Petropavlovsk - she refuses everything. She also renounced the rights to her Moscow apartment. “In vain,” say the locals, “she may not need it. But she has a daughter, grandchildren ... "

Ekaterina Zhdanova.Photo from the site 1tvnet.ru

Stalin's granddaughter lives modestly. The house, according to the neighbors, does not smell of modernity - a stove with buckets standing on the stove, old furniture, it seems that there is not even a TV.

Now she is 62 years old. She is retired, but part-time is listed in one of the laboratories of the Kamchatka Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

She comes to work, but does almost nothing. She just lives, - colleagues comment. - She used to write scientific papers - she is also a candidate of sciences, but now all this has sunk into oblivion. Sometimes he enters a volcano and seismic station - he will look at seismograms and go further ...

website: – Does he communicate with journalists?

TO.:- What do you! It is better not to meddle with her!

Television and newspaper people often come in the hope of talking to Zhdanova. But she really does not favor journalists. A rare exception to the rule was communication with AiF-Kamchatka correspondents a few years ago. She does not let anyone into the house, she does not indulge in conversations. However, there is a reason.

- A few years ago, TV crews of a well-known channel came to us ... - says Maria Demyanchuk. Katya didn't let them in. Well, I didn't and didn't. Everyone in the village has already forgotten to think about them. Suddenly, I go to work in the morning, and some men are hiding in the bushes. My heart almost skipped a beat... It turned out that the journalists were watching her to take at least a couple of shots. “Hush, Marya Vasilievna, hush! - whisper - Do not scare away! I then watched their program. I didn't like her. Lots of dirt thrown...

Those "sharks of the pen", by the way, suggested that local residents secretly shoot Zhdanova in photos and videos - they say, send materials, and we will pay you for it. There were no hunters for such money in the Keys ...

Dogs are unmeasured...

While in the Keys, we saw Ekaterina Yurievna herself once, and then from afar. A short, stooping, thin woman in a sheepskin coat and felt boots was on the street, accompanied by dogs.

– Look! There she is, Stalin's granddaughter, - our guide pointed to her.

And then ... She did not answer the phone, and only her dogs answered the knock on the door ...

By the way, Catherine has enough dogs: both in the yard and in the house itself. They zealously protect their mistress and her home. The AiF-Kamchatka correspondents had to experience the strength of dog teeth on themselves. However, they themselves are to blame. The yard is the territory of Ekaterina Yurievna ...

And many complain about Zhdanova's dogs in the village. Somehow, the most enterprising even turned to the administration - they say, figure it out, it's a mess. Officials asked for a collective statement. As a result, signatures were never collected - either because of laziness, or because of fear ...

"Tired!.."

We could not help talking to the great-granddaughter of the Generalissimo. We went to Anna in the late afternoon - by taxi. From the Keys to the "twenty" - this is the name of the military town in which she lives - 5-10 minutes of travel.

On the way we talked to the driver...

- Anka, Vovka's wife - Stalin's great-granddaughter ?! Yes, you are joking! - the taxi driver did not believe us at first. - I knew, of course, that Stalin's granddaughter lives with us, everyone knows about her, but that Anka is a great-granddaughter. Didn't even realize...

“They have a good family,” the guy continues after a short pause. - Vova is a military man... He wrote dozens of songs about Kamchatka. Many of us know and love them ...

We find Anna right at the entrance - the Gorshenin family lives in a five-story building, in the center of the town.
This is where the Gorshenins' apartment is located.

website: - Hello, we are journalists from Petropavlovsk ...

Anna Gorshenina: - Girl, this is a bad idea, - Anna does not let me finish. - Journalists wrote so much dirt about us that I don’t want to say anything ... Why is this? Standard questions, standard answers. Tired...

website:- We will not ask personal questions - we promise.

A.G.:– And then what to talk about?

website:- About the life of a young family in a military settlement ...

A.G.:- ... I won’t let you into the house, I have a small child, - the girl seems to agree.

website:Let's go to a cafe for a cup of tea?

A.G.:- No, girl, it's not worth it. I don't have much time, I'm in a hurry...

Further arguments of success also do not bring - Anna flatly refuses to communicate ...

About Anya, as well as about her mother, the media wrote more than once. Some journalists claimed, they say, “Stalin” buried herself in the Kamchatka wilderness.

However, the unfortunate and "buried" great-granddaughter of Joseph Vissarionovich does not look at all. Before speaking with Anya, we managed to examine her: a young, pretty, well-groomed woman - happy, smiling and contented with life.
Short conversation with Anna Gorshenina

During our short conversation, a girl of 8-10 years old approached Anna - Vika - the eldest child in the Gorshenin family. The girl looks like her mother and grandmother. And recently, Anya gave birth to a boy ...

Don't need another

Ekaterina Zhdanova, they say, rarely communicates with her grandchildren. Anya used to bring Vika to her grandmother, but now they rarely come here. Some accuse Gorshenina that, they say, she does not take good care of her mother. But it's not for us to judge...

- You know, be that as it may, it seems to us that Katya is happy in her own way, people who know her share. - It is a pity, of course, that her fate was so difficult. But she does not need Moscow luxury, power and money. Here, in the Keys, she found her home, her happiness, albeit difficult. Here stands "her" volcano station. Next to her daughter and grandchildren. She doesn't seem to need anything else...

Photo by Natalia Panina and Evgenia Ignatsova