MADISON, Wis. - Newly declassified documents show the FBI kept close tabs on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's only daughter after her high-profile defection to the United States in 1967.
The documents were released Monday to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act following Lana Peters' death last year at age 85 in a Wisconsin nursing home. Her defection during the Cold War embarrassed the Soviets.
When she defected, Peters was known as Svetlana Alliluyeva, but she went by Lana Peters following a 1970 marriage.
One memo dated June 2, 1967, describes a conversation an unnamed FBI source had with Mikhail Trepy- khalin, identified as second secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. Trepykhalin told him the Soviets were "very unhappy over her defection."
But an unnamed informant in another memo from that month said Soviet authorities were not disturbed by the defection because it would "further discredit Stalin's name and family."
People are also reading…
More than half of the pages released to AP were copies of newspaper articles and other media coverage of her defection.
