Nadezhda Alliluyeva

Nadezhda Sergeyevna Alliluyeva (; – 9 November 1932) was the second wife of Joseph Stalin. She was born in Baku to a friend of Stalin, a fellow revolutionary, and was raised in Saint Petersburg. Having known Stalin from a young age, she married him when she was 18, and they had two children. Alliluyeva worked as a secretary for Bolshevik leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Stalin, before enrolling at the Industrial Academy in Moscow to study synthetic fibres and become an engineer. She had health issues, which had an adverse impact on her relationship with Stalin. She also suspected he was unfaithful, which led to frequent arguments with him. On several occasions, Alliluyeva reportedly contemplated leaving Stalin, and after an argument, she fatally shot herself early in the morning of 9 November 1932. Early life Background Alliluyeva's father, Sergei Alliluyev (1866–1945), was from a peasant family in Voronezh Oblast (modern southwest Russia). He moved to the Caucasus, where he worked as an electrician for the rail depot and first became familiar with working conditions in the Russian Empire. Sergei's grandmother was Romani, a fact to which his granddaughter, Svetlana, attributed the "southern, somewhat exotic features" and "black eyes" that characterized the Alliluyevs. Sergei joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1898, and became an active member in workers' study circles; it was through these meetings he met Mikhail Kalinin, one of the chief organizers of the party in the Caucasus. Sergei had been arrested and exiled to Siberia, but by 1902 he had returned to the Caucasus. In 1904, he met Ioseb Jughashvili (later known as Joseph Stalin) while helping to move a printing machine from Baku to Tiflis. Her godfather was Avel Yenukidze who was a Georgian "Old Bolshevik" and associate of Stalin. Alliluyeva's mother, Olga Fedotenko (1877–1951), was the youngest of nine children of Evgeni Fedotenko and Magdalena Eicholz. Alliluyeva's daughter Svetlana wrote in her memoir that Evgeni had Ukrainian ancestry on his father's side, his mother was Georgian, and he grew up speaking Georgian at home. Magdalena came from a family of German settlers, and spoke German and Georgian at home. Olga's father initially wanted her to marry one of his friend's sons, but she refused to accept the arrangements and left home at 14 to live with Sergei, joining him in Tiflis.