Speaker 1: A warning before we start. This episode includes discussions of suicide.
Speaker 1: In one of my conversations with Svetlana's daughter, there was
Speaker 1: one detail she shared about her mother that really stuck
Speaker 1: with me. Olga had spent her childhood living alongside, living
Speaker 1: inside her mother's trauma, and after many moves and revelations
Speaker 1: and heartbreaks, that trauma was something the two of them shared.
Speaker 1: But Svetlana was resilient, and she wanted to teach her
Speaker 1: daughter resilience. Two. My mother would make me recite the
Speaker 1: story of Scheherazade to myself as a means of telling
Speaker 1: myself that things could be so much worse. The story
Speaker 1: of Scheherazade comes from the classic tale One thousand and
Speaker 1: one Nights. As the story goes, a Persian sultan, driven
Speaker 1: into a jealous rage by his unfaithful wife, would marry
Speaker 1: a verse gin every night and behead her in the morning.
Speaker 1: When the beautiful and clever Shahrazade weds the monarch, she
Speaker 1: staves off death by telling him enchanting stories Aladdin Ali
Speaker 1: Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sindbad the Sailor. But each
Speaker 1: night she stops the story before getting to the end.
Speaker 1: If the Sultan wanted to hear the rest. He'd have
Speaker 1: to spare her life until the next night, and the next,
Speaker 1: and the next, and after one thousand and one nights
Speaker 1: of bedtime story blue Balls. The Sultan, who'd fallen head
Speaker 1: over heels for Shahrazad, spares her life forever. Ah, love,
Speaker 1: I could be kidnapped by a king and having to
Speaker 1: be telling him stories to keep myself alive, you know,
Speaker 1: the never ending story to keep myself alive, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing like we should be so lucky. Of all
Speaker 1: the sagas of survival that' stet Lana could have compelled
Speaker 1: her daughter to recite, she chose Shahrazade, a woman trapped
Speaker 1: by a tyrant, A woman whose power, whose very survival
Speaker 1: was rooted in her ability to tell stories of Stalin's children.
Speaker 1: His eldest son was killed in war at thirty six.
Speaker 1: His younger son drank himself to death by forty, but
Speaker 1: Svetlana lived to eighty five. She lived by telling her story.
Speaker 1: Storytelling was her route to freedom, her ticket to America,
Speaker 1: to financial independence, a means to gain control over and
Speaker 1: make sense of her messy life. So how does that
Speaker 1: Lana's story end? Did she ultimately find what she was
Speaker 1: looking for. Did she ever really break free of her
Speaker 1: family history, of the cycles that haunted her? Can any
Speaker 1: of us? I'm Dan Katroser and this is the last
Speaker 1: step episoda of sted Lana Steed Lana. You wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning, you live your day, and then you
Speaker 1: do it tomorrow and over and over again, and over
Speaker 1: again and over again. Act one. I did it my way.
Speaker 1: Sped Lana had spent the last few years trying to
Speaker 1: reconnect with her family, with her roots, and find a
Speaker 1: place that felt like home. Now she found herself back
Speaker 1: to square one in Wisconsin, or more like square eight.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not one for numbers. Here's Rosemary,
Speaker 1: you know it's It's a story that is unbelievably structured
Speaker 1: because everything echoes every thing else. Spent Lana is back
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin again. Olga is back at boarding school in
Speaker 1: England again. Spent Lana's two Russian children are lost to
Speaker 1: her again, and now she's alone in a hunting lodge
Speaker 1: in the woods that she bought for cheap. Some newspapers
Speaker 1: report that she's got fifteen hundred dollars to her name,
Speaker 1: and when she reaches out to friends to ask for money,
Speaker 1: a very normal communist thing to do when you need help.
Speaker 1: Her American capitalist friends are embarrassed for her, and the
Speaker 1: press has a field day. I'm looking at this one
Speaker 1: clipping now where Spet's wearing eighties wire frame aviator glasses
Speaker 1: with the headline Stalin's sad daughter has to beg Jesus
Speaker 1: in the past, when speed Lana's been this confused, down
Speaker 1: and out, overexposed, underappreciated, She's fallen back on her writing.
Speaker 1: She's reclaimed her voice and she got rich doing it,
Speaker 1: so she tries again. Steed Lana writes another book, a
Speaker 1: memoir called A Book for Granddaughters about her time back
Speaker 1: in Russia, and if you recall, stet Lana had also
Speaker 1: written a book while living in England, a memoir called
Speaker 1: The Faraway Music about her time it's Holly Esen. So
Speaker 1: she's got these two books, two books that I love
Speaker 1: so much. We built this podcast around the stories they contain,
Speaker 1: and yet no one gives a shit about them because
Speaker 1: they aren't about her father. The only interest in Svetlana
Speaker 1: was that she was Stalin's daughter, so she wasn't talking
Speaker 1: about Stalin. They weren't interested, So she decides she needs
Speaker 1: help from someone with a bit more agency, and who
Speaker 1: might have more agency why an agent, perhaps Steed. Lana
Speaker 1: gets connected with Helen Brand, a famous literary agent to
Speaker 1: such icons as Maya Angelou and fran Leibowitz. And in
Speaker 1: the archive at Amorous College which houses feed Lana and
Speaker 1: Helen's letters, I was stunned by the shall we say,
Speaker 1: emotionally charged correspondence between these two women. I'm going to
Speaker 1: force my mic shy producers to read these letters for me.
Speaker 1: The relationship with Helen Brand begins cordially and sweetly. Here's Helen.
Speaker 1: You write beautifully about nature, about faith, about people. I
Speaker 1: love your descriptions. This is not a political book, but
Speaker 1: a hunting memoir. You can feel speed. Lana's surprised, refreshed,
Speaker 1: ready to engage deeply with a collaborator and a champion.
Speaker 1: For a long time, I have not heard anyone praising
Speaker 1: my work and good things owas make me pray. Helen's
Speaker 1: going to make set the talk of the town again.
Speaker 1: She has a game plan. She has connections. She's going
Speaker 1: to use them. All have to find the best editor
Speaker 1: and the best publisher. She goes on to list editors
Speaker 1: she knows at Random House, Harper and Rogue, nah FSG
Speaker 1: a double day. Spent Lana is thrilled. She sees the
Speaker 1: whole world opening up to her again. She even makes
Speaker 1: plans to buy a new house with what she is
Speaker 1: sure will be a nice advance. This is all going
Speaker 1: so well, so smoothly. The trajectory is up, up, up,
Speaker 1: But what goes up, according to science, must inevitably come down.
Speaker 1: Early on, editors start passing. Here's W. W. Norton and co.
Speaker 1: The past, which propelled spent Lana into the limelight seems
Speaker 1: so distant and really used up that it doesn't resonate now. Basically,
Speaker 1: according to this guy, Spent Lana's old news. Then there's
Speaker 1: the actual critique of her manuscripts. He regretfully calls them
Speaker 1: one damned thing. After another Random House agrees set Lana
Speaker 1: has to be massively edited. But it's not just her
Speaker 1: story that's turning publishers away. It's well her I also
Speaker 1: know too much about how difficult she can be, how paranoid. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's not fun. But Helen, good old Helen is not
Speaker 1: willing to give up on her client just yet. She's
Speaker 1: going to wrap up their critiques into one big constructive
Speaker 1: burrito and hope that's Svetlana will bite. Here's the thought.
Speaker 1: Set Lana ought to condense all four of her memoirs
Speaker 1: into one big, best selling autobiography. Yum is that Soviet
Speaker 1: cilantro I taste. I think a book titled set Lana
Speaker 1: a Life would sell and sell and sell. Now, before
Speaker 1: we get to set Lana's response to this, I want
Speaker 1: to say that I understand the suggestion, yet I also
Speaker 1: totally understand the feeling of having written something you're really
Speaker 1: proud of and the person who is supposed to be
Speaker 1: your advocate tells you that's great, But why don't you
Speaker 1: write it completely differently? This is the reason I'm bald.
Speaker 1: Each follicle of hair I've lost is from someone not
Speaker 1: clapping at my work. But I've never had the ovaries
Speaker 1: to do what sveet Lana does next, and that is
Speaker 1: to clap back. The whole notion about condensing my whole
Speaker 1: body of working one sounds like eskuing a composer to
Speaker 1: write one big symphony. Spetlana is downright insulted, and as
Speaker 1: this conflict between agent and client is brewing, spet Lana
Speaker 1: puts a down payment on a house with money from
Speaker 1: an advance that was not advanced. PS. I am still
Speaker 1: not quite out of a met so I have gotten
Speaker 1: into thanks to your promises, that I quote can buy
Speaker 1: a house. She sends Helen Brand and her agency a
Speaker 1: legal bill for five hundred and ninety two dollars and
Speaker 1: thirty six cents. Would your office reimburse me? I think
Speaker 1: it should. Helen is astounded by this quote soap opera.
Speaker 1: She believed in speed Lana's extraordinary story and was only
Speaker 1: trying to help, but it blew up in her face.
Speaker 1: When Spetlana first came to America in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: she did so on a work visa with a one
Speaker 1: point five million dollar book deal. If you recall, she
Speaker 1: was getting so much mail from her readers, America loved her.
Speaker 1: Listen to how young and hopeful she sounds. Have you
Speaker 1: any idea how many letters you've received? Well? I think
Speaker 1: I have received hundreds and hundreds of them. Have you
Speaker 1: read most of them? Oh? Yes, of course, And I
Speaker 1: keep most of them because they are really very nice
Speaker 1: and very kind and warm letters. Now Svetlana is not
Speaker 1: receiving letters from adoring readers. She's getting rejection after rejection,
Speaker 1: and rejection just sucks, especially when it's your life story
Speaker 1: that people are rejecting. That's personal, and for someone so
Speaker 1: studied in politics, it's frustrating to me that spet Lana
Speaker 1: could not have been less diplomatic in how she received
Speaker 1: constructive feedback. She was alienating her allies. But maybe she
Speaker 1: was just over it. Maybe after everyone twisting her intentions,
Speaker 1: her words, her story, maybe after East and West had
Speaker 1: yanked her around, Maybe after being robbed of her money
Speaker 1: at Taliessin and emptied of her heart in Russia, maybe
Speaker 1: she was just like, fuck all, y'all. The problem is
Speaker 1: all those people who had fuck spet Lana over in
Speaker 1: the past had seduced her because they want did something
Speaker 1: from her. Helen Brand is just an agent who set
Speaker 1: Lana's never met in person and who is merely trying
Speaker 1: to help. Yet set Lana is so over people's input
Speaker 1: on her life story that she sees a suggestion as
Speaker 1: an attack, critique as a betrayal. The final letter from
Speaker 1: helen Brand, which included her returning all of set Lana's manuscripts,
Speaker 1: was dated November ninth, nineteen eighty nine, the fifty seventh
Speaker 1: anniversary to the day of her mother's death, the exact
Speaker 1: day the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The world was
Speaker 1: changing rapidly. Could set Lana keep up more? After the
Speaker 1: Break Act too? The Last Laugh? June nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: A dreary day in London. After all the rejection in America,
Speaker 1: Svetlana has returned to Great Britain once again, and on
Speaker 1: this overcast morning, Svetlana gets herself dressed and takes the
Speaker 1: tube to London Bridge. When she gets off the train,
Speaker 1: it's raining. She has her umbrella, but it keeps flying
Speaker 1: up and turning inside out. When she reaches the bridge,
Speaker 1: she finds it deserted, nobody cloud and the water was
Speaker 1: muddy and brown and dreadful. She's laughing in this interview,
Speaker 1: recorded a few years after the fact, but this is
Speaker 1: a grim moment, the lowest low. She Shimmi's up onto
Speaker 1: the rail, struggling in her pencil skirt. There was nothing
Speaker 1: particularly wrong with my wife on that day, but on
Speaker 1: this particular day I thought about it in the very
Speaker 1: dark terms. What am I My book farm has published,
Speaker 1: like Sienies Lucky escape from that yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: very dark, Queny holds. At this time, Stetlana is living
Speaker 1: in a charity hostel in what the Evening Standard dubs
Speaker 1: the shabby end of town, a group home where the
Speaker 1: bathroom is shared and residents cook their meals communally. She
Speaker 1: just lost a couple of close friends, including fame novelist
Speaker 1: Jersey Kazinski, who died the month before by suicide. Stetlana
Speaker 1: is reminded of her own mother's suicide, and she thinks,
Speaker 1: if Jersey has nothing to live for with his literary fame,
Speaker 1: then what chance does she have. As she stands there
Speaker 1: on the edge of the bridge, perhaps she feels ready
Speaker 1: to join her friends her mother in what she maybe
Speaker 1: imagines as a more peaceful place. But as she's struggling
Speaker 1: in her pencil skirt, somebody gretnam that they at be
Speaker 1: done and pulled me back. Steed Lana is saved by
Speaker 1: a man she thinks must be an angel, and as
Speaker 1: he pulls her back to safety, speed Lana struggling in
Speaker 1: his grasp, he shouts, oh, these godless people as I
Speaker 1: was fighting are off. I am nobody us and she
Speaker 1: was holding me there. The police take her home and
Speaker 1: make her promise not to do it again. As far
Speaker 1: as suicide attempts go, speed Lana relays this one with
Speaker 1: a surprising amount of irony and humor. And that's what
Speaker 1: I love so much about her. It's so characteristically set
Speaker 1: to be able to look back at her most vulnerable moment,
Speaker 1: a moment when she was willing to actually end at all,
Speaker 1: and well, laugh. Of course, now I think they last
Speaker 1: next day, not maybe last next day. Maybe yah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That laughter. It was something she'd been taught by many
Speaker 1: people in her life. It was her antidote to tragedy.
Speaker 1: It's a saving grace, yes, but it was always that.
Speaker 1: It was always on the version you could lay, you
Speaker 1: could laugh, and you could, but the last thing would
Speaker 1: be laugh. You could cry, you could laugh, but the
Speaker 1: last thing would be laugh. You can hear it, can't you?
Speaker 1: In her laughter, spet Lana was able to take a
Speaker 1: step back from the pain. In nineteen ninety seven, speed Lana,
Speaker 1: now seventy one, returns to Wisconsin for the last time
Speaker 1: to live with her twenty six year old daughter, and
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life she'll do something she's
Speaker 1: never done. She'll stay put. Mother and daughter wouldn't live
Speaker 1: together long, but Olga would always be her closest friend,
Speaker 1: her confidant, her protector, and with help from those who
Speaker 1: loved and cared for her, set Lana would get to
Speaker 1: live out the rest of her days somewhat anonymously. I
Speaker 1: think many people did not even realize who she was.
Speaker 1: I mean, she was private. We called her Lana. That's
Speaker 1: Bridget Roberts, who works at the community library in downtown
Speaker 1: Spring Green. After we visited Taliessen, my producers and I
Speaker 1: wandered around, hoping to get a glimpse of what spet
Speaker 1: Lana's day to day might have looked like. When we
Speaker 1: spoke to Bridget, who was just as friendly, chipper and
Speaker 1: hushed as a Midwestern library administrator should be, we asked
Speaker 1: her if she knew spet Lana. Yes, she came in
Speaker 1: on this library many times. Oh, I definitely knew her,
Speaker 1: and she would come in. She loved to sit over
Speaker 1: in the reading area and just read books. I took
Speaker 1: her home a few times because I said, Lana, you
Speaker 1: can't walk all the way home, you know, with it.
Speaker 1: But a very very sweet lady and really private. I
Speaker 1: love that image of spent Lana Aluyeva or I guess
Speaker 1: Lana Peters a short, quiet woman in our seventies, spending
Speaker 1: her days in the library, reading and reading and reading
Speaker 1: until closing time. She's sort of an older Russian Matilda,
Speaker 1: someone seemingly ordinary who was in fact extraordinary. I think
Speaker 1: she felt comfortable here and safe, and like I said,
Speaker 1: many people just knew her is Lana. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they really knew what the connection was, but I
Speaker 1: think really everyone who knew that connection really respected her
Speaker 1: because she did not like the limelight or any of
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff sped. Lana had always claim she
Speaker 1: didn't want the limelight, though I'm not convinced that that
Speaker 1: was always true yet certainly by this time in her
Speaker 1: life she worked very hard to stay anonymous, so much
Speaker 1: so that even now when I meet people who knew her,
Speaker 1: they feel like it is their duty to protect her.
Speaker 1: Like when my producer Alison and I were interviewing Allen
Speaker 1: historian Kieren Murphy and uncovered her connection to set. Towards
Speaker 1: the end of our conversation, I'm just curious, since you
Speaker 1: recounted that memory of Lana, what the context was of
Speaker 1: you getting to know her. I lived above spet Lana
Speaker 1: Kieren admitted she'd been purposefully hiding this detail. She had
Speaker 1: a house with a second floor, and I lived up
Speaker 1: in that apartment. During these years, people would sometimes enquire
Speaker 1: about fet Lana's whereabouts. It was just in the air
Speaker 1: because people had heard that she was back from Europe,
Speaker 1: and so they would ask me if I knew her,
Speaker 1: if I met her. Kieren would always say, I don't
Speaker 1: know where she is right now to throw them off
Speaker 1: the scent. My joke was always like, I did not know.
Speaker 1: Was fet Lana in her living room? Was fet Lana
Speaker 1: at the library? Was Fetlana getting her mail? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Even though Karen lived in the same house as Lana,
Speaker 1: she kept a polite distance. She knew that set Lana
Speaker 1: was wary and weary of people oggling her. The first
Speaker 1: time that I met her was very sweet, but in
Speaker 1: my head, I'm going, oh my god, you're Stalin's daughter.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're Stalin's daughter. Like that's screaming in
Speaker 1: my head, you know, while I'm talking to this very
Speaker 1: nice woman, but it's overwhelming. Just what did set Lana
Speaker 1: say at one time? Like nobody can control who their
Speaker 1: parents are. And she was like, I wish my mother
Speaker 1: had married a carpenter. To her Spring Green neighbors. Launa
Speaker 1: Peters was this sweet old lady who spent her days
Speaker 1: quietly reading in the library. To her daughter, she was
Speaker 1: still the hilarious, big, complex personality that she had always
Speaker 1: been in our conversations. Her daughter told me that she
Speaker 1: and speed Lana dressed up as the Golden Girls Dorothy
Speaker 1: and Sophia Petrillo for Halloween. That sped Lana would curse
Speaker 1: in Russian at her typewriter. She was a terrible typer,
Speaker 1: yelling the Russian equivalent of motherfucker or more literally, mother
Speaker 1: raper at the keys if they got stuck. That speed
Speaker 1: Lana was always writing, always reading, always brewing some witchy
Speaker 1: old world salth that was good for aches and pains.
Speaker 1: But to the outside world, Speed Lana had become something
Speaker 1: of a legend, a fun fact. Have you heard Stalin's
Speaker 1: daughter lives in bumble Fuck, Wisconsin. Journalists, filmmakers, biographers all
Speaker 1: tried to reach out to speed Lana, but at this
Speaker 1: point in her life she felt so burned and harassed
Speaker 1: that she put up a wall. Right. My first letter
Speaker 1: heard said, Hey, an Nick, I want to write about
Speaker 1: your life she'd be run it away because she didn't
Speaker 1: want the attention. That's Nicholas Thompson. Nick is now the
Speaker 1: CEO of the Atlanta. Back in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: he was writing a book about George Kennon and reached
Speaker 1: out to spet Lana as a source. They soon became
Speaker 1: penpal's traded phone calls, and when Nick eventually visits her
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, he meets an older Spetlana, a quieter one.
Speaker 1: Her hair has gone white, she walks with a cane,
Speaker 1: and she's living in a senior citizen's home, her father's
Speaker 1: Russian English dictionary on the bookshelf. He recalls her having
Speaker 1: the welcoming energy of someone who hadn't told her story
Speaker 1: in a long time. Their conversations were long and numerous.
Speaker 1: Spetlana gifted him poignant insights about Kennon, the subject of
Speaker 1: his book, and didn't hold back from giving him personal
Speaker 1: advice either. They became friends. I feel lucky that I
Speaker 1: met her. I felt lucky that I got to talk
Speaker 1: to her. I really like I enjoyed those years a letter,
Speaker 1: not just as a writer or as a reporter Jack
Speaker 1: sometimes gone in the way, but just as a person
Speaker 1: so I was very grateful to have had her as
Speaker 1: like an older friend. Nick would eventually pen a wonderful
Speaker 1: piece in The New Yorker called My Friend Stalin's Daughter.
Speaker 1: It was one of the first pieces I ever read
Speaker 1: about her. She was an extraordinary mix of emotions and
Speaker 1: intensities and passions in a way that I found utterly compelling.
Speaker 1: Like Nick and so many others, I too have found
Speaker 1: her wildness, her daring, her thoughtfulness, her impulsiveness, all of
Speaker 1: her contradictions intoxicating. She's a cocktail I want to keep
Speaker 1: drinking forever. I don't know if the inner turmoils that
Speaker 1: Lana had experienced in her life was ever resolved, whether
Speaker 1: she had quieted down because she finally found balance, or
Speaker 1: that she had just gotten older. She still struggled with money.
Speaker 1: She's still cycled between senior homes. She never forgave her
Speaker 1: father and saw and repurposing his playbook, but still, by
Speaker 1: her daughter's account, she found some sense of peace end
Speaker 1: of laughter in her final years. By twenty eleven, speed
Speaker 1: Lana is diagnosed with colon cancer. Sensing she's at the
Speaker 1: end of her days, speed Lana pends a letter and
Speaker 1: gives it to her lawyer, and in November, of course,
Speaker 1: she passes away at the age of eighty five. This letter,
Speaker 1: written by speed Lana to her daughter, her last great story,
Speaker 1: is delivered in the aftermath of her death from beyond
Speaker 1: the grave. It's a loving letter about how she's joining
Speaker 1: her ancestors and how she's now watching from the other side.
Speaker 1: She ends it with a scribbled note saying sorry for
Speaker 1: the bad typing, alas it did not improve even from here.
Speaker 1: Whatever you want to call all her spet Lana Aluyeva,
Speaker 1: Luana Peters, you have to admit she got the last laugh. Actually,
Speaker 1: her daughter got the last laugh when she threw a
Speaker 1: party on the beach to scatter her mom's ashes into
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean, hoping no one would notice and issue
Speaker 1: her a fine. It was a fitting end laughter and tears,
Speaker 1: a group of friends in the sand drinking wine, casting
Speaker 1: stet Lana out to sea. More after the break, Act
Speaker 1: three curtains Scheherazade was able to stay alive through her storytelling.
Speaker 1: She'd cleverly chop her stories in half, finishing one and
Speaker 1: starting the next in the same night, making her bloodthirsty
Speaker 1: husband salivate. For the end of the tale, instead of
Speaker 1: the end of her life. It's in this way that
Speaker 1: Scheherazade created a kind of never ending story, And though
Speaker 1: that was certainly not spet Lana's intention, I kind of
Speaker 1: feel like she's done that for me. Each chapter of
Speaker 1: her life oddly linking to the next one in a
Speaker 1: way that makes you want to be a detective, understanding
Speaker 1: the links, piecing them all together. Why did she defect
Speaker 1: to the US, Why did she go to tally Esen,
Speaker 1: Why did she marry wes Why did it have to
Speaker 1: happen so fast? Why did she return to the USSR?
Speaker 1: Why did she come back? She writes about all of
Speaker 1: these big life moves in separate books, but she doesn't
Speaker 1: connect the dots. I don't disagree with the editor who said,
Speaker 1: it's quote one damn thing after another. So the why
Speaker 1: keeps me searching. Looking back on her eighty five years
Speaker 1: of life, it's easy to see her as a tragic figure.
Speaker 1: A New York Times obituary calls her life a quote
Speaker 1: bewildering road ending in decades of obscurity, wandering and poverty.
Speaker 1: That is so mean, you guys, And look, it's true.
Speaker 1: Everything that she had gained by defecting in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: It seems that she had lost by the end of
Speaker 1: her life. Before Roger and Harold met up with spelt Lana,
Speaker 1: they were warned by her friend how poor she was.
Speaker 1: It's the end of the month, and her welfare check
Speaker 1: will ever run out, and you know she probably will
Speaker 1: not offer you any drinks or you think to eat.
Speaker 1: So yes, by some standards, American capitalist standards twenty first century,
Speaker 1: everyone wants to be famous, standards where there are winners
Speaker 1: and losers in life. Sped Lana had lost it all.
Speaker 1: That's how I was characterizing her to Nicholas Thompson when
Speaker 1: I sat down with him, and I was blown away
Speaker 1: when he corrected me. She seemed like a great American immigrant,
Speaker 1: right like, Yeah, just came here and became something entirely new.
Speaker 1: I think. I mean she broke out of one life,
Speaker 1: created a new one, had a whole bunch of ups
Speaker 1: and downs. But I don't think of her story as
Speaker 1: a tragic one at all. It had tragic elements, but
Speaker 1: was not a tragic story. She lived a very full life.
Speaker 1: She lived a fascinating life. She lived an emotionally invigorating life.
Speaker 1: She had a fulfilled life. There were lots of upslots
Speaker 1: and downs, massive regrets, but I certainly don't think of
Speaker 1: it as a tragedy. As a writer trying to understand her,
Speaker 1: it's easy to get lost and sped Lana's life. He
Speaker 1: sped Lana. Herself got lost in it too. But Thompson
Speaker 1: is right. Sped Lana story may have tragic elements, but
Speaker 1: it's not a tragedy. At one point, she even said
Speaker 1: so herself. Sometimes, if you are interested to listen to
Speaker 1: one of the most funny stories of our time, my
Speaker 1: paradoxical life, I would be glad to tell you more.
Speaker 1: It is your saga, an irony, is the tire and
Speaker 1: the tragedy all in one. I'm glad I have survived
Speaker 1: it all, and I'm still an optimist, but I do
Speaker 1: laugh a lot at myself, and if I lose that
Speaker 1: mess of tupacity, my end will come fast. A saga,
Speaker 1: an irony, a satire, a tragedy. That was what drew
Speaker 1: me to spetlana story in the first place, the tale
Speaker 1: of a woman who did everything in her power to
Speaker 1: shuffle off the shackles of one life, only to thrust
Speaker 1: herself into the cage of another. And then to do
Speaker 1: it over and over again, each time intersecting with the
Speaker 1: most bizarre ca arcters of history. This is what made
Speaker 1: me want to write her into a play, a play
Speaker 1: that itself would be all of the things that she was,
Speaker 1: all of the things that I am. When I started
Speaker 1: the process of writing about set Lana, I knew that
Speaker 1: that was where I wanted to take the story. What
Speaker 1: I didn't expect was where the story would take me
Speaker 1: on trips to Scottsdale. Welcome to the Terminal three, a
Speaker 1: Phoenix International Airs on tours of Wisconsin. Your destination is
Speaker 1: on the left, we see. Thank you so much this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd become friends with authors Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman. Oh, Roger,
Speaker 1: you sound beautiful. I want you to read me the Bible.
Speaker 1: I'd be happy to you know that, Sodom and Gomora
Speaker 1: Parts and Sharon. The love for stet Lana with biographer
Speaker 1: Rosemary Sullivan. Your affection for Steve Lana moves me. I
Speaker 1: mean she really matters to you. Yeah, she does. I
Speaker 1: get to meet people who knew stet Lana funny, smart, interesting.
Speaker 1: She always had like a funny quip. You know, she
Speaker 1: had great stories. It's just a total pleasure to talk
Speaker 1: with her, and I'd get out of a trap that
Speaker 1: I and stet Lana and so many writers always fall into.
Speaker 1: I'd find a gang of artists who were not only
Speaker 1: my champions, but my collaborators, my comrades, Adam Webber, Alison Joy,
Speaker 1: and Catherine Isaac, the Stetlanits as I call us as.
Speaker 1: Someone pick a tone and we're all gonna harmonize. Wait no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not sound terrible. All right, Alison, you go again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this is Ultimately We've told this tale
Speaker 1: with humor. It was honestly the most reverential way I
Speaker 1: could tell it, and I hope, against hope that spet
Speaker 1: Lana would get the joke, or maybe not. The woman
Speaker 1: certainly had lots of opinions, but I wouldn't have her
Speaker 1: any other way. It's because of our fearless storytellers, our
Speaker 1: spet Lana's are Shahrazads, that we have these never ending
Speaker 1: stories to tap into. It's been more than ten years
Speaker 1: since she died, and spet Lana's life story and her
Speaker 1: writing have changed me. I'm calmer now, just kidding, I'm
Speaker 1: really not. I'm still the same messy person I always was.
Speaker 1: I just know that you can leap fearlessly into the
Speaker 1: next chapter of your life and rest assured that you'll
Speaker 1: retain all of your glorious, fabulous flaws. That, among many
Speaker 1: other things, is what her life means to me. I
Speaker 1: hope spent Lana's life has meant something to you. It
Speaker 1: would seem that she hopes so too. She closes her
Speaker 1: last book, a Book for Granddaughters, with this parting thought,
Speaker 1: The hope of this writer is that the memoirs of
Speaker 1: my generation will be appreciated by those who never knew
Speaker 1: our times. Our books will help them to understand not
Speaker 1: only another era, but different people. And granddaughters of all
Speaker 1: colors and creeds not only mine, will then find on
Speaker 1: these old fashioned pages strange and unreal situations, but also
Speaker 1: some familiar faces. So the next time you have an
Speaker 1: impulse to throw your life up into the air, blow
Speaker 1: it up, crash into a new chapter, think of spent
Speaker 1: Lana and know that, sure you just might lose everything,
Speaker 1: but you'll have one hell of a story. Let's drink
Speaker 1: to that, but not vodka. Svetlana preferred a gin and tonic.
Speaker 1: Vodka she said was for peasants. My name is Dan Katroser,
Speaker 1: and this was spet Lana spent Lana. St Lana spent
Speaker 1: Lana is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the documentary group.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Dan Katroser. The show is written and
Speaker 1: produced by me and my friends Adam Webber, Alison Joy,
Speaker 1: and Katherine Isaac. We also serve as executive producers at
Speaker 1: the documentary group. Our executive producer and all around fairy
Speaker 1: godmother is job A Silhouettes. Production oversight by Stacy Kleiger,
Speaker 1: additional support from Tom Yellen and Gabrielle Tenenbaum. Our iHeart
Speaker 1: team is supervising producer Casey Pegram and executive producer Maya Howard.
Speaker 1: Editing assistants from producers Christina Loranger and Joey pat These
Speaker 1: folks went above and beyond and were forever grateful. Original
Speaker 1: music by Elan Izakov, Your Brilliant Buddy. Production counsel by
Speaker 1: slas Ekhouse, Dasty Haynes Lockoe, Clearance counsel by Ballard Sparr
Speaker 1: Jay You're Our Hero. Fact checking assistance by Meghan Trout.
Speaker 1: Excerpts from spit Lana Alujeva's book, A Book for Granddaughters
Speaker 1: are performed by Cassie Greer. Cassie, along with Alyssa, Josh Luanne, Sean,
Speaker 1: Sherry Beth and Line Storm Playwrights, helped me develop my
Speaker 1: play and we're some of my earliest partners in crime.
Speaker 1: Thank you all. Big thanks to parents Neil and Diane
Speaker 1: for taking me on the best trip to Amherst, and
Speaker 1: my cousin Jenny and her fiance Jared for going on
Speaker 1: multiple tours of tally Esen West with me and show
Speaker 1: furring me around Arizona. I'm so glad I don't drive.
Speaker 1: And thank you to the partners of our writing and
Speaker 1: producing team who have added so much to this project emotionally,
Speaker 1: spiritually and creatively Jeff Wooker, Jonathan Willen, and Lena Vaughan. Lena,
Speaker 1: you are the one who said this story should be
Speaker 1: a podcast. So grateful for all of your support. And
Speaker 1: lastly to my husband Jordan Siegel. You've been there with
Speaker 1: me every step of the way during this project. You
Speaker 1: must be exhausted. Thank you.