Speaker 1: Here's the story that should have happened. Spent Lana alle
Speaker 1: Lujeva flees the Soviet Union memoir and toe launches a
Speaker 1: mad cap multi country defection, negotiates a record breaking book
Speaker 1: deal that gets her to America, and arrives with fanfair
Speaker 1: at JFK. Triumphant music plays, everybody cheers, and we fade
Speaker 1: to black credits roll. But I hate to break it
Speaker 1: to you. This happiness is not going to last, and
Speaker 1: the chaotic journey that follows her triumph and arrival is
Speaker 1: the one we're gonna go on. Just a few days
Speaker 1: after landing speed, Lana gives a press conference at the
Speaker 1: Plaza Hotel, with four hundred reporters crammed into the chandeliered
Speaker 1: colonnaded terrace room, eager to learn every detail of her
Speaker 1: wild defection. It needs the longest explanation, and I hope
Speaker 1: you will read my book this autumn and many things
Speaker 1: you will find there. My only plan is to leave
Speaker 1: without any political activities here and to do my work,
Speaker 1: which is writing, which I am happy finally to be
Speaker 1: able to do peace quiet writing well. St that Lana
Speaker 1: finally get the life she's been yearning for, or will
Speaker 1: she be tormented endlessly by an American media that turns
Speaker 1: against her, by the silence of her children who she
Speaker 1: left behind, and by the rejection of a new lover,
Speaker 1: which leaves her devastated beyond belief, such that this mild mannered,
Speaker 1: middle aged woman ends up standing outside in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, in the middle of New Jersey, bashing
Speaker 1: her fist through a window, shattering the glass and screaming
Speaker 1: at the top of her lungs covered in blood. My
Speaker 1: name is Dan Katrocer, and this is spent Lana. Sped Lana.
Speaker 1: You wake up in the morning, you live your day,
Speaker 1: and then you do it tomorrow, and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and over again, and over and over again. Act one,
Speaker 1: lost in translation. After the high of her insane escape
Speaker 1: wears off, sped Lana is left to grapple with a
Speaker 1: stark new reality. She's a former princess in a new country,
Speaker 1: on her own for the first time in her life,
Speaker 1: without her friends and most painfully, without her children. They
Speaker 1: knew nothing about my plans. We lived very good life.
Speaker 1: We were attached to each other. It was quite difficult
Speaker 1: for me to decide to leave them. I hope that
Speaker 1: they will understand me spent. Lana writes to her one
Speaker 1: year old son Joseph and sixteen year old daughter Yakatarina.
Speaker 1: She desperately hopes they'll understand why she had to leave.
Speaker 1: After she's landed in America, Joseph sends back a letter
Speaker 1: that essentially says funck off, or as he puts it,
Speaker 1: I hope from now on we shall be allowed to
Speaker 1: arrange our own lives ourselves. Sorry, if I sound like
Speaker 1: a Soviet lesbian, look I get it. If my mother
Speaker 1: fled the uss Are and left me and my sister behind,
Speaker 1: I'd say, Diane, what the hell were you doing in Russia?
Speaker 1: And I have a sister. But what must that have
Speaker 1: felt like to have your own children disown you, even
Speaker 1: if you're the one who left them? Making matters worse
Speaker 1: back in Russia. The kgbc's as personal items from St.
Speaker 1: Lana's apartment. Heavily surveils her closest friends and pushes her
Speaker 1: children to publicly denounce her. She is inadvertently hurting the
Speaker 1: people she loves. Most things in America aren't going much
Speaker 1: better speed Lana signing documents and publishing contracts. She doesn't
Speaker 1: understand she's told she can't work with her translator of
Speaker 1: choice because she might end up in bed with him.
Speaker 1: Here she is talking with biographer Meryl Seacrest on the
Speaker 1: world's tiniest microphone. It is part of her psychic imbalance
Speaker 1: that after every man and so, I mean that is
Speaker 1: very but it's would you want to insult it? Oh?
Speaker 1: I was? I was madly hill, spent Lana begrudgingly agrees
Speaker 1: to work with her publisher's translator of choice, an American
Speaker 1: named Priscilla Johnson McMillan. Spent Lana doesn't yet have a
Speaker 1: permanent place to stay, so they can live and work
Speaker 1: together for a few weeks at Priscilla's father's house on
Speaker 1: Long Island. So who is Priscilla Johnson McMillan. Well, she's
Speaker 1: an American journalist, translator, and historian who spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time covering Soviet politics, and according to The New
Speaker 1: York Times, she is also the only known person to
Speaker 1: have a quote conversed extensively with both JFK and his assassin,
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald. Seems like a pretty cool person, right,
Speaker 1: I bet spent Lana had a great time with her.
Speaker 1: Stupid woman who was my fain in the neck? Priscilla Johnson.
Speaker 1: Priscilla Johnson, who was not qualified. I say, I've heard
Speaker 1: that still in speent Lana's time together wasn't exactly peach.
Speaker 1: So wouldn't it be cool if I spoke to Priscilla
Speaker 1: to paint a picture of the time they spent translating
Speaker 1: spent Lana's book. Wouldn't it be fabulous for me as
Speaker 1: a writer to get insight from another writer's process of
Speaker 1: editing and translating my protagonista, especially if they sparred well.
Speaker 1: I called Priscilla to ask her to be in my podcast.
Speaker 1: As a playwright who had never done anything like this,
Speaker 1: I was incredibly nervous when she picked up. I hadn't
Speaker 1: hit record yet, and she asked if I was a woman.
Speaker 1: I am a man, and I have to tell you, Um,
Speaker 1: I have a very high voice. Um, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: at all. Well, we spoke pleasantries for a while and
Speaker 1: she agreed to be interviewed. But I didn't want to
Speaker 1: dive in just yet. She really is a worthy subject
Speaker 1: and uh, I know you'll do it justice. Well, they
Speaker 1: you so much, and I look forward to our next conversation.
Speaker 1: I really do. When we get to talking about spet Lana,
Speaker 1: I get nervous. I talk about some far off distant
Speaker 1: time when we'd actually get into all the nitty gritty details.
Speaker 1: And to what extent she just propel catapulted. I don't
Speaker 1: know the word. Oh my god, Priscilla, I am so
Speaker 1: excited to interview you. You have no idea. You have
Speaker 1: no idea. So in summary, if you, like me, are
Speaker 1: actually afraid of podcasting, just tell your sources to save
Speaker 1: it for the formal interview. Yeah. So worse, we're confirming
Speaker 1: or in the process of confirming a time. She is.
Speaker 1: So there. I was with hours of phone calls and
Speaker 1: dozens of scheduling emails and nothing really to show for it.
Speaker 1: But I knew the next time we talked, Yes, the
Speaker 1: very next time, I'd finally get the goods. And then
Speaker 1: historian Priscilla McMillan died July seven, just short of her
Speaker 1: ninety third birthday. Fuck. When I heard the news, I
Speaker 1: was sitting in my apartment in Portland, Oregon. Of course,
Speaker 1: I was sad that this lovely and seemingly beloved woman
Speaker 1: I've been corresponding with for months had died, but also
Speaker 1: the overriding feeling I had at that moment was shame.
Speaker 1: I didn't get the scoop. I'm not a podcaster, I'm
Speaker 1: not a journalist, I'm no biographer. Sped Lana ultimately didn't
Speaker 1: think Priscilla was qualified to tell her story, but to
Speaker 1: be fair, I doubt I would have done a better job.
Speaker 1: I don't even speak Russian. When the translation is finished,
Speaker 1: Priscilla and sped Lana part ways. Sped Lana leaves Long
Speaker 1: Island to spend the summer on a secluded farm in
Speaker 1: western Pennsylvania, where she can try again to grasp that peaceful, quiet,
Speaker 1: writerly life. The farm is owned by George Kennon, a
Speaker 1: major American diplomat credited with being the architect of the
Speaker 1: Cold War. He was also the key fixer in getting
Speaker 1: sped Lana to the States. Speed Lana is ready to
Speaker 1: get off the map and hang out with Kennon's daughters,
Speaker 1: Grace and Joan. Unfortunately for us, these two women are
Speaker 1: one hundred percent alive. Here's Joan. She enjoyed being out
Speaker 1: in the country. She's so enjoyed not being harassed by people.
Speaker 1: Joan and spent Lana became close that summer. Joan's sister,
Speaker 1: Grace on the other hand, says she ended up tending
Speaker 1: to speed Lana's every need and resenting her for it.
Speaker 1: Of course, I had very little time to talk to
Speaker 1: speed Lana. My dream of she and I were going
Speaker 1: to have these long, wonderful I had brought a notebook.
Speaker 1: I was going to write in it every night. Well,
Speaker 1: need will say that remained empty and spent. Lana was
Speaker 1: quite a demanding I was guest. She was a vegetarian
Speaker 1: and wanted pair brandy and if she didn't get what
Speaker 1: she wanted, And much as she liked to disconnect herself
Speaker 1: from her father, she had some similarities. This is a
Speaker 1: recurring theme and part of why it finds that Lana
Speaker 1: so fascinating. She can leave people with wildly different tastes
Speaker 1: in their mouths, like a Soviet cilantro. That summer, while
Speaker 1: Grace was playing Cinderella downstairs, Speed Lana would disappear up
Speaker 1: to her bedroom the whole third floor, to herself, sweltering
Speaker 1: in the summer heat, as she worked on her writing.
Speaker 1: When she'd emerged, she and Joan would simp tea on
Speaker 1: the porch and pick vegetables in the garden, and as
Speaker 1: Jones's kids played, Speed Lana would talk about how she
Speaker 1: missed her own children terribly back in Russia. I mean,
Speaker 1: that has to be the guilt of having left your children.
Speaker 1: But at the same time she felt strongly she'd done
Speaker 1: the right thing for her. But even though she has
Speaker 1: to the Kennon Farm to privately ready her memoir for
Speaker 1: the world and grieve her kids in peace, do you
Speaker 1: think the American media leaves her alone. They do not.
Speaker 1: At one point they said she would have been committed
Speaker 1: to an insane asylum. Spet Lana learns from the press
Speaker 1: that she'd warned the diamonds of the Robanoffs. She didn't,
Speaker 1: that her father had left her riches in a Swiss
Speaker 1: bank he hadn't, that she had partaken and quote passionate
Speaker 1: affairs with orgies never happened. The KGB gives stet Lana
Speaker 1: the nickname of Kukushka, meaning cuckoo bird, and Soviet Premier
Speaker 1: Alexei Kosekin declares her an enemy of the state at
Speaker 1: a u N press conference in New York. Hallelujsva is
Speaker 1: a morally unstable person, and she's a sick person. This
Speaker 1: time period is incredibly unnerving for spet Lana, She's getting
Speaker 1: a nasty taste of the real world, and she needs
Speaker 1: to do something about it. One afternoon on the farm,
Speaker 1: spet Lana asks lighter fluid and goes over to the barbecue. Then,
Speaker 1: in front of a small crowd, she dramatically throws her
Speaker 1: passport onto the flames, declaring, I am burning my Soviet
Speaker 1: passport in answer to lies. Every day it seems she
Speaker 1: is shedding more and more of her past life. Here's grace,
Speaker 1: and she put on a white dress. She twirled around
Speaker 1: in the garden with a little jar, collecting fireflies. She said,
Speaker 1: I'm free. I'm free. Free as she may be steed,
Speaker 1: Lana is not in charge of the narrative. She had
Speaker 1: wanted to be the writer of her own story, but
Speaker 1: now she's a character for others. Not only are rumors
Speaker 1: spreading that she's mentally imbalanced, but The New York Times
Speaker 1: starts serializing chapters of her forthcoming memoir with sensational headlines
Speaker 1: like how my mother killed herself and my brother dies
Speaker 1: in disc race. True, the best marketing move would be
Speaker 1: a tell all about life inside of the House of
Speaker 1: stalin suicide, murder, abuse. But that's not the books that
Speaker 1: Lana is writing. It's called twenty Letters to a Friend.
Speaker 1: It's an intimate love letter to Russia, to her childhood,
Speaker 1: the subtle growing understanding that her father was the head
Speaker 1: of a horrible state. Speed Lana had given up her
Speaker 1: children to tell the story of her family. She got
Speaker 1: her book out to the world, but so quickly she
Speaker 1: lost control. Now she's houseless, isolated and alone. And if
Speaker 1: you want to know what state that leaves her in,
Speaker 1: I can answer it for you in two words, New
Speaker 1: Jersey after the break Act too. I don't consider myself
Speaker 1: a writer. In October of nine, spent Lana grants a
Speaker 1: rare TV interview to promote the release of her book
Speaker 1: on National Education Television. You plan to settle down into
Speaker 1: the home of your own before long? Oh well maybe maybe?
Speaker 1: What about your future personally? Do you expect to continue writing?
Speaker 1: Do you have another book in mind? If you started
Speaker 1: work on another book, I didn't begin to write it,
Speaker 1: but I'm thinking about it because I still have many
Speaker 1: things to say and many things to write about. Although
Speaker 1: I don't consider myself a writer, girl, I've been there
Speaker 1: for years. I shied away from calling myself a writer
Speaker 1: when people would ask me what I did. I might
Speaker 1: say I write, but then I'd be sure to qualify
Speaker 1: it by the jobs I had that made money, bookstore clerk,
Speaker 1: children's birthday party host, professional frog storyteller. That's right, that's right,
Speaker 1: frog stroke. Do you want to know why I rolled
Speaker 1: my heart? Why I go? This existential anxiety even made
Speaker 1: its way into the play I wrote about spet Lana. Well,
Speaker 1: technically it's a play, a out a playwright writing a
Speaker 1: play about spent Lana. Here's me and my friend Cassie
Speaker 1: rehearsing that scene. I don't water rights player. So many
Speaker 1: of us ask permission to write. It took spent Lana
Speaker 1: forty one years to ask the world to call her
Speaker 1: a writer, and she still couldn't even say it herself.
Speaker 1: But still, from her book advance, she gets a bunch
Speaker 1: of money, and with that money, spent Lana decides to
Speaker 1: finally settle down in a home of her own. After
Speaker 1: bouncing around for months, she goes for a pre furnished
Speaker 1: house in Princeton, New Jersey. It's a smart choice. Princeton
Speaker 1: is its own academic enclave, reminding spent Lana of her
Speaker 1: circle of friends back in Moscow. But Princeton can also
Speaker 1: be a cold, stuffy classes place like Tucker Carlson's asshole
Speaker 1: with more bow tie. She wrote her first book in
Speaker 1: secret in Soviet Russia. It was immediate and thrilling. Now
Speaker 1: she's in the suburbs of New Jersey, free to do
Speaker 1: anything she wants. It's a new kind of writer's block.
Speaker 1: She has all the time and freedom and money that
Speaker 1: she could ask for, but how on earth to begin? Well? Friends, Luckily,
Speaker 1: there's nothing that unlocks those creative juices like fallen in love,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what happens next. The man who captures
Speaker 1: fet Lana's heart an American journalist named Louis Fisher. At
Speaker 1: seventy one, Louis Fisher is thirty years older than sveet Lana.
Speaker 1: He's written more than twenty books and rubbed elbows with
Speaker 1: everyone from Ernest temming Way to Eleanor Roosevelt to Winston Churchill.
Speaker 1: During Stalin's rise, he'd lived in Russia and worked as
Speaker 1: a foreign correspondent. And when speed Lana meets him in Princeton,
Speaker 1: he's coming off the high of winning a National Book
Speaker 1: Award for the Life of Lenin. It's hardly surprising that
Speaker 1: Fisher would go after speed Lana. The man was a
Speaker 1: major Russophile, and it makes sense that speed Lana would
Speaker 1: go after Fisher. He was, to quote Ron Burgundy, a
Speaker 1: very big deal. In my humble opinion, Lewis and speed
Speaker 1: Lana's relationship is bucked up and makes me mad. My
Speaker 1: producer Alison found a bunch of speed Lana's letters to
Speaker 1: Fisher at the Princeton Archives and got a little obsessed
Speaker 1: with unpacking all of the well documented weirdness. All right, Alison,
Speaker 1: why why are you obsessed with these letters? It feels
Speaker 1: a little bit like walking into a room you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to be in, Like they're very intimate. You'll see you,
Speaker 1: We'll get into it. Spent Lana first meets Louis Fisher
Speaker 1: at a dinner our party at the Kennon's Princeton home
Speaker 1: in the fall of nineteen sixty seven. He shows her around,
Speaker 1: takes her under his wing. He's intensely charming. It doesn't
Speaker 1: take long for spet Lana to fall for him, and
Speaker 1: within a few months things become pretty and dense. And
Speaker 1: maybe we should start by just talking about the day
Speaker 1: that everything changes, the day of Martin Luther King Jr's
Speaker 1: This fassination April four, at the height of the Civil
Speaker 1: rights movement. The Nobel Prize winning preacher was standing on
Speaker 1: his hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was struck
Speaker 1: by a bullet and murdered. It was the kind of
Speaker 1: harrowing and tragic event that was violent and political and
Speaker 1: deeply personal for so many, including spet Lana. And there
Speaker 1: is a memorial in the Princeton Chapel. Louis Fisher takes
Speaker 1: that Lana, and she writes how these big traumatic events
Speaker 1: in life have the capacity to bondas forever in these
Speaker 1: beautiful ways. She claims that it was like the union
Speaker 1: of their souls, like that was them getting married. Here's
Speaker 1: my friend Cassie again. She plays feed Lana in my
Speaker 1: play and shall read speed Lana's words in this podcast.
Speaker 1: Sitting there together, feeling together, listening to the immortal words
Speaker 1: of old and the New Testament, I had a strange feeling.
Speaker 1: It was like as if we were joined together as
Speaker 1: never before. We were blessed in the chapel that day
Speaker 1: by the priest Martin Luther King. It was our waiting,
Speaker 1: the union of two souls to be always together, to
Speaker 1: do only good to each other. Unfortunately, Louis Fisher does
Speaker 1: not share it spelt Laana's intense affection. And I should
Speaker 1: also mention Fisher had written a biography called The Life
Speaker 1: and Death of Stalin, and now he's writing a book
Speaker 1: about Soviet foreign relations. So is he actually interested in
Speaker 1: speed Lana Alujeva or is he just using her speed?
Speaker 1: Lana doesn't see the red blacks. She is swept up
Speaker 1: in Louis Fisher's intellectual charm. What's more, he gives her
Speaker 1: encouragement and validation as a writer. You have a long,
Speaker 1: strong habit of writing for perps forty years or so.
Speaker 1: That is as long as my whole life. I need help.
Speaker 1: Your presence, even a silent one, these a great thing.
Speaker 1: It helps in so many ways and so much. She
Speaker 1: sees him as this mentor figure at this kind of
Speaker 1: pivotal point in her career as a writer, and she
Speaker 1: asks him for help. So she's really staking her claim
Speaker 1: in two spots. She wants the boyfriend and she wants
Speaker 1: the mentor. I know enough about set Lana to know
Speaker 1: that that's not going to work out for her, because
Speaker 1: she's been in this place looking for this combination of
Speaker 1: affection and validation before and it didn't end well. Flashback Moscow.
Speaker 1: Sixteen year old spet Lana was at a party in
Speaker 1: the Kremlin when a successful thirty eight year old filmmaker
Speaker 1: named Alexei Kapler asked her to dance. I wanted to
Speaker 1: put my head on his shoulder and quietly close my eyes.
Speaker 1: That evening we reached out to each other. We were
Speaker 1: no longer strangers but friends, and thus began a covert,
Speaker 1: chased affair between a schoolgirl and a much older artist,
Speaker 1: exchanging forbidden books and movies, sharing their pain and loneliness,
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it. Kapler was set
Speaker 1: Laana's first great love or her first great predator. Either way,
Speaker 1: his impact on her was profound. He shaped my mind
Speaker 1: as my father knew that man has stolen. He even
Speaker 1: told me, I think you can write. In the end,
Speaker 1: the newspapers got wind of their secret relationship, and Stalin
Speaker 1: was apoplectic. For the first time ever, he smacked his
Speaker 1: darling little sparrow. He called her a whore and a fool.
Speaker 1: Kapler was sent to the Siberian Gulag and spent. Lana
Speaker 1: was alone, ashamed and destroyed. So this was spent Lana's
Speaker 1: formative early romance, one that surely colored her later relationships.
Speaker 1: She seems to always find these types and fall for
Speaker 1: them too fast. Brilliant older guys who encouraged her to
Speaker 1: find her voice, but have their own agenda, and that
Speaker 1: was certainly the case with Louis Fisher. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know more about set Lana and Louis Fisher's relationship from
Speaker 1: someone who'd seen it, so we tracked down Fisher's former assistant,
Speaker 1: a woman by the name of Deirdre who lives in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. I dialed her number and left a message.
Speaker 1: A few days later, I got this voicemail back. Hello,
Speaker 1: this is Deirdrew's returning your call about set Lana. I
Speaker 1: didn't know her very well, but she was nutty as
Speaker 1: a fruitcake, and you'd probably know from your research. Um,
Speaker 1: this will probably be a very shad, painful conversation. I
Speaker 1: hope you have time to bear with me. The whole
Speaker 1: thing was just such a mess. Deirdre was right, this
Speaker 1: whole thing was a mess. When we come back, it's
Speaker 1: going to get bloody awful. Act three A pain in
Speaker 1: the glass before I take us whitewater rafting down the
Speaker 1: river of broken hearts. I want to be clear, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you about this doomed love affair not just to gossip,
Speaker 1: but because this episode is about spent Lana fighting to
Speaker 1: manifest her long held dreams. In her pursuit of creativity
Speaker 1: and authorship. Spent Lana look to mail mentors time and
Speaker 1: again for guidance, and with the notable exception of her
Speaker 1: husband Bridges Singh, who helped her smuggle or manuscript out
Speaker 1: of Russia and into India, they always let her down.
Speaker 1: All right back to Princeton, Spent Lana is falling hard
Speaker 1: for her mentor slash lover, Louis Fisher, except that this
Speaker 1: whole time Fisher is with spent Lana. The man is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent married with children. And I can't say
Speaker 1: for sure how many other women were in the picture,
Speaker 1: but I will say that Louis Fisher seemed to collect
Speaker 1: women like I collect troll dolls. In the nineties. I
Speaker 1: had one dressed as a wizard. Here's Allison again, talking
Speaker 1: about some of Fisher's raunchiest love letters. There's one letter
Speaker 1: on Kama Sutra letterhead. One of my favorites is actually
Speaker 1: quite elegant. I think the woman, and she says, come
Speaker 1: over one afternoon and tell me how horrible you are.
Speaker 1: Sometimes so Louis is evidently prolific, and while it seems
Speaker 1: like everyone involved is clear eyed about what's going on,
Speaker 1: it also seems like spet Lana really believes they have
Speaker 1: something deeper, something unique in their own You do not me,
Speaker 1: they mistress, forgive my vulgar words. Neither I ever looked
Speaker 1: to find a lover. Were both need something else, warmth, friendship, understanding.
Speaker 1: But as Fisher pulls away, spet Lana's letters get desperate, pleading.
Speaker 1: She does don't want to see him. Wait, never mind,
Speaker 1: she does, She's sorry, Actually no, she's not, caps lock,
Speaker 1: exclamation points, chaotic scribbles in the margins. At one point,
Speaker 1: things get so bad that spent Lana rights she can't
Speaker 1: sleep without tranquilizers. All of this could lead some to
Speaker 1: think that this is an unstable person, but spent Lana's
Speaker 1: also living an unstable life. She's trying to make a
Speaker 1: home as quickly as she can, desperate for anything that
Speaker 1: would resemble a family. So maybe when her relationship falls apart,
Speaker 1: it would make sense that she'd be well, a little senseless.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of character I'm starting to understand, the
Speaker 1: kind I want to write or rewrite because I'm undraft
Speaker 1: like two and the play is supposed to go up
Speaker 1: soon by the fall of night, things are tents. According
Speaker 1: to Dear Droll. One evening, it all comes to a
Speaker 1: head at Fisher's house. I was over at Mr Fisher's
Speaker 1: house and it was kind enough to let me use
Speaker 1: his bath tub. I hate showers, and it was a
Speaker 1: big treat for me to be able to use the bathtub.
Speaker 1: So sped Lana shows up to retrieve her letters and
Speaker 1: other belongings, and she absolutely loses it, knocking and storming
Speaker 1: on the door with sed Laana hysteric siscure. She wanted
Speaker 1: the present's fact that she gave him. Apparently he tried
Speaker 1: to bring it off with her, and she bust this
Speaker 1: the door in the screen and Mr Fisher called the cops,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't able to do much. I was in
Speaker 1: the bathtub. Sped Lana had pounded on the front door
Speaker 1: and then circled round the back and bashed in a
Speaker 1: glass window. Her hands were covered in blood and the
Speaker 1: cops came. The neighbors to call the cops. Great dog
Speaker 1: in the station and booked her. And the whole thing
Speaker 1: was just you know what, this woman could have his
Speaker 1: duryod we buckets and the job of a cleanic I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought, britt she was just so much. Talking with
Speaker 1: Deardro was both exhilarating and uncomfortable. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: all about set Lana's relationship with Fisher, and I think
Speaker 1: I really got there. I listened to dear Drew as
Speaker 1: she recounted this low point in set Lana's life. I
Speaker 1: got the story. I felt like a real podcaster. I
Speaker 1: felt proud, and now I feel guilty because it's easy
Speaker 1: to paint set Lana as the fool her father once
Speaker 1: accused her of being, because if you just took a
Speaker 1: snapshot out of that moment sixty years ago, you'd find
Speaker 1: a crazed Russian woman stammering, screaming at Louis Fisher, the
Speaker 1: man who fucked her and then fucked her over. Maybe
Speaker 1: he's feed Lana's rage is more than just for Fisher.
Speaker 1: Maybe it comes from a lifetime of oppression, suppression, and betrayal.
Speaker 1: Maybe when she bashed her fist through the window, it
Speaker 1: was meant for all the people who encouraged her, who
Speaker 1: helped her find her voice, and then violated her at
Speaker 1: the same time. It's a cycle she seems to be
Speaker 1: trapped in. But what I love about spet Lana, and
Speaker 1: what I hope you'll love about her too, is that
Speaker 1: she still seems to have the optimism, the openness, the
Speaker 1: resilience to do it all over again. And despite everything,
Speaker 1: she still describes these years as her happiest ones in America.
Speaker 1: In the fall of nineteen sixte spent Lana publishes her
Speaker 1: second book, only one year about her defection to an arca.
Speaker 1: It's a major accomplishment, the first book she set out
Speaker 1: to write with the intent to publish, the first book
Speaker 1: to assert that she spent Lana is just as interesting
Speaker 1: as her much beguiled father. She might be a character
Speaker 1: in someone else's story, but damn it, she can also
Speaker 1: write her own. She's getting what she came here for.
Speaker 1: The world feels big and exciting. It's beckoning her no literally.
Speaker 1: You see. While most of her fan mail was from normal,
Speaker 1: ordinary Americans who were moved by the defecting daughter, there
Speaker 1: was one admirer who was far from ordinary. It started
Speaker 1: with one letter, then another, then another, then telegrams and
Speaker 1: gifts and phone calls, all coming from a very strange,
Speaker 1: very peculiar, very mysterious woman from the other side of
Speaker 1: the country, a place full of wonder and majesty, a
Speaker 1: place I like to call Scottsdale, Arizona, jess Hand. She
Speaker 1: was calling me six months. I was course first by her.
Speaker 1: I was in Princeton, and she was invitingly an invited
Speaker 1: for six months. Finally chicolled on the telephone and I
Speaker 1: heard her voice. We are all waiting for here on
Speaker 1: the next episode of spent Lata sped Lata, sped Laana.
Speaker 1: Sped Lana is a production of I Heard Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the documentary group I'm Your Host Dan Controcer. The show
Speaker 1: was written and produced by me Adam Weber, Alison Joy,
Speaker 1: and Katherine Isaac. We also serve as executive producers at
Speaker 1: the documentary group. Our executive producer is Job Silhouettes, with
Speaker 1: production oversight by Stacy Cleeker and additional support from Tom
Speaker 1: Yellen and Gabrielle Tennenbaum. Our I Heart team is supervising
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram and executive producer Maya Howard. Editing assistants
Speaker 1: for producers Christina Loranger and Joey Patt. Original music by
Speaker 1: Ellen Isakov. Production counsel by Slaus eck House, Dasty Haynes Locko,
Speaker 1: Clearance counsel by Ballard Spar, Back checking assistance by Megan Trout,
Speaker 1: Research assistants by min J. Kim. Special thanks to my
Speaker 1: husband Jordan's Siegel. Excerpts from Svetlana Aloujeva's book Twenty Letters
Speaker 1: to a Friend are provided by Chris Evans and performed
Speaker 1: by Cassie Greer