Ekaterina Zhdanova Granddaughter of I.V. Stalin Date of Birth: 05.05.1950 Country: Russia

Biography of Ekaterina Zhdanova

Ekaterina Zhdanova was born on May 5, 1950, into the "main" family of the Soviet Union. She was the granddaughter of Joseph Stalin, with her parents being Svetlana Alliluyeva and Yuri Zhdanov, the son of one of the closest associates of the Kremlin's leader. However, being part of the "blue blood" did not protect her from tragic experiences. KATYA attended privileged schools and lived in luxurious apartments by Soviet standards, but her childhood could hardly be called happy. She was still a child when the country began a campaign to debunk the cult of her grandfather, followed by the strange death of her uncle, Vasily Stalin, and her mother's escape abroad in 1967. Ekaterina considered her mother's emigration at the age of 17 as a betrayal. Could she have predicted that ten years later she would herself flee Moscow to escape the watchful eye of the secret services, the guardianship of relatives, and the intrusive curiosity of colleagues and acquaintances? In the remote province of Kamchatka, her independence turned into seclusion, self-assertion turned into cold indifference from colleagues, and love turned into a short-lived marriage that ended in tragedy. She first came to the distant Kamchatka village of Klyuchi in 1977 as part of a geological expedition studying the Klyuchevskaya Sopka, the largest active volcano in Eurasia. In Klyuchi, she met the charming employee of the volcano station, Vsevolod Kozev, an extraordinary person who easily became the soul of any company. It was hard not to fall in love with him. The provincial Don Juan captivated the young Muscovite. After marrying Vsevolod, she did not change her famous last name. However, she gladly traded the hustle and bustle of the capital for a quiet life at the foot of the Kamchatka volcanoes. She hoped that here she would finally become not Stalin's granddaughter, but simply Ekaterina Zhdanova. She believed that her colleagues would appreciate her as a competent specialist and her husband would love her because she was an intelligent and interesting woman. Unfortunately, her dreams were not meant to come true. "Seva was actually an adventurer by nature," recalls Gennady Tezikov, a colleague who knew Kozev well. "He thought that Zhdanova would make him rich, but she didn't have a penny... Marrying Ekaterina, Kozev left his previous family - his wife and two children. His first wife taught German at the local school and was a well-known person in Klyuchi. Many turned away from Seva then, and people began to look askance at Zhdanova..."

Zhdanova's acquaintances say that his first wife had always taken care of him. Ekaterina turned out to be completely different - she was a poor housekeeper. In her childhood, as the daughter of "princess" Svetlana, she was not taught to clean, wash, or cook. How could the caregivers know what awaited her in the near future? Vsevolod did not get what he expected from the marriage and started drinking. The birth of their daughter, Anya, in 1982 only temporarily changed him. Soon, doctors diagnosed him with cirrhosis of the liver. "Seva was unrecognizable then," recalls G. Tezikov. "He was swollen all over. He felt complete emptiness in his soul. He had always been a leader, but he found himself at rock bottom." Realizing that his illness was incurable, Vsevolod fell into severe depression and shot himself with a hunting rifle in his own home in 1983... Colleagues at that time believed that Zhdanova would leave Klyuchi to be with relatives in Rostov or Moscow. However, she stayed in the village, where she had no family or close friends. She was assigned a small house where she still lives to this day.

Ekaterina Yuryevna decided to devote herself to her daughter and volcanoes. Today, Stalin's great-granddaughter, Anya, lives separately from her mother in a small apartment in a military unit located near Klyuchi, together with her husband and their five-year-old daughter, Vika. She is studying accounting at a college through distance education, while her husband serves as a warrant officer. He only found out about his connection to the descendants of the Generalissimo later, not from his wife, but from acquaintances...

Ekaterina Zhdanova continues to work as a senior researcher at the Institute of Volcanology, although, according to colleagues, she rarely appears in her office. She hardly leaves her house, does not socialize with neighbors, and reportedly despises journalists. We managed to visit her as tourists, claiming to have come to see the Kamchatka volcanoes (although later we confessed that we were journalists).

She looked unwell - a thin, exhausted woman. The only room in her small private house was cluttered with dilapidated furniture.

The hostess showed us slides of volcanoes and passionately talked about her work. When the conversation turned to her mother, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Zhdanova noticeably became agitated: "She has her own life, and I have mine. Everyone in our family works, she decided to go her own way. We offered her to return to Russia, but she refused, that's her decision." Ekaterina Yuryevna never uttered the word "mom."

When Alliluyeva visited the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, her daughter refused to meet her and only sent a letter. "In it, a completely unfamiliar adult woman, written in the handwriting I recognized from my childhood, wrote with unprecedented anger that she 'does not forgive,' will never 'forgive,' and 'does not wish to forgive.' This is how Svetlana Alliluyeva describes this message in her book 'A Book for Granddaughters.' Ekaterina Yuryevna never forgave her mother.

After our conversation with our protagonist, we lingered near her small house. "A tiny shack, no bigger than a chicken coop, where the whole family huddled in one room," these words could also be said about Zhdanova's pitiful dwelling, but they were dedicated to another house. This is how Svetlana Alliluyeva described the hut in Gori, where Joseph Stalin was born. 126 years have passed since then. Today, a small shack, on the other end of Eurasia, is where the great leader's granddaughter lives. Although Stalin himself probably imagined that his descendants would have a different fate. Unfortunately, in some mystical way, everything has come full circle.