Dean Rusk phoned President Lyndon Johnson at 4:30 p.m. that day to brief him on the situation.2
On March 7, Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson sent a return telegram from Moscow to advise Dean Rusk: “The more we can disengage from this operation the better from point of view of our relations with Soviets. They will in any event blame U.S. for facilitating subject’s departure from India and possibly charge us with kidnapping.”3
Svetlana’s timing was terrible. Though she may have been the most famous defector ever to denounce Communism and, under different circumstances, would have been an invaluable propaganda tool in the Cold War standoff between the United States and the USSR, she had chosen the wrong moment. The Johnson administration was in the midst of ratifying a consular convention with the Soviets.4
The convention was intended to establish consular functions in both countries. It would give full immunity from criminal prosecution to consular officers and staff, and ensure the protection of nationals. Each government would be notified of the arrest of one of its citizens within two or three days. At that time, a US citizen visiting the USSR could be held incommunicado for nine months or more awaiting charges. Approximately eighteen thousand Americans traveled on business or tourist visas to the USSR annually. But the ratification of the convention, first signed in 1964, had been rough. A bloc of senators had stalled it, citing the Red peril and suggesting it would open vast opportunities for Russian secret agents to operate in the United States. At that very moment, the treaty was being debated in the Senate, and the last thing Rusk and his staff wanted was a famous defector derailing the process.
How seriously both governments took the treaty is clear from the gestures of goodwill each offered. A few months earlier, a young Arkansan, Buel R. Wortham, had been sentenced to three years in a Russian labor camp on charges of “changing dollars into black market rubles, and stealing a cast-iron bear from a Leningrad hotel.” On March 11, five days after Svetlana’s defection, the Soviet Court of Appeal reversed the sentence, releasing Wortham with a fine of 5,000 rubles. On the American side, Igor Ivanov, a Soviet agent convicted of spying in 1964 and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, was currently on bail pending an appeal for executive clemency. The Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, had made it clear that because of the reversal on Wortham’s case, the Soviet Union expected a “certain amount of credit” toward clemency for Ivanov.5
Aleksei Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers, was set to arrive in the United States in late June for discussions on everything from the Mideast to the Vietnam War to arms control. Détente was in the air. Svetlana was not just an inconvenience; she was a threat. Harboring this high-profile defector might set things back irrevocably. The Johnson administration didn’t need her on its hands. She had to be contained.
Even as Bob Rayle and Svetlana were in midflight, the CIA station chief in Rome called the head of the Italian intelligence service, Admiral Eugenio Henke, to say that the CIA had a defector coming in and needed the Italians’ help. “You wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me that?” Henke had replied. “Yah, well, let me tell you who it is,” the CIA head replied. Henke was furious. “OK,” he said, “she can come in, but she’s got to leave tomorrow.”6 He said he’d wait until the morning to tell the minister of foreign affairs, Amintore Fanfani, who would not be pleased. The Communists at that time had a strong delegation in the Italian parliament and, if urged on by the Soviets, could make a lot of trouble for the Christian coalition government in power.
As Bob Rayle and Svetlana stepped off the Qantas flight in Rome at six a.m. on March 7, Rayle was convinced that this was just a stopover and that they would proceed immediately to the United States. He was shocked, then, when the deputy chief of his office in Rome met them at the arrivals gate with the bad news.
Rayle was informed that the State Department was categorically refusing to allow Svetlana to proceed to the United States. Foy Kohler was claiming that relations with the USSR were warming up. There was even the possibility of a thaw. Rayle and many of his colleagues believed that this thaw was “wishful thinking and existed mostly in Kohler’s imagination.”7 But Kohler’s decision meant that Svetlana was grounded. From the airport, Rayle and Svetlana were conducted to a safe house, a small apartment in Rome, where they settled in to wait.
When Admiral Henke informed Fanfani that morning that Stalin’s daughter had landed in Italy, Fanfani exploded. “Get those people out of this country immediately and I don’t want there to be any evidence that they were actually in the country.” Admiral Henke replied, “OK, technically we’ll say that the International Transit at the airport in Rome is extended to include the international apartment where they are temporarily housed.”8 By this ruse, Svetlana and Rayle would never legally be in Italy.
During the next few days, the State Department contacted the governments of Australia and New Zealand, but both refused Svetlana asylum. South Africa was willing to take her in, but given its history of apartheid, she refused to consider it.
As Svetlana and Rayle waited in their safe house guarded by Italian security officers, word came from the Swiss that they would consider accepting Svetlana for a short term. In keeping with their tradition of neutrality, they insisted that her visit remain private and that she make no political statements. This condition of silence was exactly what the State Department wanted. Walt Rostow, special assistant to the president, wrote to President Johnson: “About the lady, we can relax. Switzerland has agreed to take her.”9
But the Swiss decision could not be confirmed until the Swiss Council (or cabinet) met, which took several days. The Italians were furious at the delay, but as Rayle put it, “Admiral Henke was unwilling to arrest us and deport us.”10 The State Department promised the Italians that if the Swiss didn’t come through by Friday morning, the two fugitives would leave immediately for the United States.
Over the next few days, Rayle and Svetlana became friends. Their Italian flat had a small sitting room and one bedroom, assigned to Svetlana, and the phone rang constantly. With each phone call, Rayle looked paler and more distraught, but he was pleasantly surprised by Svetlana’s tranquillity. She later said, “I had been trained not to make decisions for myself, to wait and to be patient, above all to remain well-mannered.”
Rayle was amused that every morning Stalin’s daughter made him breakfast, prepared meals from the groceries delivered by the security guard, and washed the dishes. When they had Chianti for dinner, she recalled that her father had loved good wines and knew all the best brands and years. He found her very intelligent. She was “not spoiled or demanding,” as one might expect of the princess in the Kremlin. Though the boredom in the apartment was excruciating, they had good laughs together.
She told Rayle that her defection had been an impulsive act taken in rage and frustration. Had she returned home, she was certain she would have been punished for her deliberate disobedience in extending her stay in India. Her passport would have been confiscated. With her defection, she had slapped the Soviet government in the face. She had fooled them all. But she now began to think of the revenge the Soviets might exact.
Rayle watched her fall into moments of deep sadness as she spoke of her son, Joseph, and her daughter, Katya, whom she had left behind. She had convinced herself they would be all right.
In a dark moment, she sat down and wrote them a six-page letter:
MARCH 9, 1967
My Dearest Children, Kate, Helen [Joe’s wife Elena], and Joe!
I am afraid that all sorts of lies will be told to you—and to everybody—about me. Perhaps you will be told that I’d become mad, or that I’ve been kidnapped, or that I am no more. Do not believe anything. I want to explain myself how the decision not to return to Russia has come to me. I did never expect to do so when I was leaving Moscow in December. Then I have not even taken your photographs with me. . . .
I could live in Russia—as many others are doing—being a hypocr
ite, hiding my true opinions. More than a half of our people live like that. We have no opportunity to criticize, we have no press, no freedoms, and also nobody wants to risk. Everyone has a family, children, a job, which is too dangerous to lose. I’ve lived like that for many years and could live still longer—but the fate has made me to do my resolute choice. . . .
My husband’s death changed my nature. I feel it impossible to be silent and tolerant anymore. It is impossible to be always a slave. . . . My sweet darlings . . . please keep peace in your hearts. I am only doing what my conscience orders me to do.
Your mother11
When Svetlana asked the Americans to send her letter to her children, she was told it was too political. The letter was never delivered.
Meanwhile, the New York Times’ reporter in New Delhi, Tony Lucas, had been piecing together the story. Through anonymous sources, he discovered that, in the early hours of March 7, Svetlana had flown out of India in the company of someone said to be the US Embassy second secretary, Robert Rayle. By checking the passenger manifest for all flights out of New Delhi, he concluded that Svetlana and her escort were in Rome. Obviously he wasn’t the only journalist to do so.
At three a.m. on Friday, Rayle and Svetlana were awoken with the news that the international press had tracked them down to Rome. The Italians wanted them gone. They waited for the next five hours to be moved out. Finally they left for the airport under guard and were just about to board the 3:00 p.m. flight to London and on to America, when Rayle phoned a friend at the embassy to say good-bye. “Don’t get on the plane,” his colleague said. The Swiss had come through.12
They were to meet the Swiss consul at the airport at 8:00 p.m. to get Svetlana’s visa. A young woman from the US Embassy brought her a dark green raincoat; dark sunglasses, which she refused to wear; and a small red suitcase for her few clothes and her manuscript. Because she was not legally in Italy, she could not step on Italian soil and so could only glance at the passing sights of Rome from the car window as they drove to the airport, she and Rayle laughing and singing “Arrivederci, Roma.”13
Svetlana must have thought she was in a film. Obtaining her visa turned into a car chase. Two cars, she in one and the Swiss consul in the other, circled the flowerbed in front of the airport for what seemed ages until finally she was transferred to the other car. A secretary with a bottle of ink and a rubber stamp stamped her visa, joking about the undercover operation. She returned to her car. But Swissair Flight 615 to Geneva was four hours late. Svetlana and Rayle retreated to the safe house to wait.
Then the movie became a farce. When she and Rayle returned to the airport, international journalists and photographers were swarming the terminal. A TV film truck had managed to turn its floodlights on the departure gate. Afraid that Rayle and Svetlana might be photographed together, the Italians insisted they board the plane separately.
Rayle slipped through immigration and onto the plane easily, but when the car carrying Svetlana arrived at the gate, it was swarmed by paparazzi, and the car turned back. A new plan was hatched. Svetlana would be smuggled to the plane in one of the small tractors that pull the baggage carts. She squeezed in behind the nervous driver.
But as the tractor approached the plane, an Italian official rushed toward it. There were too many reporters. Back, back, he gestured wildly, and the distraught driver swerved, the engine stalled, and, once it was going again, they headed across the empty tarmac to the other side of the airfield. Meanwhile Rayle was standing at the open door of the plane, refusing to budge until his “wife” boarded. “My wife went to the ladies room in the terminal and hasn’t come back. We have to wait for her,” he said. The portable stairs were wheeled away, but Rayle planted himself at the open hatch and refused to move. He managed to delay the flight for fifteen minutes. Finally an Italian security officer gestured to him. Svetlana would not be boarding. The stairs were returned and Rayle disembarked, fearing that the Italians had arrested Svetlana.14
He was taken to a room in the basement of the terminal where about forty security officers were swarming. The colonel in charge was madly shouting into a phone. Eventually Rayle learned that the baggage handler had driven Svetlana to a warehouse on the edge of the airport and abandoned her in an empty hangar.15
Alone in the dark hangar, Svetlana found a door and walked into what looked like an airport storehouse, where she sat crouched in a stairwell and waited in the eerie silence for almost an hour. Awake since three a.m., she was exhausted and truly frightened. When Rayle found her, though they embraced and laughed, her composure had finally dissolved. The two found refuge in the apartment of a local police officer and waited. The worst news was that her small red suitcase with her manuscript had been checked onto the plane and was already on its way to Geneva.16
The frustrated Italians were so anxious to get rid of their unwanted charges that they demanded the Americans charter a plane. A Vickers Viscount airliner was stationed in a far, dark corner of the airfield, ready for the flight to Geneva. Apart from the full crew, Rayle and Svetlana were the only passengers on that 1:00 a.m. flight. This would be her first trip into Europe. Rome didn’t count. She was never officially in Rome.
On the plane to Geneva, Rayle kept repeating that he wanted to show Svetlana “Washington, the Lincoln Memorial, everything.” In fact, he said this to reassure her; he had little hope of her getting to Washington soon.17 He gave her some pertinent advice. She must not admit that she had ever left the international transit lounge in Rome; if the press pestered her with difficult questions, she must simply say, “No comment.” She must not accept the first publisher who wanted her book but instead get the best possible deal. As Rayle wrote to his superiors, “She plans to support herself in the West as a writer so this manuscript right now is all that stands between her and the poorhouse.”18
On Friday, March 10, the New York Times published the first of many stories. Citing unidentified sources, the article was tentative:
Svetlana Stalina, the daughter of Stalin, was reported to have left the Soviet Union for good. . . . Some reports indicated that she may be in danger. She was said to be seeking visas and may have approached United States officials in New Delhi. It could not be determined why she left the Soviet Union.19
Svetlana was still a mysterious figure, and there were many errors in the piece. It was claimed that she had married Mikhail Kaganovich, son of the Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich, in 1951 in a wedding that cost $280,000 and that after Stalin’s death, she had been banished from Moscow. The American Embassy in Delhi and the State Department refused to comment.
But there was soon another dimension to the story. Tony Lucas of the New York Times discovered through anonymous sources that Robert Rayle was an undercover CIA officer. Lucas phoned the US Embassy in Delhi and said that if he didn’t receive a disclaimer, he would file the story.20 The embassy refused to comment. Bob Rayle’s cover as second secretary was blown. Svetlana’s defection in the company of a CIA officer soon became headline news around the world.
When Rayle later submitted a mandatory report to the State Department on the defector’s “personality” and her “adaptability to different environments,” he described Svetlana as “the most completely cooperative defector I have ever met.” He said she’d remained cheerful and optimistic throughout the week as they waited in the safe house, even as she took in the shock that the Americans were refusing her asylum. As Rayle put it, “She recognizes that she cannot be considered a normal, ordinary human being and that her actions have political implications. . . . You’ll find her a warm, friendly person who responds to warmth and friendliness. I think you’ll find her genuinely likeable.” He added, “She is a very stable person.”21 But he warned that she seemed quite naive, as if she’d never lived “in any real world,” and would need help in finding her way in the West.
In the early morning hours of March 11, Svetlana “stepped over the invisible boundary between the world of tyranny and the world of freedom
.”22 Of course, it could never be that simple. The strange journey of the second half of her life was about to begin, but if she hoped to escape the shadow of her father’s name, she was tragically mistaken.
Chapter 17
Diplomatic Fury
Because he had been the US ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time of Stalin’s death, the diplomat George Kennan, photographed here in 1966, was given responsibility for Svetlana as she began her new life in the United States.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress, LC-U9–15312, #22A)
Early in the morning on Friday, March 10, the first and second secretaries of the Soviet Embassy in New Delhi arrived at the Singh estate in Kalakankar. They said Svetlana had disappeared from the Soviet compound and demanded to know where she was. Brajesh Singh’s brother Suresh said that he hadn’t the least idea. Just then the caretaker of the estate rushed in to say the BBC was reporting Svetlana had reached Rome. The face of the first secretary blanched in terror.
“Now we’re through! We’re done for! Oh, my God!”
“So you do believe in God after all, don’t you?” Suresh teased.
“Please, Lal Suresh,” the first secretary said. “This is terrible. I cannot discuss God just now!”1
This is the story Suresh Singh liked to tell, and it may have been true, but Moscow already knew that Svetlana had left India. Perhaps the secretaries had rushed to Kalakankar hoping against hope that it was all a mistake and she might have returned there. Her defection was on their heads. They had shown insufficient vigilance. Had Stalin been alive, they would have been shot.
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