Daughter of Stalin dies, 85

SOVIET dictator Josef Stalin’s daughter, whose defection to the US during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author, has died aged 85.

Svetlana Alliluyeva died of colon cancer last week in Wisconsin, where she lived off and on after becoming a US citizen.

Her defection in 1967 — which she said was partly motivated by the poor treatment of her late husband by Soviet authorities — caused an international furore and was a public relations coup for the US.

On her arrival in New York in 1967, she said: “I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia.”