#I'm really interested in like constructions of power and how women and children fit into that and also I think the story of their family is

[alliluyevas]

@melrosing-main​ lol okay! for you and for anyone else who may have started following me during my less openly soviet history obsessed flop era

In my past life before I graduated and became a high school social studies teacher + part-time professional Lannister stan, I was a history + Russian major in undergrad and specifically focused on the Stalin-era USSR, and I was (and continue to be) really interested in the political and domestic dynamics of Stalin’s inner circle and their families. I consider myself a Kremlin wives aficionado :) My senior thesis for my BA was a roughly 40 page mini-biography of Nadezhda Alliluyeva who was Stalin’s second wife, and I honestly think (not to brag) I am almost certainly the currently living expert on her. (The nice thing about being into extremely niche historical figures is that you get to be the academic expert without getting a PhD, lol). (I even tracked down a bunch of letters she wrote that had never been translated into English before and translated them).

My url is in reference to both Nadya and her daughter Svetlana who took her mom’s surname as an adult for um obvious reasons. Svetlana is also an extremely cool historical figure in her own right! She defected to the United States in 1967 and wrote two memoirs about her childhood and life which are, no exaggeration, low-key my bible.  

#I'm really interested in like constructions of power and how women and children fit into that and also I think the story of their family is #just like really deeply moving as a familial tragedy? #when I say im the foremost Nadya expert I'm not overly hyping up my historian skills just. that I'm the person who is most invested in resea #researching and writing about her