Pauline Labranche recalled her days as the French tutor for Stalin’s teenage daughter, Svetlana:
“Stalin looks much shorter and older than his pictures suggest. He was often pale, worn-out, weary. There were rumors at the time that that he was suffering from heart attacks. He was 65 when I first saw him. He showed the strains of the hard war years…’He doesn’t like to see strangers [in our house]’, Svetlana explained. I believe Stalin’s avoidance of strangers is chiefly due to his fear of an attempt on his life. Svetlana once told me that he often wears steel undergarments whenever he appears in public, to protect him against pistol shots… But this is a secret, she added hastily, ‘You must never speak of it.'”
In the Sixties, Stalin’s daughter would defect to the West – read about it here.
– from Amazon:
