More worrisome to Stalin than his recurrent ill health were his growing difficulties with Nadya. Periods of calm and tenderness were interrupted by explosions of mutual irritation. Nadya and the children spent time with him in the south; and she and Joseph wrote to each other if for some reason she could not stay there.41 Her absence became normal once she started a student’s course at the Industrial Academy: the beginning of term coincided with her husband’s annual holiday leave. Their letters to each other were tender. He called her Tatka and she called him Joseph. She was solicitous about him: ‘I very much beg you to look after yourself. I kiss you deeply, deeply, as you kissed me when we said goodbye.’42 She also wrote to his mother on Joseph’s behalf, giving news of the children and passing on little details about life in Moscow. Stalin himself wrote to Georgia only infrequently. He was too preoccupied with political business, and anyway he had hardly bothered about his blood relatives for many years. Usually his letters to his mother were brief to the point of curtness and ended with a phrase such as ‘Live a thousand years!’43 Nadya was doing her best for him, but she could never get the appreciation and understanding from her husband that she craved.
His harshness would have demoralised the most optimistic spirit. Nadya’s mental condition worsened and she was given to episodes of despair. Stalin’s flirtations with other women probably played a part in this. On the secretarial staff of the Politburo was a beautiful young woman, Tamara Khazanova, who befriended Nadya; she came round to the Kremlin flat and helped with the children. At some point it would seem that Stalin took a fancy to her and pursued his interest.44
Nadya descended into gloom. She expressed her thoughts in a letter to her friend Maria Svanidze, the sister of Joseph’s first wife:45
You write that you’re bored. You know, dearest, that it’s the same everywhere. I have absolutely nothing to do with anyone in Moscow. Sometimes it seems strange after so many years to have no close friends, but this obviously depends on one’s character. Moreover, it’s strange that I feel myself closer to non-members of the party (women, of course). The obvious explanation is that such people are simpler.
I greatly regret tying myself down again in new family matters. In our day this isn’t very easy because generally a lot of the new prejudices are strange and if you don’t work, then you’re looked upon as an ‘old woman’.
‘New family matters’ was Nadya’s odd way of referring to her latest pregnancy. Because of this she had to delay getting the requisite qualifications for professional employment. Enrolment on some training course remained her ambition. She told Maria to take the same attitude or else spend her time running errands for others.46
The child she was expecting was born on 28 February 1926; it was a girl, and they named her Svetlana. Nadya, however, remained determined to free herself of domesticity and in autumn 1929 she got herself enrolled at the Industrial Academy in central Moscow on a course specialising in artificial fibres. The Stalin household was left to servants and nannies.
Each morning she left the Kremlin and made for the Industrial Academy. She left behind all privilege. She was also leaving a middle-aged environment and joining people of her own age. Most of the students were unaware that Nadya Allilueva was the wife of the Party General Secretary — and even if they knew this, they did not act much differently towards her. Off set Nadya without chauffeur or bodyguard, taking the same forms of transport as her fellow students. She wrote to Joseph about a very tedious journey on 12 September 1929:47
