Lana Peters, daughter of Josef Stalin, dead at 85

Lana Peters, the daughter of former Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, died Tuesday (Nov. 22). She was 85.

Born Svetlana Stalina in 1926, Lana spent the first half of her life in the Soviet Union. It was in 1967, then 41 and twice divorced, that she decided to seek political asylum in the U.S. When she arrived in New York in April 1967, she promptly denounced her father and the regime he ran that killed millions of people.

After defecting, she was was briefly married to William Wesley Peters, a protege of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The two have a daughter together.

Ms. Peters died of colon cancer in Richland County, Wis.