#also this reminded me that the 90th anniversary of nadya alliluyeva's suicide is next week i should probably do something

[alliluyevas]

Top 5 favorite Soviet history figures (I might be able to guess one based on your URL lol)?

my url is actually plural for a reason!!! but yeah you did guess

i honestly could not pick between my two favorites who inspired my url but 1 and 2 would be Nadezhda and Svetlana Alliluyeva. Nadya is sort of personally special to me because she was the subject of my senior thesis and I do think I may be the foremost living expert on her (THIS SOUNDS LIKE SUCH A BRAG SORRY but she's really obscure ckfdjgds.) But I also do deeply love Svetlana and she is also very very important to me.

3 and 4 would be Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan, the ultimate bro squad. Khrushchev is a fascinating and deeply compelling historical figure, incredibly quotable, and the genuine cause of a lot of positive change in Soviet society and he is also my grandfather (do you guys remember when I got that hostile anon accusing me of having a parasocial relationship with Anastas Mikoyan lmfaooooooooo) anyway Mikoyan is imo such an underrated figure in Soviet politics, I love his impact on food history, and I love the entire Mikoyan family which is deeply interesting to me

5 would probably be Nadezhda Krupskaya! I mostly focused on the Stalin era especially later in undergrad tho I started w focusing on the revolution itself so I initially wanted to give this spot to a member of the later Kremlin Wives Community like Polina Molotova or Nina Khrushcheva but I really couldn't pick, I find them all compelling. Nadezhda was definitely not just a Kremlin Wife but a politician in her own right as part of an older and less regressive generation of Bolsheviks (I do not mean this as a putdown of the next generation at all, there were more forces going on there than individual achievement) and I find her inspiring on a lot of levels, and very interesting as well. I think we would probably get on well if we met too :)

Also honorable mentions to Bukharin and to the Kremlin kiddo memoirist squad.

Thank you so much for asking this! Brought me back to my roots lol. I'm going to start trawling through my archives and reblogging pictures of baby Svetlana now :')