Alliluyeva worked as a secretary for Bolshevik leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Stalin, before enrolling at the Industrial Academy in Moscow to study synthetic fibres and become an engineer.

On several occasions, Alliluyeva reportedly contemplated leaving Stalin, and after an argument, she fatally shot herself early in the morning of 9 November 1932.

[3][4] Sergei's grandmother was Romani, a fact to which his granddaughter, Svetlana, attributed the "southern, somewhat exotic features" and "black eyes" that characterized the Alliluyevs.

[11] Olga's father initially wanted her to marry one of his friend's sons, but she refused to accept the arrangements and left home at 14 to live with Sergei, joining him in Tiflis.

[15] Sergei Aliluyev worked at an electricity station, and by 1911 was named head of a sector there, allowing the family to afford a comfortable lifestyle.

[17] Her family frequently hosted party members at their home, including hiding Vladimir Lenin during the July Days of 1917, which further strengthened Alliluyeva's views.

[1][28] Stalin made Alliluyeva a secretary at the People's Commissariat for Nationalities, where he served as the head, and in May brought her and her brother Fyodor with him to Tsaritsyn, where the Bolsheviks were fighting the White Army as part of the Russian Civil War.

[41] Alliluyeva frequently took the tram from the Kremlin to the academy, joined by Dora Khazan [ru], the wife of Andrey Andreyev, a leading Bolshevik and associate of Stalin.

Some have speculated that Alliluyeva learned of the issues the population was facing as a result of the collectivization of agriculture, including the famine in Ukraine, and argued with Stalin about this.

Her letters give the impression that she, like the rest of the Bolshevik elite, was completely isolated from the suffering of tens of millions outside the Kremlin walls.

[53] In the summer, Stalin would holiday along the coast of the Black Sea, near Sochi or in Abkhazia, and was frequently joined by Alliluyeva, though by 1929 she would spend only a few days there before returning to Moscow for her studies.

She was suffering from "terrible depressions", headaches, and early menopause; her daughter later claimed that Alliluyeva had "feminine problems" because of a "couple of abortions which were never attended to".

[60] On several occasions, Alliluyeva reportedly considered leaving Stalin and taking the children with her, and in 1926 she left for a short time, moving to Leningrad.

[61] Her nephew Alexander Alliluyev would later claim that shortly before her death Alliluyeva was again planning to leave Stalin, but there is no evidence to confirm this assertion.

[63] Alongside her compatriots, she marched in the 7 November parade commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution, while Stalin and the children watched her from the top of Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square.

[1] There was much drinking during the dinner, which had several high-ranking Bolsheviks and their spouses in attendance, and Alliluyeva and Stalin began to argue, which was not an unusual occurrence at these gatherings.

[58] It has been suggested that Stalin was also flirting with Galina Yegorova, the young wife of Alexander Yegorov, and there was recent discussion that he had been with a hairdresser who worked in the Kremlin.

[64][65] Things became even worse between the two, and Montefiore suggested that when Stalin "toasted the destruction of the Enemies of the State", he saw Alliluyeva did not raise her glass as well and became annoyed.

[66] Stalin supposedly threw something at her (listed variously as an orange peel, cigarette butt, or piece of bread)[e] to get her attention, before finally calling out to her, which only further maddened Alliluyeva, who abruptly left the dinner and went outside; Zhemchuzhina followed after her to ensure someone else was there with her.

[69] Events after that are not clear, but some time early in the morning of 9 November, Alliluyeva, alone in her room, shot herself in the heart, killing herself instantly.

[70] Alliluyeva used a small Mauser pistol only recently given to her by her brother Pavel Alliluyev, who brought it as a gift from his time in Berlin.

[72] To help keep the true nature of Alliluyeva's death from being released, staff who worked in the Kremlin at the time were either dismissed or arrested, though efforts to suppress this information continued for several years afterwards.

[83] Her son Vasily was also greatly affected: although Alliluyeva had not played a major role in raising her children, she still showed interest in their well-being.

After her death, Stalin doted upon Svetlana but virtually ignored Vasily, who began to drink from a young age and ultimately died of alcohol-related issues in 1962.