After his father died in 1953, Vasily lost his authority, developed severe alcohol dependency, and was ultimately arrested and sent to prison.

[4] As his mother was interested in pursuing a professional career, a nanny, Alexandra Bychokova, was hired to look after Vasily and Svetlana.

Pauker frequently travelled out of the Soviet Union and would bring back gifts to the younger Stalin, though during the Great Purge his foreign nationality and trips abroad had made him a target for repression, and he was shot in August 1937.

[16] His father ordered the school not to grant him any favours or special privileges due to his name, and asked that he should stay in regular army barracks.

Vasily did quite well at this school, with a 1939 report to his father noting he was "[d]edicated to the cause of the Party of Lenin-Stalin", and was "interested and well versed in questions related to international and domestic situation".

However, the report also noted Vasily tended to study poorly, was unshaven for duty, and reacted "badly to snafus in flight".

[20] Bored by his new role, Vasily found himself in trouble after the 4th of April 1943 incident where he had explosives dropped into the Moskva River, injuring himself and killing a flight engineer.

He helped develop a team to represent the air force, VVS Moscow, and brought in Anatoly Tarasov as the player-coach for the inaugural season in 1946–47.

[25] Even so, VVS won three consecutive Soviet Championship League titles from 1951 to 1953, before Vasily divested himself of the team in the wake of his father's death.

He was charged with denigration of the Soviet Union's leaders, anti-Soviet propaganda and criminal negligence, and sentenced to eight years in prison.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued him a pension of 300 rubles, an apartment in Moscow, and a three-month treatment vacation in Kislovodsk.

[verification needed] Vasily died on 19 March 1962, due to chronic alcoholism, two days before his 41st birthday,[30] and was buried in Arskoe Cemetery.

[31] Vasily was partially rehabilitated in 1999, when the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court lifted charges of anti-Soviet propaganda that dated from 1953.