Lidiya Pereprygina

Lidiya Platonovna Pereprygina (Russian: Лидия Платоновна Перепрыгина; 1900 – 1965) was a Russian peasant and mother of Alexander Davydov, an alleged son of Joseph Stalin. Stalin began living with Lidiya during his final exile in Siberia and impregnated her twice when she was 14-16 years old, but only the second child survived. Stalin was transferred elsewhere and later joined the February Revolution while Lidiya married a local and raised Alexander.

Born sometime in 1900, Lidiya Pereprygina grew up with a family of five brothers and two sisters, all orphans due to losing their parents at a young age.^[1] She was raised in the village of Kureika above the Arctic Circle, near Turukhansk in Krasnoyarsk Krai. Kureika was a hamlet consisting of only eight or ten wooden cottages, with the Perepryginas living in cramped and impoverished conditions, including a filthy floor, broken windows, and only two rooms.^[2]

In March 1914, exiled Joseph Stalin and his Bolshevik comrade Yakov Sverdlov were moved to Kureika, living together in an izba before Stalin moved out due to clashes between the two Bolsheviks. Stalin then rented a room from the Perepryginas.^[2] In Lidiya's unpublished memoirs, she remembers Stalin as a merry tenant, spending much of his time hunting and fishing with a native khanty named Martin Peterin and attending evening dances or other festivities, singing and dancing.^[3]

In 1914, 14-year-old Lidiya and 35-year-old Stalin began living in the same room together, with Lidiya becoming pregnant and giving birth, but their child died soon after.^[1][3][2][4] Although relations between exiles and locals were common, the fact that Lidiya was only a teenager and twenty years younger than Stalin sparked controversy among the village, causing the Perepryginas to alert the local authorities.^[4] The local gendarme, Laletin, reprimanded Stalin for living with and impregnating a minor, to which Stalin promised that he would marry her when she came of age.^[3]

Stalin was ordered to leave Kureika in October 1916, was moved to Monastyrkoe several hundred kilometers away, and in December was transferred from there to Krasnoyarsk, arriving in February 1917. Lidiya gave birth to a second son, Alexander, in 1917. Stalin continued to send letters to Lidiya for some time but when rumor arrived that he had died she married the local peasant Yakov Semyonovich Davydov, who adopted Alexander.^[4]

Lidiya's son Alexander was drafted in August 1940, fighting in the Red Army against the Empire of Japan during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in March-August 1945, earning the rank of major and the Order of the Red Star.^[5] According to Alexander's son Yuri, Stalin tried twice to bring Alexander to Moscow, but the father and son never met.^[6]

After marrying Yakov Davydov, Lidiya had eight more children.^[7] The family eventually moved one hundred miles north of Kureika to Igarka, where Lidiya became a hairdresser. She died around 1964 or 1965.^[8]

Soviet documents indicate that in 1946, Averky Aristov was asked by Stalin to inquire on the inhabitants of the Kureika village. Aristov sent P. Sirotenko, the instructor of regional committee, to Kureika in 1947, where he interviewed Lidiya Pereprygina and was told how she began living with Stalin at age 14 and gave birth to two sons with him, with only the second child surviving. Lidiya then provided Sirotenko a photo of that second son, Alexander.^[4]

Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's only daughter, knew her father had a son with a Siberian peasant girl, writing in her book Only One Year (1969): "My aunts told me that during one of his periods of exile in Siberia he [Stalin] lived together with a local peasant woman and that their son now lives there somewhere, poorly educated and preferring anonymity."^[2] In the 1960s, Czech adventurers Hanzelka and Zikmund found evidence of the Stalin-Lidiya relationship during their travels in Siberia, writing of it in their published travelogues.^[2]

Lidiya's descendants knew of their relation to Stalin. Her son Alexander fathered two sons: Eduard and Yuri Davydov. NTV and The Siberian Times interviewed Yuri, who stated that in the early 1970s Alexander "invited [Yuri] to a room for a 'serious conversation'", in which Yuri was told that his grandfather was Joseph Stalin and further urged to keep it secret.^[9][10]

Yuri said of his grandmother, Lidiya:

"My father's mother, Lidiya, told him about this many years after her affair with Stalin. I only saw my grandmother when I was little. She was thin and dark-skinned. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and was of medium height. They both kept it a secret."^[7]

In 2016, Yuri Davydov confirmed that Alexander's father was Stalin via a DNA test. Alexander Burdonsky, Stalin's grandson through his son Vasily Stalin, provided the genetic material to confirm the relation.^[10]