Brajesh Singh

Brajesh Singh, Kunwar Brijesh Singh or Brajesh Singh Lal;

His first wife was Kunwarani Laxmi Devi, followed by Leela, an Austrian woman with whom he had a son named Victor Singh. Victor later moved to England, where he became a photographer. In 1963, while recuperating from bronchitis, Singh met Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Joseph Stalin. The two fell in love while Singh was critically ill with bronchiectasis and emphysema. The romance deepened while the couple were recuperating in Sochi near the Black Sea.

Singh returned to Moscow in 1965 to work as a translator, but he and Alliluyeva were not allowed to marry. He died the following year, on 31 October 1966. In an interview on 26 April 1967, Alliluyeva said that she considered Singh to be her husband but that Aleksei Kosygin never allowed them to legally marry.

Singh studied English at a college in Lucknow. He later moved to Berlin, to pursue an engineering education. In 1928, M. N. Roy was expelled from the Communist International, he then moved to Berlin and from there he enlisted the help of several Indian students. Singh was one of those students who became an active communist and began closely working with him to establish the Group of Oppositional Indian Communists that would be affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany Opposition and INC. The primary reason for the establishment of the organisation was to protest the Ultra-leftist attitude of the Communist International in India. While in India, Roy also suggested that Indian communists were distancing themselves from the Nationalist movement.

During the course of this campaign, Singh served as Roy's right-hand man. He also financed Roy's health care in Switzerland and his trip to India. However in 1931 when Roy was arrested in India, Singh decided to relinquish Roy's principles and defected back to the orthodox communist stronghold in Europe. When he arrived in London in September 1932, he came across his brother Raja Awadhesh Singh, who had been regularly commuting from London to Dublin. Brajesh's previous passport was impounded in India, so he had been to Ireland using his brother's passport. While he was crossing over to Ireland, the Indian Political Intelligence was actively monitoring Singh's activities. whom Singh married during the Second World War. Singh and Leela both fled to India to escape Nazi persecution, where they lived for 16 years. After the war, Leela moved to England with their son Victor. Singh followed her, but due to his inability to find work in England, he returned back to India after divorcing her. While there, his son Victor became a photographer. who was there for a tonsillectomy. At the time, Svetlana was reading a biography on Mahatma Gandhi and wanted to ask an Indian like Singh about the subject. After bumping into each other in the corridors, they took a seat on a nearby couch and had keen conversation for an hour.

A romantic relationship followed. As per the terms of his visa, Singh's return to India was scheduled after he was discharged from the Kuntsevo Hospital. However, he and Svetlana came up with a new plan, where Singh would go to Russia from India and work as a translator of Russian texts into Hindi. He left for India in December 1963 and went to Russia in March 1965. He landed in Sheremetyevo Airport on 7 April and was welcomed by Svetlana and her son Joseph Alliluyev.

Svetlana had hastily married three times before making the urgent decision to marry Singh due to his critical health; Singh also had refused to return to India without her, and she was required to be his wife to travel with him. She was given special permission by Kosygin to go to India on a condition that she would avoid contact with foreign press. Dinesh Singh, his nephew, wrote to Svetlana, stating that she was invited to stay at his house and that he had managed to secure a funeral in traditional manner. Although her passport for India was issued on 11 November. Dinesh Singh requested her to delay her visit until next month, on 12 December, when he would be free from parliamentary work.