Joseph Alliluyev

Iosif Grigoryevich Alliluyev (; 22 May 1945 – 2 November 2008) was a Soviet and Russian cardiologist and medical academic. A grandson of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, he specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of chest pain and other cardiac conditions and was credited with more than 150 scientific articles and monographs on heart disease.

Early life and family Alliluyev was born in 1945 to Svetlana Alliluyeva and her first husband, the lawyer and academic Grigory Morozov, a school friend of Stalin’s son Vasily. His parents’ marriage ended in the late 1940s. When Alliluyeva married Yuri Zhdanov in 1949, Zhdanov adopted her son, who for a time used the surname Zhdanov before his original name and patronymic were restored in the mid-1950s.

Russian and international media accounts describe Alliluyev as the only one of Stalin’s grandchildren who personally knew their grandfather. He spent his childhood in Moscow and kept out of public life after Stalin’s death.

Despite his family background, Alliluyev generally avoided publicity. ABC News, citing Russian media, described him as “very discreet” about his origins, noting that he declined offers to write memoirs and seldom gave interviews. Channel One Russia similarly reported that he refused to write memoirs and “practically did not give interviews”; one of his rare interviews was later used in the documentary film Svetlana about his mother.

Death Alliluyev died suddenly in Moscow in early November 2008 at the age of 63. Russian media reported that he had been a well-known cardiologist and the only one of Stalin’s grandchildren to have met their grandfather. A biographical note on his father’s grave site states that he was buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, next to his grandmother Nadezhda Alliluyeva.

In popular culture Alliluyev’s childhood and relationship with his mother and grandfather have been discussed in biographies of Svetlana Alliluyeva and in television documentaries about Stalin’s family.