QUOTE : If Svetlana’s version of herself was that she was passive and vulnerable, this was not always how others saw her. Her cousin Vladimir called her character “harsh and unbalanced,” though she was “courageous and independent, with her own principles, in line with the traditions of Alliluyevs,” as he put it.3 Her friend Stepan Mikoyan felt her shyness was half camouflage. “Svetlana was very shy and quiet when everything was quiet; and when she was against something, she was very strong.