In the years after World War II, Romania went through the most drastic social change in its history with the establishment of communism in power. At the same time, the status of women in society and politics was changed overnight. Over half of the country's population received the right to vote and the right to be elected to leadership positions. However, the new social order was subject to human nature, which produced a new political elite. Who were the women in this elite and what role did they have in history? We tried to find out the answer from historian Lavinia Betea, who wrote The Red Princesses. "The first real princess was Stalin's daughter. This Svetlana Alliluyeva, who was raised in the spirit of Soviet ideology, achieves performances unimaginable by her father or any Soviet citizen. A young woman with very good intellectual potential, an attractive woman and of course more attractive than her physique, was the status of Stalin's daughter. Here it was about hunting for political and social capital. She makes some extraordinary contracts for the publication of memoirs in which she certainly denigrates her father, she is the best witness to how criminal he was, what he did and denounces Soviet society, and on the basis of this contract she becomes a millionaire in dollars before setting foot on American soil”, said Lavinia Betea. Stalin's daughter arrives in America after her father's death and later returns to Europe. “She dies in an asylum, poor, dressed in second-hand clothes, hating both Soviet society and the world she had entered and could not adapt to”, said the writer. In Romania, the most famous red princess is, of course, Zoia Ceaușescu, Elena Ceaușescu's daughter. As for Svetlana Alliluyeva, she did not write her memoirs. Regarding the relationship between Elena Ceaușescu and her daughter, Lavinia Betea says that at most “we can speculate based on bits of information coming from their entourage”. "It was certainly not a good relationship after Zoia matured. They were very proud of this daughter of theirs. She was a beautiful girl, a very disciplined girl, very good at studying, a girl very concerned with poetry, with art. What did frond mean at that time? It meant smoking and she was a very big smoker. It is said that she smoked two or three packs of cigarettes a day. And what else could you do? You could drink vodka. This was generally the case in student circles. She did that too. Naturally, Elena Ceaușescu did not like it. Zoia was also, in turn, a very courted girl, or rather hunted. There have always been and will be people who want to climb a social ladder higher", explained Lavinia Betea. The fate of the red princesses was almost always tragic. Their parents tended to control them and impose their life trajectories on them. Zoia Ceaușescu died in 2006 from lung cancer. She was 57 years old. For the latest news: https://euronews.ro/ Subscribe to our Youtube channel: / @euronewsro Follow us on Social Media: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaCn... / euronewsro / ro.euronews / euronews_romania / euronews.romania