By 1929, Nadya Alliluyeva (Stalin's second wife) was 28 and had given Stalin two children but against his wishes, she enrolled at the newly established Industrial academy to study synthetic fibres. There she made friends with two Ukrainian students who told her the horrors of the rural famines created by her husband’s ‘Great Breakthrough’. Nadya heroically tried to confront her husband about these horrors and the fatal results of that tragic confrontation.