 Dallin was the son of Menshevik leader David Dallin, a Russian revolutionary who had gone into exile from Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1921, and David's first wife, the former Eugenia Bein.The family then fled the Nazi persecution of the Jews, becoming trapped in Vichy France for a while.Leaving on the SS "Excalibur" from Lisbon, Portugal, they arrived in the United States in November 1940.