The House of Government

15

THE DAYS OFF

When the House of Government was being built, most Soviet institutions were on the so-called uninterrupted production schedule. The seven-day week had been abolished. The year now consisted of 360 working days organized into seventy-two five-day weeks and five common holidays. All workers and employees were divided into five groups, each with its own work schedule. In keeping with the First Five-Year Plan ethos of ceaseless work by autonomous individuals organized into random but seamlessly cohesive production “collectives,” factories and construction sites never shut down, and members of the same family might have different days off. The demand for individualized spaces coincided with the drive for individualized schedules. The chief promoter of both was Bukharin’s future father-in-law, Yuri Larin, who liked to imagine the future producer as “a snail carrying its shell.” Rational collectivism was about extreme individualism.¹

The House of Government had been built as a structure “of transitional type” combining extended communal services with a concession to family longevity. On December 1, 1931, soon after most House residents moved into their apartments and a whole year before the First Five-Year Plan was pronounced to have been fulfilled “ahead of schedule,” the uninterrupted five-day calendar was replaced by a uniform six-day week, with universal days off falling on the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th, and 30th of each month. All Soviets, including those forming affective and reproductive units within more or less insulated separate spaces, were to synchronize their lives.²

For top nomenklatura officials and their families, however, weekday schedules remained uncoordinated. A continued attachment to the ethic of ceaseless work in an age of proliferating “parks of culture and rest” meant that those who never slept had to sleep while others worked. In the House of Government, maids, nannies, grandmothers, and female poor relations would get up early, make breakfast for the children (hot cereal, sandwiches, or both), see the young ones off to school (help them across the streetcar tracks on Serafimovich Street or hand them over to their fathers’ chauffeurs), and then do things around the house. Some did their own cooking; most relied on prepared meals from the House cafeteria and other exclusive food distribution points, supplemented (usually at dinner) with homemade dishes made from ingredients picked up at various distribution points or purchased at the House grocery store. Working mothers might eat breakfast with their children or a bit later. Nonworking mothers (a minority in the House) might get up before their husbands and engage in a variety of activities (volunteer work, dressmaking, shopping, sewing, conversing with visiting friends or live-in relatives) or get up and have breakfast with their husbands in either the kitchen or the dining room. Most men did not linger over breakfast and might or might not have time to read through Pravda (everyone did eventually—at work if not at home); their chauffeurs might come up or wait outside. Soon after the men’s departure, the schoolchildren would come home and have lunch (usually by themselves, served by the nannies). Tutors normally came in the late afternoon. Some working mothers might have dinner with their children and other live-in relatives; others would come home late and eat by themselves, usually quickly and with little ceremony. The men might or might not have dinner at home. Most would come home when all the other apartment residents were asleep. The only permanent presence in the home—the fixed axis of the weekday schedule and the only person vitally connected to every other member of the household—was the nanny or maid (assisted, and occasionally replaced, by the grandmother or another resident female relative).³

The sixth day of the six-day week was the “day off.” It was not called “Sunday,” but it was a common holiday officially dedicated to rest and unofficially serving as the chronological pivot of family life. After the first layer of scaffolding was taken down from the house of socialism, the Sabbath was gradually returning (even for Veitser, who was now happily married). Once every six days, the maids and nannies would step into the shadows and cede the space and schedule to their “masters.”

Most families woke up to the sound of the radio. Each apartment had a radio cable connected to a round black loudspeaker (or “dish”) mounted on the wall, usually in the kitchen or dining room. Radios were always on, but on holiday mornings they were turned up and actively listened to. “Day-off” programming usually included children’s shows, music shows (Soviet songs and classical music), and, later in the day, live broadcasts of concerts, operas, and theater performances. The man responsible for both the programming and the nationwide cable and relay network was the expert on rational time-keeping and work ethic, Platon Kerzhentsev, who served as head of the All-Union Radiofication and Broadcasting Committee between 1933 and 1936. Like many other men in the House, Kerzhentsev also owned a German valve radio set, which he kept in his study.⁴

All the men read newspapers (which meant a lot of articles written by Koltsov, among others). Some recuperated from their work week by working on themselves. Osinsky studied Hegel and mathematics; Arosev wrote fiction and kept a diary. Almost everyone read for pleasure. The most popular books remained the same as in prison and exile, with the exception of both the Russian radical tradition (Chernyshevsky, Kravchinsky, Gorky) and fin-de-siècle Belgian and Scandinavian modernism, which did not seem to fit the age of Augustinian fulfillment and gradually dropped out of the high culture canon. Still compulsory were “the Pamirs” of European literature (Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe); the Russian classics (with Pushkin and Tolstoy at the top); and the nineteenth-century European standards (especially romantic and early realist works, headed by Dickens and Balzac). Another large category included the adventure stories the House of Government men had enjoyed as boys. It consisted of two overlapping sets of texts: early-nineteenth-century historical novels reimagined as literature for adolescents (Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, Alexandre Dumas) and books of imperial exploration, whose popularity had coincided with their Old Bolshevik youth (Thomas Mayne Reid, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, Louis Henri Boussenard, Jack London, and O. Henry). Of contemporary writers, the most popular was Romain Rolland, who was seen as a reincarnation of heroic realism (and perhaps of his—and his readers’—great heroes, Beethoven and Tolstoy). Soviet literature was read by few people who were not directly involved in producing or supervising it. The great exceptions were children’s books (including Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How Steel Was Tempered, which was popular among adolescents) and, of the adult novels produced in the 1930s, Aleksei Tolstoy’s Peter I (a construction/creation story in the form of a realist historical epic).

Other popular forms of home entertainment for men were photography and chess. Cameras (along with gramophones and clothes) were among the most important items brought home from foreign trips, and many men spent hours developing photographs. (Ivan Kraval created a fully enclosed photo lab inside his dining room.) Chess complemented reading as a form of relaxation that combined high-culture credentials with entertainment. Kerzhentsev clipped match reports from newspapers, classified the matches in various ways, and then analyzed and replayed them himself. The added value of chess was social. Some men had permanent partners. (Yakov Brandenburgsky played with N. V. Krylenko, the people’s commissar of justice and head of the Soviet Chess Federation; Romuald Muklevich played with Iosif Unshlikht [Józef Unszlicht], the chairman of the Civil Aviation Directorate and a fellow Pole.) Most fathers played regularly with their sons. Kerzhentsev’s son (from a previous marriage) had died young, so he played with his daughter, Natalia, who was not particularly interested. The Komsomol Central Committee secretary, Serafim Bogachev, played with his young wife, Lydia. “Sima really loved chess,” she remembered, “and in the evenings, when we had some free time, we would often sit down and play. He would say: ‘Stop doing your math; let’s play chess instead.’”⁵

Many parents, particularly fathers, devoted their days off to their children: playing with them, reading to them, and taking them to the theater, the movies (usually the Shock Worker and, in the late 1930s, the First Children’s Movie Theater, located in the New Theater auditorium), the Tretyakov Art Gallery (a short walk away on the other side of the Ditch), the Museum of Fine Arts (a short walk away on the other side of the river), and Gorky Park (a slightly longer walk, first along the Ditch and then along the river). Gorky Park was a particularly popular destination. In 1935, Koltsov’s new wife, Maria Osten, published a book on behalf of a ten-year-old German boy she and Koltsov had adopted in the Saar and brought to their House of Government apartment. The book was called Hubert in Wonderland, and one of the greatest wonders Hubert had seen in the USSR was Gorky Park, which he visited in the winter of 1934, soon after his arrival: “I went to the Park of Culture and Rest. Even in winter, there were plenty of fun things to do. The squares, avenues, and paths were turned into mirror-smooth skating rinks. There were rinks for beginners and for regular and figure skaters and special areas for games and rides. In the evenings, they were all lit up, with Red Army bands playing. At the far end of the Park was a ski area that stretched all the way to the Lenin Hills. I spent many wonderful hours in the winter in the Park of Culture and Rest, skating, skiing, and sledding.” His next visit was in the spring:

Everywhere you look, someone is painting or building something, or a banner is being put up. The circus is open, and the Swing Boats are ready. Posters announcing the new season have been displayed in front of the theater and the cinema. There is a Ferris wheel, a parachute jumping tower, a roller-skating rink…. I don’t know where to go or where to begin.

I run around, as if in a maze: to the house of mirrors, reading room, restaurant, children’s village, and boat rental…. An orchestra is playing in one of the pavilions. A little farther on, someone is playing an accordion. In one place couples are dancing a foxtrot. In another, they are learning folk dances. I look at the people around me, and each one seems to be headed toward a specific goal. Only I run back and forth, confused. That is because it is all so new to me.

I spent many fun days at the Park of Culture and Rest. I was seldom alone there. I met new friends and often went with my classmates. We used to swim, take out rowboats, exercise, ride on the Zero Gravity, roller-skate, and go to the theater, cinema, or circus. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to parachute because we were still too small, but we used to stand for hours watching others do it.⁶

Hubert in Wonderland was a political work published by Koltsov as a special issue of his illustrated weekly, Ogonyok. If Soviet children wanted to be like the Reichstag-trial hero, Georgi Dimitrov, wrote Georgi Dimitrov in his introduction to the book, they must read about Hubert’s travels. “To be like Dimitrov,” wrote Dimitrov, “means to be a consistent proletarian fighter,” and to be a consistent proletarian fighter meant knowing the difference “between the joyful and truthful world of socialism and the mean, lying, and bloodthirsty world of fascism.” Most of Hubert’s (and Dimitrov’s) neighbors in the House of Government did know the difference, did want to be like Dimitrov, and, whether or not they thought much about such things, did enjoy going to Gorky Park. Boris Volin’s daughter, Viktoria, who was fourteen in 1935, remembered going there to watch movies, dress up for “carnivals,” eat ice cream, skate, and walk. “We used to walk and walk and walk. We’d kiss and we’d walk. We did all kinds of things.” In 1935, the official things to do included twenty amusement rides that were open from noon to 11:00 p.m. In addition to those mentioned by Hubert, there were different kinds of carousels, a bumper-car rink, an “upside-down room,” and a “Magic Chamber.” The “Music and Song” part of the entertainment included daily symphony concerts, no fewer than ten other orchestras and bands playing on any given day, mass chorus singing on two different stages, and a music center consisting of a “room for musical games,” a “gramophone-record listening room,” and “a room for individual music lovers” with free tutoring sessions. Theater options included an open-air (“green”) theater for 20,000 spectators, an indoor theater for 1,270 spectators, a music theater for 1,500 spectators, a small drama theater, a circus (two shows daily), and a children’s theater.⁷

Hubert L’Hoste in Gorky Park

Theater was everywhere: in kindergartens, schools, parks, and family apartments, as well as in theaters. Actors and directors from prominent Moscow theaters were objects of adoration, subjects of gossip, and constant recipients of dinner invitations from those prominent enough to hope for a response. “Going out” at night usually meant going to the Bolshoi, Maly, Art, Vakhtangov, or, less commonly, to the Chamber or New theaters. Most preferred the nineteenth-century repertoire; few cared for Meyerhold; and almost all considered it a duty, as well as pleasure, to go to the ballet (at the Bolshoi, top nomenklatura members and their families were entitled to seats in the royal box).

On September 24, 1934, Arosev had a day off that included both Gorky Park and the ballet, among other things:

Sent children off to Gorky Park. Dressed, washed, and played with son.

Picked up children and took to theater (Carmen). Left children there—then went to bookstores. Bought lots of interesting books. Especially happy about Petrarch.

Went to CPC [Council of People’s Commissars] cafeteria. Telephoned Kaganovich, but he’d already left for work. Called the Kremlin, but he hadn’t arrived yet.

Picked up girls. Took them to CPC cafeteria. Read Al. Tolstoy’s Peter I in cafeteria library.

Went home.

Read some Petrarch. There’s absolutely no one who doesn’t grapple with the question of death!

Went to ballet at Conservatory. Duncan Studio’s Maria Borisova especially good. Very impressive woman.

Read more Petrarch.⁸

At home, Arosev liked to direct his younger daughters, Olga and Elena, in home plays they produced together. (His eldest daughter, Natalia, lived with her mother and her new family in a communal apartment in a different building; Olga and Elena lived with him and their governess and maid; his son, Dima, lived with his mother in the apartment next door; Arosev split his time between his younger daughters and his new wife and son.) Feliks Kon liked to play charades with his wife and grown children; Osinsky’s wife, Ekaterina Smirnova, and her children played “literary games.”⁹ Literary games came in a variety of forms. Arosev’s daughters had a special bookshelf.

He would put some books on the shelf, quite a few, and we were supposed to read them all by the end of the week. And not only that—we also had to report, either orally or in writing, on what we had read. That was to make sure we hadn’t cheated by claiming to have read something we hadn’t. But we didn’t need to be forced. We loved to read and often read into the night. We used to go to bed late because we always waited up for Dad—and he often had receptions in the evening at VOKS. We used to listen for the elevator, try to figure out which floor it was stopping on, and then, when we heard his key in the lock, quickly jump into bed and pretend to be asleep. Dad would come in thinking we were sleeping, give us a kiss, and then go over to Apartment 103 or straight to bed.¹⁰

Most fathers closely monitored their children’s reading, which included the same books they had read themselves in prison and exile (and continued to reread), in a particular order. Osinsky, according to his daughter, Svetlana, “was very strict about it, and did not allow us to take books off the shelves without his permission. Only once, I remember, I … there was no one in his study, and he wasn’t supposed to be coming back, so I got Dante down and was looking through the Divine Comedy with those scary pictures by Doré. And just at that moment, he walked in. But instead of yelling, he said, well … when the time comes, we’ll read Dante.”¹¹

“We’ll read Dante” might mean either “I’ll tell you when the time comes to read Dante,” or “I’ll read Dante to you when the time comes.” Reading aloud was an old form of noble—and, later, intelligentsia—sociability, an important way of establishing and maintaining spiritual intimacy between friends and lovers and within families. It had also been a part of the Old Bolshevik prison and exile experience. Osinsky had first listened to his father reading aloud and then read aloud to his fellow reading-circle members and later to his lover, Anna Shaternikova (their relationship had continued into the 1930s). Now it was his children’s turn:

Not too frequently, but not so infrequently either, he would read aloud to us. We had our own special ritual. We would sit down on the couch, and the three of us took turns sitting next to him. He would prepare a special drink, which we called “wine” (I think it was probably watered-down fruit syrup), and give each of us a little glass. He would open the book, and total bliss followed. Afterward, we would always beg: “Keep reading, Dad!” and Dad never ignored our pleas…. I remember reading Jules Verne. Huge, heavy atlases in leather bindings would be opened up before us so that we could trace the routes of the ships and look for the places where the Mysterious Island might be or where Captain Grant’s children had come ashore. Dad read Dickens to us. We particularly loved Great Expectations with its funny beginning, and Joe Gargery’s famous words to young Pip, “WOT LARX,” became a household saying.¹²

The Osinskys also read Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Korolenko, Longfellow, Victor Hugo, Alphonse Daudet, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Heine, Oscar Wilde, and Kipling, among others. Kerzhentsev, who had debated Osinsky at Moscow Gymnasium No. 7 in 1905, read Dickens, Pushkin, and Gogol to his daughter, Natalia. Arosev read Gogol’s Dead Souls to his daughters the day before taking them to see the Art Theater’s adaptation of the novel on May 30, 1935, which was a day off. The director of the Archive of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and former Soviet trade representative in Turkey, Akim Yuriev (Apt. 467), read Gibbon to his daughter.¹³ He may have gotten the idea from everyone’s favorite writer:

“Bought him at a sale,” said Mr Boffin. “Eight wollumes. Red and gold. Purple ribbon in every wollume, to keep the place where you leave off. Do you know him?”

“The book’s name, sir?” inquired Silas.

“I thought you might have know’d him without it,” said Mr Boffin slightly disappointed. “His name is Decline-And-Fall-Off-The-Rooshan-Empire.” (Mr Boffin went over these stones slowly and with much caution.)

“Ay indeed!” said Mr Wegg, nodding his head with an air of friendly recognition.

“You know him, Wegg?”

“I haven’t been not to say right slap through him, very lately,” Mr Wegg made answer, “having been otherways employed, Mr Boffin. But know him? Old familiar declining and falling off the Rooshan? Rather, sir!”¹⁴

■ ■ ■

Having guests over for dinner was not common practice. Chess partners might come over in the evenings, but they tended to stay in the study. So would card (mostly Preferans) players, who were more numerous and usually stayed longer. The head of the Alcoholic Beverages Directorate, Abram Gilinsky, used to play with his deputies; the head of the Bookselling Directorate, David Shvarts, played with his brother, brother-in-law, and best friend, Aleksandr Kon (Feliks’s son). While the men were playing, the women might go off to the theater or talk in the dining room. Card playing was particularly popular among NKVD officials. On his visits to Kiev, Sergei Mironov used to play with the deputy head of the Ukrainian NKVD, Z. B. Katsnelson. Agnessa, who liked going to Kiev to shop, normally came with him.¹⁵

We went over to Balitsky’s deputy’s house every day. Mirosha really enjoyed those visits and would sit up half the night playing cards for money. The three of them—Balitsky’s deputy, Mirosha, and another high official—played for high stakes. Balitsky didn’t take part in the game and didn’t even know about it. They would sit in the study, while we wives sat in the living room and gossiped about everyone we knew for lack of anything better to do.

Sometimes, late in the evening, Mirosha would rush in:

“Aga, give me some money!”

That meant he was losing. I would give it to him—what else could I do? But I’d be furious. There went all my big shopping plans! Sometimes he’d gamble all our money away in one night. We’d leave, and I’d start in on him:

“How could you lose so much?!”

But he would just chuckle:

“Don’t worry, you’ll get it all back.”

And, amazingly enough, I would. The next day Mirosha would bring me money—lots of money.

It turned out that Mironov had been losing on purpose and that, soon after each loss, he would receive a special reward from Katsnelson for good service.¹⁶

But then Ezhov became the people’s commissar of internal affairs, his friend Frinovsky became his deputy, and his friend Mironov became the head of the NKVD Directorate of West Siberia, where the local Party boss, Robert Eikhe (Roberts Eihe), was afraid of him. Neither Mironov, nor Agnessa, had to lose to anyone anymore.

In Novosibirsk we were given the former governor-general’s mansion. A guard was posted at the gate to protect us.

We had a huge garden with a stage, where local actors used to perform for us. There was also a separate little house for billiards, and, inside the mansion itself, a film screening room that had been built especially for us. As the first lady of the city, I got to choose from a list which film I wanted to see that day.

I had my own “court” and was surrounded by “ladies-in-waiting”—the wives of the top brass. Who to invite and who not to invite was my decision, and they all competed for my favor. And though I might ask for their opinion, I was the one who chose the films.

Sometimes, as we sat in the viewing room watching a film, the “toadies” would come in with fruit and cakes. Of course, you’re right, that’s not the right word. “Servants” would be more accurate, but I used to call them “toadies”—they always tried so hard to please and anticipate our every wish. They were constantly hovering around. These days they’re called the “help” (rather than “servants,” like in the old days).

They would sometimes bring in these cakes—do you know them? They had ice cream inside and were covered in flaming alcohol, but you could eat them without getting burned. Just imagine all those little blue lights glowing in the darkened room. Of course I didn’t eat them very often myself. I was always watching my weight and mostly ate only oranges.¹⁷

In the House of Government, such displays were physically impossible and socially unacceptable; even simple dinner parties were rare. There were some exceptions, however. The Shvarts and the Gaisters were friends and frequently invited each other for dinner. Both families, with similar lower-class Pale of Settlement roots, were large, loud, successful, and sociable. At one point, the Gaisters’ maid got tired of having to deal with so many last-minute dinner invitations and left them to work for the commander of the Soviet Air Force, Yakov (Jēkabs) Alksnis, who lived in Apt. 100, one floor above Aron Gaister’s brother, Semen (Siunia). She returned one month later, probably because she missed the Gaister children, whom she had raised. Another frequent host was Karl Radek, who was known for his eccentricity and, according to Elina Kisis, his poodle, Devil, who used to greet all the visitors to his apartment. “If the guests did not immediately remove their hats, Devil would jump up from behind and come down with a hat between his teeth. He was always given a seat at the dinner table and a plate of food that he would carefully munch on.” According to Elina Kisis, Radek’s daughter Sofia “was a glamorous girl. She had all kinds of admirers, mostly pilots. Sometimes they got drunk and threw up in the bathroom.”¹⁸

Writers liked to stage large gatherings complete with public readings. They were also—along with famous actors and artists—in constant demand as celebrity guests at government receptions and birthday parties for nomenklatura officials. Koltsov was a regular at many of them, often several in one evening. Arosev, who could not stand Koltsov, was, too—both as a fiction writer and as head of the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties with Foreign Countries (VOKS). October 24, 1934, exactly one month after Arosev bought his volume of Petrarch, was another day off:

Went to see Dimitrov. Raskolnikov also there. Dimitrov serious, charming, and dressed in military uniform that doesn’t suit him. He has beautiful hands, truly beautiful. Discussed Bulgarian affairs. Went home. Barbusse and Gosset already there.

The Raskolnikovs arrived. Had warm and friendly conversation about fascist atrocities. Barbusse cited many facts. About last days of our own Russian Revolution, I took lead. Mentioned so many interesting facts, our French visitors demanded I write it all up and have it translated.

Wouldn’t mind—except editors illiterate and have blunted sense of beauty.

At 9 p.m., after Barbusse and Gosset left, wife and I went to Tarasov-Rodionov’s. Usual crowd there. Also Kamenev, wonderful pianist named Lugovskoy, and Comrade Chinenov (former soldier, wonderful fellow, and sensitive revolutionary—very modest), who’s leaving for Far East and came to say goodbye to me. Pianist played well. Especially Liszt piece dedicated to “Lyon Weavers’ Revolt.” I did dramatic readings of Chekhov and Zoshchenko and made such an impression that Kamenev began reciting Voloshin’s poetry (in usual monotone, but with some embellishments).¹⁹

Dimitrov, the star of the Reichstag Fire Trial, had recently arrived to a hero’s welcome and embarked on a campaign against Piatnitsky’s “Third Period” policy of restoring sectarian purity within the Comintern. His wife had committed suicide in Moscow the year before, while he was still in prison in Berlin. Two weeks after Arosev came to see him, he was joined by Rosa Fleischmann, a Viennese journalist (originally from Moravia) whom he had met in 1927. She stayed on to become his second wife, Roza Yulievna Dimitrova (in Apt. 249 and later Apt. 235). Fedor Raskolnikov (Larisa Reisner’s first husband) had just been named Soviet ambassador to Bulgaria. The novelist Henri Barbusse was writing a biography of Stalin; the journalist Hélène Gosset was trying to get an interview with Stalin; the writer Tarasov-Rodionov had been a literary ally of Arosev’s in the 1920s (his much-debated 1922 novella, “Chocolate,” was about the emasculation of Chekists by the feminine sweetness of NEP).²⁰

Arosev had long wanted to be an actor, as well as a writer, and often performed in front of his friends and colleagues. On March 10, 1937, after a long day at work, he came home, signed a life insurance policy, discussed his daughter Olga’s cold with her doctor, and then walked over to Serafimovich’s apartment. Other guests included the Spanish ambassador, the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, the painter Petr Konchalovsky, and the writer Stepan Skitalets. “We sang, danced, and performed dramatic readings. Came home at 2 a.m. Only positive thing, I think, was that I recited Maya-kovsky and Chekhov. That always makes me feel brave and honest about myself. Skitalets told me I read more expressively than a professional actor. Especially ‘The Thinker.’ My ‘Thinker’ is not funny, but frightening. ‘Chekhov himself had no idea he’d created such a devil,’ Skitalets said. ‘It’s the devil who tempts his “interlocutor.”’”²¹

Aleksandr Arosev reciting Chekhov

Serafimovich continued to run his circle for former proletarian writers and amateur singers. “I have known few people,” wrote Fedor Gladkov, “with the same passion for friendly gatherings and the same need for constant human companionship. When friends were over, he would always be the one to start singing. He sang with pleasure and abandon—and would get very annoyed if anyone sat silently off to the side. ‘Sing, by god, sing! All together now!’ he would bellow, and start waving his arms around like a conductor.” Elena Usievich, who once made common cause with Serafimovich against Leopold Averbakh, liked to host regular late-night poetry readings. One of her discoveries was Pavel Vasiliev, who was married to Gronsky’s sister-in-law and often stayed in Gronsky’s apartment, where some of the largest gatherings took place. Gronsky’s job was “to guide the work of the Soviet and foreign intelligentsia” on Stalin’s behalf. His most frequent guests were the realist (AKhRR) painters Isaak Brodsky, Boris Ioganson, Evgeny Katsman, Viktor Perelman, Vasily Svarog, and Pavel Radimov (who was also a poet) and the poets Sergei Gorodetsky, Aleksandr Zharov, and Pavel Vasiliev. Another frequent guest and one of the top Soviet officials was Valerian Kuibyshev. According to Gronsky’s wife Lydia,

He would come over not only to converse with artists and poets, but also just to relax. He particularly enjoyed hearing the Svarogs sing.

The painter Vasily Semenovich Svarog and his wife Larisa were frequent guests at our place. He would bring his guitar or banjo, and they would sing Neapolitan songs. Later he presented Valerian Vladimirovich with a knee-length portrait of Larisa, beautifully painted in a broad style—with Larisa in a dark dress with a bright shawl over her shoulders. The Svarogs’ visits were like holidays for me: with singing, conversations about socialist realism, and the rejection of everything alien: formalism, naturalism, etc.²²

Another one of Lydia’s favorites was Pavel Radimov. Once she visited him in his studio behind the altar of a church on Nikolskaia Street, near Red Square. He almost ruined the experience by offering to get a bottle of wine, but she did not hold it against him—so “sunny and joyous” was his art. She remembered his first meeting with Kuibyshev in their apartment:

All three painter friends—Radimov, Katsman, and Perelman—were sitting around the table, as usual. Kuibyshev asked Radimov:

“What’s your job? What do you do?”

“I’m a poet,” Radimov answered.

“What kind of poet?”

“The peasant kind.”

Kuibyshev filled a glass of vodka and handed it to Radimov, who, without hesitating, knocked it back with a satisfied grunt.

“Now I can see you really are the peasant kind,” said Kuibyshev, with a laugh.²³

Radimov was a priest’s son; Kuibyshev, an officer’s. In May 1933, Stalin wrote to Gronsky accusing him of abetting Kuibyshev’s drinking. Gronsky responded by saying that the purpose of the parties at his place was “to use the conversations between Communists and non-Party people in order to recruit the non-Party ones and draw them into the Party.” The result was that “a large number of undecided non-Party people have been drawn to our side, the proof of which, in the case of the writers, can be found in their published works.” As for Kuibyshev, continued Gronsky, he did not come over as often as he used to. “I used to see Comrade Kuibyshev more often, but after I noticed that he was drinking heavily, I decided to see less of him and, when I did see him, to discourage him from drinking so much. For example, if I went to his dacha, I would try to distract him from drinking by getting him involved in volleyball games. At my place (especially if he was already tipsy when he arrived), I would ask some of the comrades (his close friends) to keep him from drinking, and we would often succeed in getting him to switch to ‘Napereuli’ [Georgian wine] or tea.”²⁴

The problem was that many of Kuibyshev’s friends, especially the painter, Svarog, were heavy drinkers themselves, and Gronsky was not sure he could be successful in the long run. More to the point, he was not sure he was the right man “to guide the work of the Soviet and foreign intelligentsia.” His letter to Stalin ended with a confession and a plea:

I have established contacts with hundreds of people from the intelligentsia milieu. Many of them come to visit me, I visit many of them, and they all approach me with various requests, ask for advice, call me on the phone, write letters, etc., etc. It is a unique, important aspect of Party work that no one notices, but one that literally wears me out. Once I counted all the telephone calls I received, and it turned out that I was answering 100 to 200 calls a day. I could ignore them, but these people are extremely quick to take offense. If you miss a call, don’t visit, or fail to invite them over from time to time, these people get their feelings hurt, and these feelings, unfortunately, can easily be transferred to the Party and the Soviet state, not to mention the literary organizations. Besides, they all squabble, scheme, gossip, flatter each other, and try to cobble together all kinds of opportunistic groups and caucuses. I need to delve into every aspect, keep track of all the petty intrigues, and continue to push my line, without antagonizing any of the writers or painters, but without making any concessions, either. I have never had a job that was so difficult and so devilishly complicated.

Valerian Kuibyshev

Ivan Gronsky, 1931

Even Voronsky and the RAPPists, “who had been specializing in literature and the arts for a number of years,” had failed at it. He, a former worker, had to master high culture even as he was supervising its fractious practitioners. “Perhaps I am not suited for this job,” he concluded. “If so, I should be replaced by another comrade, but the work itself must go on because it is, in effect, a struggle for the intelligentsia. If we do not lead the intelligentsia, our enemies will. I can see it at every step.”²⁵

Gronsky kept his job for another year or so (before being replaced by several comrades, including Stetsky and Kerzhentsev on the domestic front and Arosev on the foreign one). Lydia Gronskaia’s favorite memories of the time they spent guiding the work of the Soviet and foreign intelligentsia were Sergei Obraztsov’s puppet show in their apartment (“I remember a basso profundo doll with an endlessly stretchable neck, but the real sensation was a song ‘We’re Just Friends,’ performed by two little dogs”); a party for about thirty guests at which Tolstoy’s granddaughter, Anna Ilinichna, played the guitar and sang romances (“melancholy yearning and wild abandon flowed freely, enchanting the grateful audience”); and a small soiree in Petr Konchalovsky’s studio:

We were drinking cognac. The dinner-table conversation was very interesting. It was about art. It was easy to follow and interesting. Not like the political discussions, which bored me. Gorodetsky’s wife, Nympha Alekseevna—a beautiful, statuesque woman—did not join in the conversation, as I recall. I watched these people with wide-eyed awe. If I remember correctly, Petr Petrovich began singing “Don’t Tempt Me in Vain,” and I got up the courage to sing along. He looked surprised, gave me a big smile, and walked over and sat down at the piano. The two of us (I was shy at first, but then grew more confident) sang the entire romance.²⁶

There were other House residents with artistic connections and bohemian inclinations. Khalatov, the former head of the publishing directorate, and Yakov Doletsky (Jakób Dolecki/Fenigstein), the head of the Soviet Telegraph Agency (TASS), were, according to Gronsky, old drinking partners of Kuibyshev and Svarog. (Svarog painted portraits of Khalatov’s and Arosev’s daughters, as well as Kuibyshev and other Party leaders. His best-known painting was I. V. Stalin and the Members of Politburo in Gorky Park, Surrounded by Children.) Khalatov’s cousin, who had a room in his House apartment, was an Art Theater actress and later a radio announcer. Doletsky’s friend, Romuald Muklevich, liked to entertain artists and hung their paintings on his walls. All of them, and many others, had friends among the theater actors.²⁷

Vasily Svarog, I. V. Stalin and the Members of Politburo in Gorky Park, Surrounded by Children

■ ■ ■

Most adult House residents led quiet lives within their families, with guests coming over a few times a year, on special occasions. The most common special occasions were birthdays, celebrated by most adults and all children. The other rites of passage—weddings and funerals, as well as Pioneer, Komsomol, and Party induction ceremonies—were normally conducted outside the home, although the Gaisters did organize a wedding party for Aron’s brother-in-law, Veniamin Kaplan (Rakhil’s brother). Perhaps the only ones to have had a “proper” wedding with elements of the traditional East Slavic rural ceremony were Sergei Mironov and Agnessa Argiropulo, (neither of whom came from a rural East Slavic background). The reason they could do it was that they were not yet living in the House of Government.

For several years after Mirosha and I left Rostov, my husband, Zarnitsky, waited for me, believing that I would return. But after five years he asked for a divorce because he wanted to remarry.

All the marriage registry offices in Dnepropetrovsk Province were under Mirosha’s control, so one day he summoned a registry office employee to our house. That employee dissolved my marriage to Zarnitsky and Mirosha’s to his wife Gusta (in those days both spouses did not have to be present) and then married Mirosha and me. The whole thing—two divorces and one marriage—took half an hour to complete.

Soon afterwards Mirosha had to go to Kiev, and I always tried to accompany him. We arrived in Kiev, but news of our marriage had arrived before us, and everyone kept congratulating us. V. A. Balitsky, the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, kept laughing and demanding a wedding.

V. A. Balitsky (Courtesy of Nikita Petrov)

It all happened so quickly I didn’t even have time to order a white dress. Balitsky gave us some money for the wedding—government money, of course, what else? They used to hand it out in envelopes in those days, you know. The place they picked out for the wedding was an NKVD dacha on the bank of the Dnieper. They thought of everything! Their people did a brilliant job organizing it all—everyone wanted to have a good time.

There was still the problem of the dress … One woman offered me her wedding dress, but it had already been worn! So I politely refused.

I ended up wearing a light green dress trimmed with gold buttons, but nobody seemed to mind. Everyone was having a great time. They wanted us to kiss, but when Mirosha told them we’d been married for twelve years—six years of living together without a license and six years of “underground apprenticeship,” they all started shouting at once: “To hell with the underground apprenticeship! We don’t want to hear about it! We want the rest of your life to begin now. And for you to be newlyweds!”

Everyone really wanted it to be like the real thing.

I had to carry around a tray with a glass of vodka while everyone sang: “Whose turn is it to empty the glass?” I would go up to each man in turn, and he would drink the vodka, kiss me, and place some money on the tray.

When I got to Balitsky—a handsome man, tall, strapping, blond, a regular Siegfried—they sang their song and waited. What would happen next? I knew that Balitsky liked me, but his wife was sitting right beside him. She was a pathetic, mean little thing and never took her eyes off him for a moment. He downed the vodka in one gulp, but with her glaring at him, he didn’t dare kiss me—though he did put a silver ruble on the tray. At that time, they were very rare.

After the banquet everyone started shouting: “Lock them in the bedroom”—and they did. But I begged them to let me out, saying that Mironov would fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow (he used to get very tired), and that I wanted to go on having fun with the rest of them. So they let me out.

That’s how, in the summer of 1936, I became Mironov’s legal wife.²⁸

The next-most-common special occasion—and by far the most popular public holiday—was New Year’s Eve. German-style Christmas celebrations had spread in Russia in the 1840s and quickly become the center of the annual cycle for urban families and a life-defining experience for noble and bourgeois children. The Orthodox Church had protested repeatedly, and traditional peasant celebrations remained largely unaffected, but most turn-of-the-century urbanites had grown up with the regular rite of midnight magic associated with the domesticated version of the axis mundi. (Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, which premiered in St. Petersburg in 1892, followed a well-established mythic pattern.) Bolshevism, like all new faiths, viewed competing sacred calendars as pagan superstitions and campaigned vigorously against them. During the reconstruction period of the late 1920s, the Christmas tree was, in effect, banned, although some true-believer families, including the Kerzhentsevs and the Mikhailovs, continued to decorate fir trees for their children (correctly assuming, one suspects, that the E.T.A. Hoffmann and Hans Christian Andersen versions they had grown up with had little to do with the cult of baby Jesus). The official position was clarified in late 1935. According to Khrushchev (who lived in Apt. 206),

One day Stalin called me and said: “Get over to the Kremlin. The Ukrainians are here. I want you to take them around Moscow and show them the city.” I immediately went over there. Kosior, Postyshev, and Liubchenko were with Stalin…. “They want to see Moscow,” said Stalin. “Let’s go.” We walked out and climbed into Stalin’s car. We all managed to squeeze in. We talked as we drove around…. At some point, Postyshev asked: “Comrade Stalin, wouldn’t a Christmas tree celebration be a good tradition, one that would appeal to the people and bring joy, especially to the children? We’ve been condemning it, but why not give the tree back to the children?” Stalin agreed: “Take the initiative, publish your suggestion to give the tree back to the children in the press, and we’ll support you.”²⁹

On December 28, 1935, Pravda published Postyshev’s letter, itself based on a familiar Hans Christian Andersen image, but substituting “New Year” for Christmas:

In prerevolutionary times, the bourgeoisie and their officials always staged New Year Tree celebrations for their children. The children of the workers would look on with envy through the windows at the tree ablaze with gaily colored lights and the rich men’s children making merry around it.

Why do our schools, orphanages, kindergartens, children’s clubs, and palaces of young pioneers deprive the children of the Soviet working class of this wonderful joy? Some deviationists, probably of the “left” variety, have labeled this children’s entertainment a bourgeois invention.

It is time we put an end to this improper condemnation of the New Year Tree, which is a wonderful entertainment for children. Komsomol members and Young Pioneer instructors should stage mass New Year Tree celebrations for children. Children’s New Year Tree celebrations must take place everywhere—in schools, orphanages, palaces of young pioneers, children’s clubs, and children’s theaters and movie theaters. There should not be a single kolkhoz where the governing board, together with the Komsomol members, does not organize a New Year’s Eve party for its children. Municipal councils, heads of district executive committees, rural soviets, and local public education offices must help stage New Year Tree celebrations for the children of our great socialist Motherland.³⁰

The celebrations were duly held in all the towns and kolkhozes. As Maia Peterson wrote to her father, who had recently been removed from his position as commandant of the Kremlin and transferred to Kiev: “Comrade Postyshev ordered all the children to decorate a New Year tree.” (Maia’s brother Igor had made a red star with a little light bulb inside to put on top of their tree.)³¹

New Year’s Eve quickly became the most popular Soviet holiday—an elaborate, state-managed public production reflected and replicated in every home. For most Russian intelligentsia members and their peers from rich men’s families, it was, indeed, a return. For most Jewish Bolsheviks, it was a welcome substitute for the rejected family traditions. For most ordinary Soviets, it was a “Christmas” miracle. (The Little Match Girl lit a match—and “there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant’s house. Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her.”) The only House residents who did not celebrate New Year’s Eve were those former workers who had remained workers in taste and habit. Among them were the families of the prize-winning foreman Mikhail Tuchin (who now worked in Gorky Park and often came home drunk or not at all) and the “barely literate and politically underdeveloped baker,” Boris Ivanov. Ivanov’s wife, Elena Zlatkina, was perhaps unique among the House of Government Jewish residents in showing little interest in upward mobility by way of cultural imitation. One of her brothers, Ilya Zlatkin, became a diplomat, and later, a prominent historian of Mongolia; she, even in retirement, remained a seamstress alongside her husband, who was still a baker. Tuchin’s and Ivanov’s daughters were close friends; Zinaida Tuchina, whose parents were never home during the day, often ate with the Ivanovs.³²

One year after Postyshev’s decree was issued, People’s Commissar of Internal Trade Izrail Veitser organized a New Year tree bazaar in downtown Moscow. He asked his wife, Natalia Sats, to direct the festivities:

It was the winter holidays at the end of December 1936. There were New Year trees everywhere—in shop windows, in the arms of passers-by, red-cheeked from the cold—and everyone was preparing for a joyful New Year’s Eve celebration. But it was at its most joyful on Manege Square, near the Kremlin, where, right before your eyes, a fairytale town emerged: huts on chicken legs, a gingerbread house, the house of the puppet girl Malvina, a fir-tree forest, an open-air zoo, a children’s “airport” with hot-air balloons taking off with their little passengers, and a huge, twenty-meter-high New Year tree decorated with wonderful ornaments. You could pick out Buratino in his bright cap, the Swan-Princess, the Golden Fish, and other characters from popular children’s theater shows. They were not hard to spot: these ornaments were the size of small children, and they stood out gaily among the glittering decorations and bright lights of the New Year tree, so resplendent in its green velvet robe.³³

Buratino and Malvina were both characters from Aleksei Tolstoy’s deliberately unfaithful 1935 adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio. True to the new amusement park image of Soviet childhood, Tolstoy’s The Golden Key tried to be more entertaining and less moralistic: the new hero Buratino was to Pinocchio what Huck Finn had been to Tom Sawyer (two other Soviet childhood favorites). At the end of the story, Buratino does not become human: he redefines himself as a puppet in his own theater. Natalia Sats’s first production in her theater’s new building on Sverdlov Square was a show based on The Golden Key. She had spent several months trying to persuade Tolstoy to adapt it for her theater and finally succeeded by supplying his new wife (and former secretary) with foreign fashion magazines. Natalia Sats’s Children’s Theater (saved by Koltsov, renamed the “Central,” and reborn next to the Bolshoi on the spot where Doubting Makar begins his journey through Moscow) represented the end of Buratino’s quest: a theater of free, self-directed puppets. The text was serialized in Pionerskaia Pravda, and some critics compared the adventures of Buratino to Hubert’s travels in Wonderland. The show premiered on December 10, 1936, about two weeks before the opening of the first New Year’s Eve Bazaar and about a two-minute walk away.³⁴

On December 31, Veitser, as usual, worked all day. Natalia waited for him in their House apartment. “He came home late—and froze in amazement. I had bought and decorated a little New Year tree and lit the candles. What happiness it is to do something for a man who can appreciate even the smallest sign of attention!”³⁵

■ ■ ■

The most public of Soviet public holidays were the May 1 International Workers’ Day and the November 7 Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution. On May 2, 1932, Adoratsky wrote to his daughter, Varia:

On one side of the House of Government, at the top, we have Lenin’s portrait, and on the other, Stalin is gazing out over the Moscow River…. The Stone Bridge has been decorated to look like one of the steamships that will arrive in Moscow after they finish the Moscow–Volga Canal, which will be 140 kilometers long and have 9 locks and four power stations (according to the inscription on the bridge).

The street decorations and signs carried by the parade participants suggest that the whole production has been carefully planned and they make an extremely good impression with their perfect symmetry.³⁶

The whole production had, indeed, been carefully planned. Preparations usually began about two months in advance. Plans were fulfilled, workers rewarded, rallies organized, streets cleaned, speeches scripted, signs painted, and parade marchers selected and instructed. According to the special “May Day” instructions issued in 1933 by the Party committee of Moscow’s Lenin District, which included the House of Government, “all drafts of all decorations of all enterprises, offices, and educational institutions, streets, large shop windows, artistic installations, posters, photo exhibits etc., as well as everything to be carried by parade participants, their performances, floats, etc. must be approved by the district’s Artistic Subcommittee.” The House of Government was to decorate itself and the Big Stone Bridge; the theme of the bridge decoration was to be “Moscow’s municipal economy.” In preparation for the November 7 celebration in 1934, the House of Government administration spent 351.76 rubles on the repair, upholstering, and mounting of the three-meter-high wooden letters in “Long Live,” and 403.49 rubles on the manufacture, upholstering, and mounting of the illuminated letters in “Worldwide October.” The total for all the decoration work, not counting materials and including the construction of scaffolding, restoration of the portraits of Comrades Stalin and Kalinin, painting of new portraits of Comrades Lenin and Kaganovich, painting of 150 slogans and their placement on balconies, mounting of a ten-meter star on the club balcony, and hoisting of two flags on top of the building and 150 flags above the club, was 10,287.25 rubles (based on a special hardship rate “given the building’s height and the particular inconvenience of having to carry out the work in a hanging position”). The overall decoration budget was 20,000 rubles; the shock worker bonus budget, 12,000 rubles.³⁷

Shock workers were workers who consistently overfulfilled the plan. In the House of Government, it paid to be a shock worker: the average holiday bonus was approximately equal to a month’s salary. In November 1935, the stairway cleaner Smorchkova and floor-polisher Barbosov received 80 rubles each, the painter Apollonov and laundress Kartoshkina, 100 rubles, and the “administrative-technical” employee Mokeev, 300 rubles. Mokeev’s colleague, Mosienko, received only a diploma because he was just back from a free trip to a Crimean resort; the senior guard Emelian Ivchenko, who talked the lost Leningrad port employee, Anna, into a marriage of convenience, received 200 rubles (they had just had their first child, and Anna’s mother had moved in to help). Altogether, out of the ninety-five people proposed by the various departments within the building, eighty-nine were approved by the “socialist competition committee.” The six rejected candidates were replaced by those whose “commitment to the cause has brought great benefits to our House.” (Between October 1934 and September 1935, the proportion of shock workers among House staff members had increased from 34.1 percent to 43.9 percent. About one-third of them received holiday bonuses.) The House Party Committee Secretary M. A. Znot, Trade Union Committee Chairman K. I. Zhiltsov, and House Commandant V. A. Irbe and his two deputies could only be rewarded by the Central Executive Committee Housekeeping Department on the recommendation of the House Socialist Competition Committee. The committee duly recommended that, “taking into account their extraordinary management of a complex enterprise and large staff,” they be rewarded “as our very best shock workers, who have achieved high marks in their management of the House.”³⁸

The festivities usually began the night before. According to Hubert’s memoir of Wonderland,

On the eve of May 1st [1934] on the streets of Moscow, one could hear the sound of hammers late into the night. The last nails were being driven in, wires suspended, and floodlights connected. At night the red cloth of the banners looked especially beautiful, illuminated by the white light. A forest of flags filled several squares.

When it grew dark, long, multicolored beams of light from the floodlights appeared in the sky and lit up the city for much of the night. Factories, power stations, workers’ clubs, and offices had been decorated with brightly colored electric lights. There were huge portraits of Lenin and Stalin hanging everywhere.

May First demonstration in front of the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square

Festive crowds swarmed through the streets to the sound of loud music, which was being transmitted over the radio at every corner and intersection. The whole city was taking part in the joyous celebration.³⁹

Early the next morning, most House residents would go watch the parade. High nomenklatura members would have passes to Red Square (the higher the rank, the closer to Stalin); the rest would line up along the route or stroll around listening to the music and enjoying the festive decorations and celebrating crowds. Those who stayed behind (various guards, servants, old people, and some wives) would listen to the live radio broadcast. Adoratsky, who did have a pass, described the 1932 May Day parade in his May 2 letter to his daughter:

This year’s parade was wonderful. It began, as usual, with Voroshilov, on a beautiful stallion, inspecting the troops (not only on Red Square but also on Resurrection Square and, I believe, the right side of Theater Square, as well). Next, he made a fifteen-minute speech and read the text of the oath, with each phrase being repeated by everyone standing in the square in a thousand vibrant voices. Then the cannons on Tainitskaia Tower fired their salutes (a lot of them—at least thirty salvoes), which sounded like thunder. After that, the marching columns appeared. First came the cadets from the Military Academy of the Red Army Command and the Central Executive Committee School, Navy pilots, various infantry units, cavalrymen on foot, and even militiamen in their gray helmets and white gloves. Then came the student battalions in civilian dress with rifles slung over their backs and partisan units, which included some graybeards. Next came the Komsomol battalions in gray tunics and Komsomol girls wearing the red scarves of the communications services. Then came the units with German shepherds (they serve, too). Next came the horse-drawn artillery, then artillery on trucks, then APCs, tanks of different kinds, and radio stations that looked like carriages with radio transmitters mounted on the roof. Above the tanks more than a hundred airplanes, including some five-engine giants, were flying in neat formations.⁴⁰

The Bolshevik public holidays marked key moments in the Bolsheviks’ private lives. The history of the Party and the biographies of faithful Party members were, in theory and in personal recollections, one and the same thing. Bolsheviks who were also close friends were Bolsheviks who had experienced key moments in Party history at the same time and in the same way. The May Day celebrations in forest clearings on the eve of the real day had been celebrations of shared faith as shared youth (“we are the young spring’s messengers, she has sent us on ahead”); the October Revolution was to be the birth of the new world and the rebirth of its messengers.

Nikolai Podvoisky and his wife Nina Didrikil had met at a May Day celebration in 1905, when he was twenty-five and she was twenty-three. By October 1917, when he, as the chairman of the Petrograd Military-Revolutionary Committee, was guiding “the stormy stream” toward the Winter Palace, they already had three children. On April 28, 1933, Nikolai wrote to his wife from the House of Government:

My darling, darling, darling Ninochka, pride of my heart and our mighty fortress! I am sending you a great big hug from home (the biggest possible), kisses, and, once again, congratulations on our military parade day…. It is with great pride that I will stand on Red Square on May 1, sensing your presence, your shoulder next to mine, and our two Bolshevik hearts beating in unison. I will rejoice in the knowledge that, since May 1, 1905, you and I have always stood together and cut through the elements and through the waves aligned against the proletariat: by force of arms, when necessary; when not, with words, by example, or through study.⁴¹

All successfully routinized new faiths graft their sacred chronology onto the natural cycle of eternal return and the personal life cycle of individual believers. The Bolsheviks had done well on the first score: the two great revolutionary holidays—November 7 and May 1—invoked traditional harvest (Thanksgiving, Pokrov, Sukkot) and spring rebirth (Easter, Passover, Nowruz) festivals, with New Year’s Eve joining them later as Postyshev’s winter equinox miracle. The second requirement—the extension of the universal chronology into the home and the transformation of family rites into state-regulated sacraments—remained unfulfilled. As Trotsky had written in 1926, “in the most important spheres, the revolutionary symbols of the workers’ state are innovative, clear, and powerful…. But in the closed-off cells of family life, these new elements are almost nonexistent—or too few, at any rate.” Ten years later, they were still too few or nonexistent: what had changed was that no one worried about them anymore. In 1926, Koltsov had written that whereas he, “a progressive person free of prejudices,” did not need home reinforcement for his revolutionary faith, the “laborers lost in the forests” might benefit from dressing up their baptisms, weddings, and funerals in new Soviet garb. But with the triumph of the First Five-Year Plan and the inauguration of Bolshevik Augustinianism, no one was lost in the forests anymore, and no one tried to connect family rites of passage to the official canon (the way Jews and Christians do). The socialist “base” had been laid; the appropriate “superstructure” would arise by itself. Marxism had left the Party with no instructions concerning the “closed-off cells of family life,” and the Party offered no guidance to the cells. Everyone was lost in the forests, but on the threshold of a new era, it did not matter.

In the House of Government, as elsewhere, virtuous home behavior had to be improvised. No one knew what to do after the May Day military parade was over. Osinsky, for one, did nothing at all: he used to bring his children home from Red Square and then resume his usual study routine (or sneak out to see Shaternikova). Neither, at the other end of the class spectrum, did the prize-winning foreman Mikhail Tuchin and his wife, Tatiana. The biggest day of the year for them was Tatiana’s saint’s day. Relatives (but not friends or apartment neighbors) would come over, drink a lot of vodka, and eat Tatiana’s pies, vatrushki (pastries with sweet cheese), jellied meat and fish, and assorted pickles (which she made herself). Another—much smaller—holiday was Easter, complete with the traditional Easter breads (kulichi) and sweet cheese dessert (paskha). On regular days off, Tuchin read newspapers, books about Cossacks, and adventure stories, while Tatiana made pies and read Health and Female Worker magazines. It is not known whether the stairway cleaner Smorchkova, floor-polisher Barbosov, painter Apollonov, or laundress Kartoshkina celebrated any of the three great Soviet holidays.⁴²

The Rykovs followed the turning-Christmas-into-New Year’s model by moving Easter to May Day. Their maid, Anna Matveevna (an experienced domestic who had, as she put it, “worked in good homes,” including Zinaida Morozova’s) would use eighty egg yolks to make a large batch of kulichi: a huge one for the entire family, a large one for the father, a medium-size one for the mother, and small ones for each of the children. “It was, as they say, a sacred ritual in our home,” according to Natalia Rykova. “We were not allowed to run or to bang doors for any reason, or else the dough might fall.” The Ivanovs celebrated May 1 by combining Easter, Soroki (the traditional rural spring festival), and Passover meals: Boris did the baking, while Elena made gefilte fish. The same dishes, except for the special spring “lark” cookies, were served on Revolution Day.⁴³

But most House residents found “religious” trappings inappropriate and potentially polluting. They either did nothing at all or staged generic feasts without ritual references to the nature of the occasion (except for a toast or two). Kira Allilueva describes the special feasts her mother (and Stalin’s sister-in-law) Evgenia used to prepare:

We did not make a cult of food in our household, but we did enjoy eating. Mother used to bake Novgorod meat and cabbage pies to go with the chicken soup. They were huge, almost half the size of the table. She would put the dough and the yeast in an enamel bucket and cover it with a cloth napkin. We children would watch, and when it began creeping up trying to escape, we would shout excitedly: “Mommy, the dough is rising! It’s getting out!”

The appetizers always included herring with green onions. And my mother used to make a delicious tomato and onion salad: she would squeeze a lemon over it or add some sunflower oil and vinegar and pepper. And we always had mushrooms—ones we had gathered ourselves at our dacha in Zubalovo.

Of the drinks, I remember light wines, Armenian brandy, vodka, liqueurs, and a sweet vodka infusion called “Zapekanka.” There was also a punch that my mother made by mixing white wine with pineapple and sour-cherry juice.

Afterward, they would take their time drinking tea from cups and saucers. A samovar heated with pine cones would stand on a tray with a little teapot on top. For dessert my mother used to make delicious, sweet saffron pretzels. The dough would turn an incredible yellowish-green color because of the nutmeg and vanilla she added. Good cakes were sold in the stores, too, but I did not eat them because of the icing. And, besides, why would I want them if I could have my mother’s sweet pretzels?

After the meal, they would usually dance. The rooms in our apartment were so big we did not even have to move the table. They danced to a phonograph. We had brought a lot of records from Germany with tangos, fox trots, the Boston Waltz, and the Charleston. In those days, everyone knew how to dance. It was the fashion.

My father never danced, though, and neither did Stalin. On such occasions, Iosif Vissarionovich always urged Redens: “Stakh, dance with Zhenia. You dance so beautifully together!”⁴⁴

Stanislav (Stanislaw) Redens, the son of a Polish cobbler and the husband of Anna Allilueva (the sister of Stalin’s wife Nadezhda and Evgenia’s husband, Pavel), was a top-ranking secret police official: head of the Ukrainian OGPU/GPU in 1931–33 (during collectivization and the famine) and head of the Moscow Province NKVD since 1934. According to his son, Vladimir, he was “an outgoing, friendly person, easy to get along with. He had a pleasant appearance: soft facial features, curly hair, and a trim, athletic physique. He was charming and popular, especially with women.”⁴⁵

Stanislav Redens (Courtesy of Nikita Petrov)

The Alliluev holiday feasts seem to have been typical of what high-nomenklatura House residents did on special occasions. Food was plentiful but simple, prepared mostly by peasant maids according to peasant recipes: beet, cabbage, and chicken soups and, as the standard festive dish, meat, mushroom, and cabbage pies. Osinsky liked kasha; Arosev and Kraval liked Siberian dumplings; and Romuald Muklevich (a Pole from Suprasl, outside of Bialystok) liked potato pancakes, fried pork, and boiled potatoes sprinkled with bacon cracklings and fried onions. The most popular salad was the traditional Russian “vinegret” (made of boiled beets, carrots, eggs, and potatoes with pickles, onions, and sauerkraut), but some cooks experimented with newer recipes. (Nadezhda Smilga-Poluian’s culinary mentor was her longtime admirer, the famous Art Theater actor, Nikolai Khmelev.) Vodka was always around (Rykov prepared a special orange-peel infusion known as “Rykovka” and had a shot before lunch every day), but most people preferred Crimean and, less frequently, Georgian wines (wines tended to be sweet, and it was increasingly common to be a connoisseur). Dessert consisted of tea with cakes and chocolates and, occasionally, liqueurs. (Muklevich and his Polish friends drank coffee.) Most men and some of the women smoked a great deal—as a sign of both harried self-denial at work and bodily pleasure at the dinner table. The most popular cigarette brand was Herzegovina Flor, which Stalin favored. Ivan Kraval followed Stalin’s example of unrolling the cigarettes and using the tobacco to fill his pipe.⁴⁶

Dancing the tango and foxtrot to phonograph records brought from abroad was, indeed, the fashion. (Everyone’s favorite performers were the Russian émigrés Vertinsky and Leshchenko.) Also common were more or less formal recitals by amateur and professional musicians, but the most popular conclusion to a festive dinner was the general singing of revolutionary hymns and Russian and Ukrainian folk songs. Osinsky, like Serafimovich, liked to conduct. (The “choir” usually consisted of his eldest son, Dima, and Dima’s friends.) His favorite songs were “In Chains” and “Martyred by Hard Servitude.” Ivanov liked “Bravely, Comrades, March in Step”; Arosev liked “Twelve Bandits”; and Podvoisky (who used to be the choirmaster of the Chernigov Theological Seminary) liked traditional Ukrainian songs. The head of the Bookselling Directorate, David Shvarts, also liked Ukrainian songs. Once, when Shvarts was still living in the First House of Soviets, he and about ten of his friends and relatives went for an after-dinner walk through Manege Square. It was midnight, and they were singing Ukrainian songs. According to Shvarts’s son, Vladimir, “they were all from Ukraine, after all. All Jews, all from Ukraine. They may even have been singing in Ukrainian. And then a militiaman came up to them and said: ‘Citizens, you are disturbing the peace. You are being too loud.’ Next to them was a row of coachmen waiting for passengers (there were no taxis then). So those coachmen intervened: ‘Come on, let them sing. They are singing so well. Let them sing.’”⁴⁷