16
THE HOUSES OF REST
An option not available to the Tuchins was to spend regular days off in “one-day rest homes” outside of Moscow. In 1935, the Housekeeping Department of the Central Executive Committee had about a dozen such homes, all of them prerevolutionary gentry and merchant estates. The usual practice was to arrive in the afternoon before the day off, spend the night, and leave on the following afternoon. This created obvious problems for the staff. According to the director of one of the most popular one-day rest homes, Morozovka, “it was not a regular rest home, some rooms were reserved for certain people, but we had no idea who would arrive, and when. A comrade might arrive at 2 in the morning. If his room was occupied, you couldn’t send him back to Moscow, and then he would have a fit because his room was occupied.”1
One such unhappy visitor to Morozovka was Arosev, who, in March 1935, complained to the Housekeeping Department. The head of the Section of Out-of-Town Properties, A. Chevardin, responded that, “in accordance with the established procedure, all comrades go there with the advance permission of the Housekeeping Department, depending on room availability.” Arosev responded by forwarding “Chevardin’s vacuous reply, which contains elements of rudeness and inaccuracy,” to the department head, pointing out that established procedures varied by rank. “The comrades of my category, i.e., Old Bolsheviks and high officials, are included in the list of those who have permanent access to the Central Executive Committee rest homes and need no additional case-by-case permissions. I would appreciate not being discriminated against in this matter and being put on the appropriate list.” Several weeks later, on May 17, 1935, Arosev arrived in Morozovka with his four children (to read Dead Souls to them and work on his diary) and was given a room, but “slept badly because the people who arrived at 2 in the morning banged their doors unceremoniously and talked loudly between the bathroom and their room, as if they were at home. Where does this shameless Russian parasitism come from?”2
For the most part, however, the staff were helpful; the rooms were ready; the house was quiet; and the food was good (although Adoratsky disapproved of the coffee). Located on the bank of the Kliazma River right off the Leningrad Highway, Morozovka—like Lenin’s last refuge and Zbarsky’s first house—used to belong to the Morozov merchant clan. The main building was an art nouveau version of a medieval gingerbread castle. Lydia Gronskaia, like most House residents, used to enjoy going there: “Morozov’s old house was tastefully appointed and cozy. I especially liked the library, with its stained-oak paneling, dark wooden ceilings, bookcases, and soft leather furniture. It was so cozy to curl up in a corner of the couch with a book! The billiard room was wonderful, too. I practiced a lot, and could even beat Ivan sometimes.” Billiards was the most popular pastime for guests of all ages. The House of Government boys would learn how to play there, mostly from the servants, who had little else to do on weekdays, and then show off, and perhaps make some money, in the pool halls of the best Moscow hotels. Other pastimes included chess, Preferans (the card table, covered with green cloth, was on a round balcony, so no one could stand behind the players’ backs), and various outdoor activities. Valerian Kuibyshev (according to his sister, Elena), liked to do certain tasks himself when he was there. He “planted trees, worked in the vegetable garden, took care of the rabbits, and cleaned the volleyball court.” Winter was the high season, and the most popular activities were skiing and skating. The son of the deputy chairman (and, after 1938, chairman) of Intourist, Mikhail Korshunov, remembered one winter evening in Morozovka:
Morozovka
It was growing dark. The housekeeper had sounded the dinner gong. My father, mother, and I were sitting at one end of the long dining table, surrounded by chairs with high, carved backs. No one else had arrived—yet. Through the huge windows that reached almost to the floor, you could see the deepening shadows in the park and hear the knocking sound coming from the water tank. The water tank was down at the edge of the park, and the sound of the knocking emphasized the surrounding silence. The Schooner House seemed to float along in this silence. That was the name we had given to the house because it used to creak slightly in the wind: wooden, partially draped in canvas, and with its tiny towers, intricately curved balconies, and decks, it resembled a sailing ship on the waves. At night, you would lie awake, listening, and dream of being at sea.3
Nikolai Podvoisky
Winter was high season in Morozovka (and other nearby rest homes) because in warmer seasons House residents could travel farther and stay away longer. The most popular destinations were the Black Sea resorts and the North Caucasus mineral spas. The most difficult problem—as in Morozovka, the House of Government, and throughout the Soviet Party-state—was to match ranked officials with ranked destinations amid fluid schedules, inconsistent hierarchies, and competing patronage claims. Only a few top officials close to Stalin had personal cottages reserved for them; all others had to hope for the best vacancy appropriate to their rank, connections, and persistence. On July 30, 1932, the head of the Sochi Group of CEC Rest Homes, Ivan Stepanovich Korzhikov (an experienced administrator and former director of the Second House of Soviets), wrote a routine report to the head of the CEC Housekeeping Department, Nikolai Ivanovich Pakhomov:
The other day Comrade Vlasik told me that Valery Ivanovich Mezhlauk had left Sochi in a huff, and that this news had reached the vacationer in Cottage 9. I already wrote to you once about this matter. This is basically what happened: on July 13, Comrade Mezhlauk’s wife, Ekaterina Mikhailovna, arrived in Sochi. I personally met her at the railway station and told her that a room in Cottage 8 was ready for them, but she absolutely refused to go there. She refused to go to the “Riviera” as well, so I finally took her to Cottage 4, which happened to have a small room available. Two days later I transferred her to a larger room in the same cottage. For the next three days or so, she and some military man kept coming to see me, asking for a room in Cottage 2, but there was nothing I could do since there was not a single free room left. On July 19, Valery Ivanovich Mezhlauk himself arrived from Mukhalatka [another CEC resort in Crimea]. I saw him when he arrived, and he told me that he had come to pick up Ekaterina Mikhailovna and that they would both be leaving for Mukhalatka in two days. And that is exactly what they did: on July 21 they both left for Mukhalatka…. Ekaterina Mikhailovna was very unhappy—she felt insulted and complained bitterly to Valery Ivanovich. On their return to Moscow she will probably complain to you. She made a lot of threats to me here, but I did not say anything particularly rude back to her, as I think you will understand.4
Valery Ivanovich Mezhlauk (Mežlauks, in Latvian) was the first deputy chairman of the State Planning Agency. (He and Ekaterina Mikhailovna soon separated, but both remained in the House of Government: he and his new wife, Charna Markovna, in Apt. 276; Ekaterina Mikhailovna in Apt. 382.) Nikolai Sidorovich Vlasik was the personal bodyguard of the vacationer in Cottage 9. The vacationer in Cottage 9 was, as Bukharin once said, “the personal embodiment of the mind and will of the Party.” Korzhikov’s next letter to Pakhomov was sent two days later:
Last night the vacationer in Cottage 9 ordered me to come by with a list of all the guests in all of our cottages. The results of our conversation are as follows:
(1) People have been calling him on the phone with all sorts of complaints. I personally believe that most of the complaints have reached him through Ekaterina Davydovna Voroshilova.
(2) The Boss asked me how things were going. I told him that everything was going fine. His questions mostly concerned the accommodation of Comrades Kabakov, Rukhimovich, and Mezhlauk. Why didn’t Comrade Kabakov get a room immediately upon request? Why didn’t Comrade Mezhlauk get a room in “Blinovka”? Why was Comrade Rukhimovich put up in the Riviera Hotel, and not in a separate cottage?
I responded: Comrade Rukhimovich has been staying at the Riviera and never approached me about this. Comrade Mezhlauk (the wife) did not receive a room in “Blinovka” because
when she arrived, there was not a single free room left, and when a room did open up, they turned it down. Comrade Kabakov could not be given a room because, again, I did not have any available at the time, but when Comrade Ter-Gabrielian’s room in Zenzinovka became free, Comrade Kabakov moved in without waiting for authorization.
(3) The Boss asked about the criteria I use to assign rooms in our cottages. He asked: On what basis did I give rooms in Zenzinovka to the wives of Comrades Yusis and Vlasik? Why do the wives of Comrades Kork, Mogilny, and Semushkin live in separate cottages?
He also asked why we had closed down Cottage 3 and converted it into a walk-in clinic. And then he told me, jokingly: “As you can see, I know everything about your affairs.”
In the end, the Boss suggested that I always keep one or two rooms in reserve, just in case—for such comrades as Comrade Kabakov and the like.
He also said that he would talk to Comrade Enukidze, to make sure that separate vacation cottages are not to be given to people who do not belong there.5
Ivan Kabakov was the Party boss of the Urals; Saak Ter-Gabrielian—the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Armenia; Moisei Rukhimovich—the general manager of the Kuzbass Coal Trust. Ivan Yusis was Vlasik’s fellow bodygard. Comrades A. D. Semushkin (the People’s Commisariat of Heavy Industry) and A. M. Mogilny (Molotov’s secretariat) were mid-level functionaries. The commander of the Moscow Military District (and House of Government resident, Apt. 389), August Kork, was an intermediary case. His unaccompanied wife was not.
The director of the Berezniki Chemical Works, Mikhail Granovsky, was the equal of Rukhimovich, if not quite of Kabakov and Ter-Gabrielian. When he and his family arrived in Sochi a month later (when the first stage of construction at Berezniki was nearly complete), they found everything to their liking. According to Mikhail’s son, Anatoly,
The main gates give out onto the Caucasian Riviera and there a sentry checks your papers and salutes as you enter. Immediately beyond is the area reserved for sports, with tennis courts, croquet lawns, basketball courts and so on neatly laid out and separated by wide beds of well-kept flowers and neatly tended footpaths. Then comes the area devoted to night life and indoor entertainments. There is a large dance hall, an open air and an indoor cinema, billiards saloons and a number of rooms for card games, chess and draughts. There is also a spacious restaurant beyond which is the communal kitchen. The residential area that follows comprises some thirty-two four-to five-bedroom houses, each set in a plot of ground some four hundred yards square and screened off one from the other by lines of trees, their lawns and gardens meticulously cared for by a small regiment of gardeners. The most remarkable feature about the houses is that none of them has a kitchen. No cooking is done in the houses at all as all meals are ordered from the communal kitchens. At any time of the day or night a servant may be sent to get piping hot food which is delivered on a tray under a gleaming insulating cupola. There is never, of course, any question of payment or signing of bills for anything ordered.6
It is not clear whether the Granovskys received a whole cottage to themselves; most people of their rank did not. It is also not clear whether they had their food delivered to their rooms; most people of their rank used the dining room. The food was, by all accounts, plentiful; most Central Executive Committee sanatoria had their own “auxiliary farms.” According to a 1935 report on the Foros resort in Crimea, “the livestock provided whole milk and dairy products; the pig farm offered a regular supply of sausages and smoked meats; the sheep farm made up for any shortages in the meat supply; and the chicken farm provided fresh eggs, so that, as a result of the work of the auxiliary farm, the rest home had no interruptions in supplies.” The farm also produced its own fruits and vegetables and made its own wine (Mourvèdre, Madeira, Muscat, Aligoté, and Riesling, among others).7
There were three separate categories of diners, each with its own dining room ration. In 1933, the nomenklatura guests and resort managerial personnel were entitled to (per day): 50 grams of caviar, smoked fish, ham, or sausage; 400 grams of meat (or 500 grams of fish); 3 eggs; 200 grams of milk; 40 grams of cheese; 50 grams of butter; 40 grams of “cow’s” butter; 40 grams of other dairy products; 1,000 grams of vegetables; 400 grams of fruit; 100 grams of assorted grains; 300 grams of white bread; 200 grams of black bread; 15 grams of vegetable oil; 4 grams of coffee; 2 grams of tea; and 150 grams of sugar, among other things. Mid-level resort managers and skilled workers, including drivers, received smaller and less varied meals; unskilled workers received even less. Only the salt ration—20 grams per day—was the same for all three categories.8
Sergei Mironov and Agnessa Argiropulo used to arrive in Sochi in the fall, “when it was overflowing with fruit”:
Just imagine, it’s October, beginning of November—the autumn season, when it is no longer hot and humid, but the sea is still warm. There are grapes of every kind, persimmons, mandarins—not to mention all the imported exotic fruits they plied us with. They used to put huge bowls of fruit on every table. Once Mirosha and I bought some nuts, but by the time we got back, the same nuts—hazelnuts and walnuts—had appeared on all the tables. Mirosha said jokingly to the manager:
“See what you have done to us? You have deprived us of the last opportunity to spend our own money!”
The manager laughed: “Forgive me, but the fact that you had to spend your own money means that I have been remiss in my duties.”
Oh, the chefs they had and the dishes they created for us! If only we could have eaten as much as we wanted…. Mirosha tended to put on weight, too, but, following my example, he tried to watch what he ate and stay in shape. The doctor ordered fasting days of only milk and dry toast for him. For each one of those days Mirosha lost over a pound. And no siestas either! Every day, right after lunch, we would head straight for the billiard room. Several hours of billiards each day kept us in good shape. I was the one who kept urging Mirosha to follow this exercise regimen, and he agreed, knowing I was right and that otherwise we would burst from all those fabulous sanatoria meals.9
The Gaisters, according to their daughter, Inna, “did a lot of hiking, because they thought they were too fat and needed to hike.” The Muklewichs combined walking and fasting. In Foros, they went on daylong hikes every other day. Romuald led the way, and his wife, Anna, followed. They did not bring any food with them. According to Irina, “my mother was a bit worried about my father’s health, because he was, in spite of it all, still rather stout.”10
David Shvarts and his wife, Revekka Felinzat, at a resort
Postyshevs at a resort
The Shvartses used to play a lot of volleyball, chess, and billiards. Adoratsky and his daughter went for walks, read, and played the piano (although the one in Mukhalatka had “a tinny sound” and was “not particularly pleasant to play on”). They did not have a weight problem and enjoyed good food (the Gurzuf breakfast eggs were “perfect and done just right”), but their favorite part, as always, were the bubbling mineral baths, which they took both morning and afternoon. “After the baths,” he wrote to his wife from Kislovodsk, “I lie down and rest, and then we are brought back to our rooms by car or on horseback, and I lie down and rest again. This allows us to pass the time and provides us with an illusion of activity.” Osinsky also preferred Kislovodsk to the beach resorts, but spent most of his time studying. In October 1931, however, he was so exhausted from constant travel and collectivization-related worry that he allowed himself a little vacation. “I thought of nothing,” he wrote in a letter to Shaternikova, “did nothing, and did not write to you; instead I slept, ate, and read whatever substitutes for fiction for me. I also walked, but not very far: only to the “Blue Rocks” and “The Little Saddle” (once). After vegetating for five days, I suddenly pulled myself together and thought: What about Hegel?! I’ve been wasting precious time! So I jumped into harness and started reading Hegel, though not terribly quickly. Up to now, I’ve only been rereading my notes, comparing them with L
enin’s, and then rereading Hegel in the original. I’ve managed to get through 105 pages this way, and, starting tomorrow, I’ll begin reading new material.” His goal was “to understand everything, in order to be able to launch the universal mastery of the dialectical method in its profoundest and most developed form.” His first (Hegelian) phase was mostly complete by 1934, after several more stays in Kislovodsk. While there, he normally worked for much of the day, while most of the other guests played billiards.11
Terekhovs at a resort
Gronskys and the Belenkys at a spa in Essentuki, 1933
Besides billiards, the most popular evening entertainment at the sea resorts was cards. One of the oldest Party members, Elena Dmitrievna Stasova (sixty-two in 1935, from Apt. 245), played every evening on a terrace next to the main building in Mukhalatka (in much the same way as her gentry aunts and grandmothers once did). According to Aleksei Rykov’s daughter, Natalia,
With Elena Dmitrievna, one had to play Clubs. It was a card game—rather simple, but not too…. Whenever my father played with her, it would turn into a complete farce—because ten minutes into the game, she would always say: “Alesha, you’re cheating again!”—“Who, me? Elena Dmitrievna, surely you don’t think me capable of such a thing?” And then he would do something outrageous again. And they would repeat the same scene day after day…. But the main attraction was when they all played Podkidnoi Durak [Throw-in Fool] with two decks. Now that was a circus, a real circus. Then the cards could end up under the table, under the players, or just about anywhere—because everyone cheated. They would all be joking and laughing. It was so much fun!12
The House of Government Page 73
