The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC

  Soviet neoclassicism was to be both monumental and “essentially rational.” In the former Russian Empire, this meant that the new Soviet capital was to rival the old imperial one. According to a 1940 manual on urban planning, “the general plan of St. Petersburg is a well-thought-out and complete architectural composition, with justified street directions and well-placed squares—a monumental composition rich in detail and worthy of a capital of an immense and powerful state.” Built in a swamp and organized around semicircular canals and three radial avenues emanating from the vertical axis of the Admiralty Spire, it was superior to its contemporaries, including Paris, with its “agglomerations of haphazardly built houses amidst narrow lanes and blind alleys,” and London, which, “in spite of Wren’s brilliant efforts, would always remain an undisciplined city.” The General Plan of the Reconstruction of Moscow prescribed a well-thoughtout and complete architectural composition, with justified street directions, well-placed squares, and ceremonial waterways. Thanks to the new Moskva–Volga Canal (1933–37), the city was to become “a port of five seas.” In the words of the plan, “the Moskva embankments, clothed in granite and supporting wide avenues with uninterrupted traffic, must become the city’s main thoroughfares.”15

  Intourist map of Moscow, 1938

  Socialist-realist art was “Rembrandt, Rubens, and Repin in the service of the working class and socialism.” Socialist-realist literature was Goethe’s Faust for a new age (“but with the same extreme degree of generalization”). The new Moscow was “the capital of an immense and powerful state,” and thus an heir to Rome and St. Petersburg, ready to overtake Paris and Washington.

  ■ ■ ■

  By virtue of being the capital of the Soviet Union, Moscow was the center of the world. Like all ontological centers, Moscow lay at the intersection of the east-west/north-south spatial axes and the vertical axis mundi representing the tree of time, with roots deep underground and the trunk pointing upward, toward a heavenly future. The expectant present was preceded, most memorably, by the great breakthrough of the First Five-Year Plan, the heroic period of the Revolution and Civil War, and, just below the surface, the sacred unity of prison and exile. The thickest roots included the history of Marxism and the Russian prophetic tradition that culminated in the martyrdom of the People’s Will (described and explicated by Voronsky in his Zheliabov).16

  The north-south axis was just that—an axis around which Earth revolved, with only the two poles visible. Polar exploration was one of the most popular spectator sports in the Soviet Union, with various record-breaking contests covered ceaselessly in newspapers and on the radio. For Tania Miagkova’s mother, the “Chelyuskin saga” was “a test of the achievements of the revolution”; for Tania herself, it was the most emotional link between her isolator and the building of socialism. Arosev learned of the success of the operation on April 13, while he was at the Nemirovich-Danchenko theater for a performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. “The news arrived that twenty-two Chelyuskinites had been rescued, and that only six had remained on the ice floe, but they, too, were eventually saved. Before Act 1, Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was in the audience, announced the news to the spectators, and led them in a touching, humane ‘hurray.’ The audience gave him, and through him, the heroic aviators, an ovation.” (Two of the heroic aviators, Nikolai Kamanin and Mikhail Vodopyanov, soon moved into the House of Government.) The South Pole was less visible but still crucially important: Roald Amundsen was among the most popular non-Soviet Soviet celebrities; his books and other accounts of his travels were constantly reissued, and, in 1935–39, the Main Northern Sea Route Administration published his collected works in five volumes.17

  The world between the two poles stretched along the east-west axis. The best way to represent it in its entirety was to follow the sun. At the first Congress of the Soviet Writers’ Union in 1934, Gorky issued the following challenge to the foreign delegates: “Why don’t you try to create a book that would depict one day in the life of the bourgeois world? It doesn’t matter what day—September 25, October 7, or December 5. What you need is any weekday as it is reflected in the pages of the world press. What you need is to show the colorful chaos of modern life in Paris and Grenoble, London and Shanghai, San Francisco, Geneva, Rome, Dublin, and so on, and so forth, in the cities and in the countryside, on water and on land.”18

  The foreign writers did not have the means to produce such a book, but Koltsov’s Newspaper and Magazine Alliance did. “Friends of the Soviet Union” throughout the world were asked to send in newspaper clippings, calendar pages, announcements, cartoons, photographs, posters, “and all kinds of other curious social, cultural, and human documents.” The chosen day was September 27, 1935—“the third day of the six-day week” in the Soviet Union and “Friday” in most of the rest of the world. The ultimate goal, as Gorky wrote to Koltsov, was “to show to our reader what a philistine day is filled with, and to juxtapose that picture with the content of our Soviet day.” The Soviet press wrote a great deal about the decay of the bourgeois world. The challenge was “to give a vivid, clear sense of exactly how” it was decaying.19

  The work took a long time because of the inherent difficulty of collecting material from around the world; the disappearance—and subsequent removal from the text—of many of the Soviet protagonists; Gorky’s last-minute demand for starker contrasts (“they have to jump out at you from every line”); and Gorky’s death on June 18, 1936, at the age of sixty-eight. On August, 10, 1936, the galleys were sent to the print shop; about a year later, The Day of the World saw the light of day. It was a large-format, richly illustrated, six hundred–page volume. The print run was 20,250 copies; the price, 50 rubles (about 60 percent of the monthly salary of the stairway cleaner Smorchkova and the floor-polisher Barbosov).20

  The book was organized around the world’s most “dangerous flashpoints”: first, the countries involved in the Abyssinian conflict, including England; then the visit by Hungarian Prime Minister Gömbös to East Prussia and the three parties immediately concerned; then all the countries threatened by German aggression (fanning to the east, south, west, and north); Japan and its victims, past and future; the rest of the colonial world; “the countries of the Near, Middle, and Far East, which have succeeded, after a desperate struggle, in preserving their independence from imperialist domination”; the Americas; and, finally, “a different world, which represents the exact opposite of the other five-sixths of the globe—the world of liberated labor and joyously creative life, the world of socialism, the USSR.”

  Of the non-Soviet five-sixths of the globe, the largest entries were on France, Germany, the United States, and Britain (“England”). There was much on war preparations, rising prices, class struggles, and unemployment, but the emphasis was on the “colorful chaos” and boundless foolishness of daily life under capitalism: palm readers, Bible preachers, drunk drivers, cat collars, gossip columns, beauty contests, prayer meetings, spitting records, and lonely hearts advertisements. The Soviet Union (at one hundred pages, one-sixth of the book) represented the “exact opposite.” There was much on border security, labor productivity, plan fulfillment, and full employment, but the emphasis was on the small joys and satisfactions of daily life: participants in the Lake Baikal–Moscow kayak marathon approaching Moscow; children in the “crawlers’ group” at the Kalinin Factory nursery learning how to walk; housewives from the Residential Cooperative No. 1 in Podolsk forming a choir; a six-month-old calf by the name of Ataman weighing in at 313 kilograms; Professor Nevsky from Leningrad State University working on a dictionary of the extinct language Si-Sia; shock worker D. N. Antonov from the Molotov Automobile Factory receiving a free automobile; miners from the Far North arriving at the Red Krivoi Rog sanatorium in Alushta, Crimea; and E. M. Katolikova from the Molotov collective farm announcing at a tailors’ conference in Kaluga that “female kolkhoz workers are demanding new fas
hionable dresses.” On the day of the world, residents of Moscow purchased 156.6 tons of sugar, 51 tons of butter, 236 tons of meat and sausage items, 137 tons of fish products, 96 tons of confectionary items, 205,000 eggs, 2,709 tons of bread, 200,000 liters of milk, 1,700 tons of potatoes, 100 tons of pickles, 300 tons of tomatoes, and 300 tons of apples and pears, among many other food items. The list concluded with a comment by the editors: “In the future, Moscow plans to eat even better.”21

  Soviet life on the eve of full socialism was about peace, prosperity, creative labor, and “cultured rest.” The French writer André Gide, who, on closer inspection, decided that he did not agree, was struck by the apparently universal Soviet conviction “that everything abroad in every department is far less prosperous than in the USSR.” The most obvious consequence of that conviction was the look of contentment on the faces of Soviet children. “Their eyes are frank and trustful; their laughter has nothing spiteful or malicious in it; they might well have thought us foreigners rather ridiculous; not for a moment did I catch in any of them the slightest trace of mockery.” But the most remarkable thing was that “this same look of open-hearted happiness is often to be seen too among their elders, who are as handsome, as vigorous, as the children.” Even in the Gorky Park of Culture and Rest, which was meant for games and entertainment, “crowds of young men and women behaved with propriety, with decency; not the slightest trace of stupid or vulgar foolery, of rowdiness, of licentiousness, or even of flirtation. The whole place is pervaded with a kind of joyous ardour.”22

  Gorky Park

  Gide found this spectacle of contentment to be both genuine and staged, simple and contrived, pleasing to the eye and strangely frightening. Ultimately, he concluded, it was the result of the inescapable propaganda and “an extraordinary state of ignorance concerning foreign countries.” Lion Feuchtwanger, who visited the USSR a year later and wrote a rebuttal called Moscow 1937, attributed it to realism and justifiable pride: “I cannot take offense at the Soviet people’s love of their country, even though it is expressed in always the same, often very naïve, forms. Rather must I confess that their childlike patriotic vanity is rather pleasing to me than otherwise. A young nation has, with enormous sacrifices, accomplished something really great, and now stands before its achievement and cannot itself quite believe in it. It is overjoyed at what it has achieved, and is eager that the foreigner, too, should never cease to confirm how great and fine the achievement is.” Feuchtwanger was happy to oblige, and there is good reason to believe that most House of Government leaseholders were as pleased with his book (which was translated and widely publicized) as they were displeased with Gide’s (which only they had access to). Some of them, most prominently Koltsov and Arosev, had been specifically charged with courting foreign celebrities and shaping their impressions, and all of them, including Koltsov and Arosev, upheld the fundamental principles of Communism, shared a common love of the Soviet Union, and believed that in the near future the Soviet Union would be the happiest and most powerful country on earth.23

  Aleksandr Serafimovich traveled to Paris about a month after the chosen Day of the World and several months before André Gide arrived in the USSR. On November 6, 1935, he wrote to his wife:

  The weather in Paris is like ours in early fall: around 5–6 degrees, on the damp side, the ground cold, and the walls inside cold, although there is some heating. It is (usually) either foggy or raining. They do get snow in the winter sometimes, but it doesn’t stay on the ground and melts right away. The river Seine is cold and leaden, but it doesn’t freeze. It’s that way all winter long.

  The buildings are high: 5–6–7 stories. They are dark and gloomy. Some of them are hundreds of years old. At night everything is lit up.

  There are different kinds of streets: some are so wide they look like squares that have been elongated, and some are so narrow they are scary to walk on: at any moment a car or a bus might hit you and run you over. The sidewalks are so tiny and narrow, you have to press yourself against the wall (as hard as you can). But in other places they are huge—even wider than our streets.

  The crowds are huge. There are lots of people. They don’t walk or run—they scurry. When you look down from your window, it’s like an anthill. And what tense faces, worn out by need and anxiety! The women look emaciated, but each tries her best to dress up, i.e., to dress like the bourgeoisie. Most have crudely painted lips, and on Sundays they plaster their faces with makeup.

  The air outside is so vile you can hardly breathe. When you get home, you find soot in the corners of your eyes, and on your handkerchief. A huge mass of cars flows by in an unending stream; the smell of burnt gasoline is everywhere. It is killing people. The bourgeoisie feel fine: they regularly go on trips to the beach, the mountains, or the woods, while the workers suffocate. The exploitation is expert, relentless, unceasing.24

  It was about four months later that the Soviet delegation consisting of Arosev, Bukharin, and Adoratsky traveled to western Europe to inspect and purchase the Marx-Engels archive. In early April, Bukharin was joined in Paris by Anna Larina, who was pregnant with their son. According to Larina, she was met at the railway station by Bukharin and Arosev. Arosev handed her some carnations, saying that Bukharin was too shy to do it himself. Bukharin blushed, and they all got into a car and drove around Paris for a while before arriving at their hotel. “The members of the delegation lived in neighboring rooms. Adoratsky used to come to Bukharin’s room only when business required it, but Arosev often stopped by. He liked to discuss things, or simply chat lightheartedly with N. I. Unlike the dry, dogmatic Adoratsky, he was a charismatic, talented person.” Before Larina’s arrival, Bukharin and Arosev “spent a lot of time together, walking around Paris. They had been to the Louvre more than once. They were both in a good mood and joked a lot.” Once, when Arosev, Bukharin, and Larina were on Montmartre, Bukharin saw some couples kissing. Saying he would do them one better, he “did a handstand and started walking on his hands, to the delight of the passers-by.”25

  At some point during their time in Paris, Larina witnessed a conversation between Bukharin and the exiled Menshevik (and priest’s son) Boris Nicolaevsky, who was representing the Marx-Engels archive (and had recently written a Marx biography):

  Nicolaevsky asked: “So, how is life over there, in the Soviet Union?”

  “Life is wonderful,” responded Nikolai Ivanovich.

  He talked about the Soviet Union with genuine excitement, in my presence. The only difference between his words and his most recent newspaper articles was that he did not keep mentioning Stalin’s name—something he had to do in the Soviet Union. He talked about the rapid growth of industry and the development of electrification, and shared his impression of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Dam, which he had visited along with Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Citing numbers from memory, he described the huge steel plants built in the eastern part of the country and the accelerated development of science.

  “You wouldn’t recognize Russia now,” he concluded.26

  When Larina was not around, he may have had other things to say, but all his fears, doubts, and criticisms had to do with Stalin’s personality, not the rapid growth of industry, the development of electrification, or the accelerated development of science, let alone the overall superiority of the Soviet Union over the capitalist world.27

  Overall superiority did not mean superiority in all things. Soviet modernization consisted in overcoming backwardness, which Stalin defined as a “50–100 year lag behind the advanced countries.” The Five-Year Plans’ greatest achievement had been to replicate Western achievement. The results were spectacular, but not consistent or uniform. While Bukharin was talking to Nicolaevsky, Adoratsky was writing his letters home about the oak-paneled rooms, walk-in closets, magnifying mirrors for shaving, and his new custom-tailored Cheviot-wool suit. Bukharin was wearing a tailor-made suit, too. (According to Larina, a few days before his departure, Stalin had told him: “Your suit is frayed, Nikolai. You c
an’t go looking like that. Have a new one made quickly. Times have changed. We need to dress well now.”) Bukharin worried about his French; Arosev was proud of his and dismissive of Osinsky’s. House of Government children were learning German, and House of Government adults traveling in the West were buying clothes, cameras, radios, gramophones, refrigerators, and fashion magazines. A bad foreigner in the Soviet Union was usually described as arrogant and condescending (as well as fearful); a bad Soviet abroad was usually described as ingratiating or uncouth (as well as belligerent).28

  Arosev, whose job was to preside over “cultural ties with foreign countries,” suffered from both bad foreigners and bad Soviets. Western diplomats “projected mockery and cowardice at the same time”; André Gide combined arrogance with treachery; and Lady Astor’s guests, including George Bernard Shaw, raised arrogance to the heights of innocence (“it seems that if one of them were to unbutton his pants and urinate on the carpet, no one would pay any attention, and the servants, without having to be told, would simply remove the soiled carpet as quickly as possible”). Bad Soviets were more detrimental to the cause and more personally aggravating. On November 2, 1932, while Arosev was still ambassador to Czechoslovakia, he passed through Germany and then into Poland on his way to Moscow. “After the Polish border, the train became dirtier and the staff, less disciplined and more confused. It was as if everything gradually began to lose meaning. Such is the terrible difference between a European and the resident of the Russo-Polish Plain. The latter does not seem quite sure why he was born or what his place in the world should be, while the European, by the age of seventeen, knows all this, as well as when he will die and how much capital he will leave behind.”29