45. Pravda, May 4, 1935. Stalin was seen to leave early, but it is unclear why. Ken, Mobilizatsionnoe planirovanie, 293 (N. Charles to John Simon, May 7, 1935: PRO FP 371/19450/N2376).
46. Voroshilov had initiated these celebratory “breakfasts” (as well as a separate annual May graduation ceremony for the military academies). At the May 2, 1933, reception, during the famine, 1,800 pounds of meat, poultry, fish, and sausage were served. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 66; Osokina, Ierarkhia potrebleniia, 79n21; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 41–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1117, l. 9–10); Borev, Staliniada, 90.
47. The immense interior encompassed more than seven hundred rooms. Deviatov and Zhuravleva, Dvortsy Kremlia; V. Bogomolova et al., Moskovskii kreml’; Chuev, Molotov, 96; Kabanov, Stal’nye peregony, 53. Two ancient monasteries (the Chudov and Voznesensky) were demolished. So was Moscow’s onion-domed Savior in the Wood, originally consecrated in the thirteenth century, to make way for a five-story service facility, while the magnificent Red Porch leading to the Palace of Facets was destroyed for a two-story canteen. Vinogradov, Genrikh Iagoda, 435–6 (TsA FSB, f. 3, op. 3, d. 883, l. 1–2, June 2, 1936).
48. “Stalin slowly gets up from his chair” amid deafening applause, noted a record of the 1933 banquet. “The hall quiets. ‘I am not inclined to speak, but I am being obliged. The first toast is for Lenin, the second for technology.’” Warming to the room, Stalin continued: “Lenin did not die, he lives together with the party he created, together with the Soviet power he created. Who are we, Soviet power and the party of Bolsheviks? We are considered great people. No, we are little people in comparison with Lenin. Lenin organized the party and the proletarian revolution on one-sixth of the earth, which astounded the whole world . . . To the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the great teacher Lenin!” Stalin then toasted “the Russian nation—the most talented nation in the world,” and raised a glass to “our military technology! To our air industry personnel! To our aviators! To our tank drivers! . . . To the leaders and vozhds of the Red Army! To the best student of Lenin, Klim Voroshilov! Hurrah!’ (stormy applause).” Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 43–5 (RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1117, l. 9–10). See also Pravda, May 2 and May 4, 1934; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 46–55 (RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 164, l. 165–8, 162–4; d. 160, l. 23–5). The Soviet brand of champagne had been developed on the basis of tsarist foundations in Crimea and blossomed after 1934, when a former aristocrat and chemist, Anton Mikhailovich Frolov-Bagreev, perfected a process of fermenting sparkling wine in large reservoirs, rather than in bottles, facilitating mass production.
49. Izvestiia, May 2, 1935. See also Nevezhin, “Bol’shie Kremlevskie priemy Stalina” (no. 3), 56–70, (no. 4), 123–39. Stalin would approve replacement of the tsarist double-headed eagles atop the Kremlin’s main gates—the Savior (Spassky), Nikolsky, Trinity, and Pinewood (Borovitsky)—with metal red stars in 1935 (two years later, the metal would give way to glass).
50. Nevezhin, Zastol’ia, 280.
51. Shmidt, “Priemy v Kremle,” at 274; Nevezhin, Zastol’nye, 192.
52. Izvestiia, May 4, 1935. The account in Pravda (May 4, 1935) by Mekhlis was less exuberant. In Feb. 1935, Bukharin had written to Stalin begging for approval, “in order that I could say, ‘all the same. comrade Stalin thinks that the newspaper is not such a bad one.’” Adibekov and Anderson, “‘U menia odna nadezhda na tebia,’” 50. Security at the banquets would tighten considerably. Moiseev, Ia vospominaiu, 47.
53. Krenkel’, RAEM, 492–3. One scholar has asserted (without presenting the evidence) that Soviet military academies began teaching ballroom dancing and manners in the 1930s. Tumkina-Perfil’eva, Russkii etiket, 148.
54. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 4, d. 657, l. 236.
55. Back on May 2, 1932, at the close of the evening’s concert, Stalin had remarked that the artists “were dressed not the way artists of a great country should be” (part apology for Soviet material life, part directive). Barsova, “Nash veilikii drug,” 59.
56. Pravda, May 4, 1935; Le Temps, May 5, 1935.
57. Beloff, Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, I: 152–4; Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 247. “One must remember that there was never an alliance between the tsarist government and France,” Maisky wrote to Litvinov on May 3, 1935, of the 1892 military convention that was activated by the Great War, “only an exchange of notes and an agreement between the two high commands.” Dullin, Men of Influence, 112, citing AVP RF, f. 10, op. 10, pap. 48, d. 7.
