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Summerfolk, a review

In her illuminating programme note accompanying the recent production of Summerfolk at the National Theatre, the cultural historian, Rosamund Bartlett, describes Maxim Gorky’s third play as a ‘grotesque next chapter’ to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (2003).

Summerfolk was first staged in Moscow in November 1904, some four months after Chekhov’s death.  Chekhov had been corresponding with Gorky for some years, and had encouraged the younger man to start writing plays. It is often said that  Summerfolk can be read as Gorky’s homage to his friend.  However, as Bartlett implies, while Chekhovian echoes resonate in the play, Gorky’s purpose and artistic vision were very different from those of his mentor. 

By the time He wrote Summerfolk at the age of 36, Gorky had been arrested more than once for anti-Tsarist activities and had regularly been under police surveillance.  He was a writer with a cause, and, while anxious to produce high quality art, his aim was determinedly polemical.  Not for him an expression of nostalgia for the old order, nor portraits of a fading aristocracy on their country estates. His declared aim in this play was to produce ‘a critique of the bourgeois-materialist intelligentsia’. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was undergoing a period of belated but rapid industrialization. The middle class was burgeoning while many noble families were in decline.  In his comprehensive history of the Dacha (1)Stephen Lovell describes this period as the dacha’s ‘golden age’, when scores of dacha colonies sprang up around major cities to fulfil strong demand for summer retreats. Indeed it was just such a settlement that Chekhov’s thick-skinned businessman, Yermolov Lopakhin, has in mind when he proposes the destruction of the eponymous cherry orchard.  

The development of dacha colonies was not met with universal approbation and indeed Gorky’s play represents just one of several examples in literature and in the contemporary press which subjected the new breed of ‘dachniki’ to critical or satirical comment. The holidaymakers were typically portrayed  as unruly interlopers, solely interested in their own pleasure and neglectful of society’s problems, while the colonies they frequented were seen as places of dubious morality where vulgar forms of entertainment were on offer. (2)

Gorky’s play is set at a  rented dacha, taken for the summer by a lawyer, Busov, and his wife Varvara.  The play’s episodic approach, with its plethora of roles, present quite a challenge to any producer of the play. Over the course of three hours, as character is piled on character, and scene on scene, the audience may well be quickly reduced to bewilderment at best, to boredom and irritation at worst. However in this instance, the Director, Robert Hastie, and his production team skillfully avoided this outcome.

The play was enhanced by a new adaptation by Nina and Moses Raine. Losing more than half an hour from the running time, this sharpened the action, provided some useful signposts where appropriate, and managed to introduce additional humour to the script.  On the whole, the result was admirable, although perhaps some of the language was jarringly anachronistic and at times excessively vulgar.

The quality of the acting was terrific throughout.  The five main female protagonists, who are on the whole better drawn and defined than the men, were all totally convincing, and managed to vividly convey the essence of their characters despite the constraints of the text.

The staging of the whole was impressively expansive; relatively sparse sets, beautifully lit and realised, gave a light yet authentically Russian feel to the whole.  The Russian countryside was credibly evoked by a backdrop of Shishkin-like tree trunks, while a real bathing place was ingeniously created for the picnic scene in the third act. 

            Despite the play’s inherent difficulties, this production of Summerfolk was an undoubted success,the cheerful buzz from the departing audience, bearing witness to general enjoyment.  Gorky’s play has not been seen often in England since it was premiered by the RSC in 1974. It is to be hoped that this evocative production might be revived in time to enable more people to enjoy it.

  • (1)Stephen Lovell, Summerfolk, a history of the Dacha, 1710 -2000,  New York, 2003.
  • (2) See for example Aleksander Blok’s poem The Unknown Woman (1906)

To err is human….

‘Her taste exact for perfect fact amounts to a disease’  W.S. Gilbert (The Mikado)

I hope that my novels are historically accurate and that, by and large, the facts within them are correct.  I regret to say however that I have spotted one or two small mistakes in my first published novel, Small Acts of Kindness, but none so far in the second, Fortune’s Price.

These little faults seem to have gone undetected by readers, probably because the truth is unlikely to be generally known.  One error, for example, concerned the inaccurate siting of a controversial pair of statues in Saint Petersburg In 1825.  I discovered this not so terrible mistake several months after the book had gone to press, so it was too late to change the text.  If there is ever a second edition I may do so, but I probably won’t.  I don’t want to lose the impact that the sight of these muscular male statues had on the sensibility of the naïve young woman who observed them with interest. To read about the statues and see them in all their manly glory follow this link: http://www.saint-petersburg.com/buildings/konnogvardeyskiy-manege/

 I have learned that there are some areas where an erroneous fact is bound to be called out.  These are generally fields of interest where a lot of nerdy people (usually male…just saying!) take a fanatical interest in the subject.  A good example is that of trains and old railway timetables. There is obviously a group of people who (inexplicably) spend their time reading these for fun.  I have been told by more than one writer that if they inaccurately include a train leaving Paddington (pictured above) for Reading at 6 p.m. from platform 5 in July 1880, they will be assailed by several well-meaning enthusiasts quick to inform them that the train would definitely have departed from, let us say, platform 12.

The area in my books that presents a similar minefield is that of weaponry, and in particular guns. Uniforms come a close second.  These are matters of which I was entirely innocent when some years ago  I started to write of military exploits in early 19th century Russia.  Unfortunately this lack of knowledge cannot be extended to some of my readership, who I am sure understand every detail and application of each gun and bullet mentioned.  As a result I regularly have to turn to a very kind friend who is expert on these matters and is always keen to put me right.

 I was recently reminded of this hazard when exposing the  first five hundred words of my current work in progress (working title:  In the Shadow of the Flames) to a writing group.  The very first sentence contained a terrible blunder!  I had sent my hero, Pavel, out duck shooting with a rifle!  This, I was swiftly reminded by a member of the group, should not have been a rifle but a SHOTGUN!  Oh horror.!  I might have had a mistake in the very first sentence of the book.  Anyway, thank you to the kind gentleman who saved me from potential humiliation.

The issue of the choice of rifles versus other forms of gun is actually very interesting when looking at the weaponry used by the French, English and Russian armies in the Napoleonic era.   Since this is such a vital element of my WIP, I shall expand on it next month in my blog.

Remembering the Decembrists

The Imperial Life Guards Regiment during the uprising of December 14th 1825 Senate Square. (19th Century).

Vasily Timm (1820 -1895).The Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

‘The historical value of revolutions depends upon three conditions:  upon what they destroy, upon what they create and upon the legend that they leave behind…The Decembrists have not destroyed anything or created anything. The value of their accomplishment consists entirely in their legend, but that is sufficient.’  (Aldanov, Memories of the Decembrists.1926.)

Today, the 14th December (if we reckon by the Julian Calendar*), is the two hundredth anniversary of the Decembrist Uprising in Saint Petersburg, a revolt by a group of young officers against serfdom and autocracy in Russia.

The events of 14th December 2025 have a special place in my heart, since they form the background to my first novel, Small Acts of Kindness.

            The revolution was short lived and unsuccessful. The young men involved were unclear about their aims, and were obliged to prepare in a hurry.  The Emperor Nicholas the First had little trouble in putting down the revolt. He then hanged five of the ringleaders for their trouble, and over one hundred others were sent off to specially created camps in Siberia.

In the past in Russia the December revolutionaries were lauded as heroes.  In Tsarist times they were regarded, by liberals at least, as early standard bearers in a righteous cause.  It is thought that Tolstoy had the revolt in mind when he started War and Peace, but in the end the book covered different ground. In the Soviet era, as witnessed by the quotation from Aldanov above, despite the fact that the main actors were essentially toffs, they were embraced as worthy forerunners of the later revolutions of 1905 and 1919.

I am not sure how the anniversary will be portrayed in today’s Russia, but the prospects are not good.

The most recent retelling of the story, as far as I am aware, was a film ‘The Union of Salvation’,  that was released in Russia in 2019.  Unsurprisingly perhaps given today’s situation, the film, in part produced by state owned Channel One, takes a less than positive view of the Decembrist rebels.   Meduza’s film critic, Anton Dolin, reviewing the film in December of that year, describes it as  ‘an epic chronicle of a well-deserved failure. Its characters are naïve drinkers and neurotics, ready to drown Russia in blood for a good cause’.  The motivation behind the rebellion is never discussed in the film and the Emperor Nicholas in contrast to the revolutionaries, is shown as  a laudable figure who, handsome and paternal, saves his country from anarchy.  Once the revolutionaries meet their just deserts, we are led to believe that the man known variously as the ‘Gendarme of Europe’ and Nicholas the Stick, reigned for the next thirty years like a benign pussy cat.  In short,  the story as presented can be seen as more reflective of the values of the Government of today’s Russia than those of the young heroes of the post Napoleonic era.  In Dolin’s words the story has become  ‘an endorsement of the policy of state terror in relation to dissenters’.

*Add 12 days to find the date for events in the 19th century, under the Grigorian Calendar that we use now.

Napoleon in Moscow

Napoleon Bonaparte receiving the keys of Vienna at the Schloss  Schonbrunn , 13th November 1805. (1808)

Anne-Louise Girodet de Roussey-Trioson (1767-1824)

When Napoleon defeated his enemies in battle he expected the vanquished to concede and hand the keys of their capital cities to him.  This occurred in Vienna (twice), Berlin and Madrid in the early years of the 19th Century.  The picture above shows the scene in Vienna in 1805, but pictures can be found showing similar ceremonies elsewhere.

When he arrived at the walls of Moscow in September 1812, after the inconclusive battle of Borodino, Napoleon expected the same treatment. The French Emperor waited for twenty four hours in the hills to the west of the city, while some of his generals were sent to find suitably important people formally to cede the city to him.

He waited in vain.  Much to his irritation and the embarrassment of his suite, no one came, apart from a few French emigres and one or two people of little significance.  This was the first indication that the occupation of Moscow was going to be very different from his Austrian, Prussian and Spanish experiences.

Losing patience, Napoleon finally entered Moscow. As the French troops marched through the streets, they realized that the city was almost entirely deserted.  The Russian army had, as agreed, passed straight through the city and anyone who was anyone, including the Governor of the City, Rostopchin, had gone, taking government employees, fire fighting equipment and the police force with them.

               The Emperor of France set himself up in the Kremlin, and quickly appointed his own officials to govern the city. His suite was said to have found the ancient fortress surprisingly shabby, not at all the luxurious palace that they had expected. They possibly didn’t realise that the place had hardly been used since the time of Peter the Great, one hundred years earlier. 

            Napoleon, unable to believe that Alexander the First had given up the city without a fight, waited in vain for his offer of negotiations.  Soon he decided that he must take the initiative himself and write to the Russian Emperor.   By this time a devastating fire had broken out in the city, destroying much of it, and in the resulting chaos it was difficult to find any Russian of standing prepared to take his message.  Eventually State Councillor Tutolmin, the superintendent of the Moscow Foundling Home containing 600 children under eleven years old,  agreed to send Rykhin, one of his employees with a letter to Alexander and also to the Emperor’s mother, Maria Feodorovna, who was the patron of the orphanage.

            The unfortunate young man’s journey to Saint Petersburg was not without incident, at one stage he was almost murdered by suspicious peasants,  but he did finally manage to deliver his message.  This was one of at least two dispatches that Napoleon sent to Alexander, but no answer was received. Alexander realised that winter was coming on and that all he needed to do to rid the city of the French invader was to wait.   In the end Napoleon spent a little over five weeks among the ruins of burnt-out Moscow before embarking on his disastrous retreat back to Europe. It turned out to be the beginning of the end.

            This incident features in my current work in progress, In the Shadow of the Flames (working title), which is set in 1812, and centres around the Moscow Foundling Home.  There are articles about this extraordinary institution on this blog in June 2021 and July 2024.

Mrs Adams in Winter

Sometimes you come across a book that would have been really useful when working on a project years ago!

My talk ‘Russian Roads’ was developed in the early 2000’s.  It is a rather eclectic mix that examines travelling in Russia through the ages.  It also illustrates the work of the Peredvizhniki, the group of Russian artists who in the 19th Century broke away from the constraints of the conservative Imperial Academy of Arts. They not only often painted landscapes but also took their pictures on travelling exhibitions around the country. The talk concludes with a discussion of the idea of travelling forward (вперед!) embraced by communist propagandists in the 20th Century.

Mrs Adams in Winter, a Journey in the last days of Napoleon by Michael O’Brien tells the story of a journey undertaken by Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams who subsequently became the sixth President of the United States.   In the early months of 1815, Mrs Adams, with her seven year old son, travelled from Saint Petersburg  to Paris to be reunited with her husband.  Quincy Adams had been the American plenipotentiary to the Court of Alexander 1st for several years. He left his wife behind in Russia for almost a year when he was obliged to travel to Ghent to join the commission negotiating the treaty that concluded the 1812 war between the United States and Britain.  Catherine kept a diary of the journey, which forms the basis of the book.

While details of the journey itself are fascinating, containing many facts about travel at the time, of some of which I was unaware,  the book is supplemented by all sorts of information about  history and personalities that are equally interesting. 

In my book, Fortune’s Price, which is set a little later in 1830, one of my characters undertakes a journey from St Petersburg to Warsaw, which covers some of the same route.  I was pleased to read that the same hair-raising river bridges, snow, mud, bears and wolves were encountered by Mrs Quincy Adams as she traversed the forests of Estland and Livonia!

The Streltsy

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandford, on their excellent podcast ‘The rest is history’, recently featured a series on the subject of Peter the Great and the Great Northern War.

 I have not yet had time to listen to the whole narrative, but I much enjoyed the first episode which told the story of Peter’s early years and the upheavals of his childhood.

The picture above shows some members of the Streltsy, a corps of soldiers formed in the 16th Century by Ivan lV (a.k.a. Ivan the Terrible), as his personal bodyguard. Their name derives from the Russian verb ‘strelat’,  which means ‘to shoot’. As can be seen; not only were they very brightly dressed, they were also armed to the teeth with a variety of weaponry. A potent force in battle at times of war the Streltsy were generally faithful and effective servants of the Tsar. However, in times of relative peace they had a tendency to get bored and become involved in trouble.

The Streltsy loomed large in Peter’s life. He became Tsar of Russia in 1782 when only 10 years old, reigning as joint ruler with his elder brother Ivan, who was disabled.  His mother was appointed regent, but this situation was soon challenged by Peter’s sister, Sophia, who seized the throne with the Streltsy’s help. The bloodshed witnessed by young Peter was horrible and Peter developed an aversion to the gloomy labyrinth of the Kremlin palace, where the atrocities took place, and to Moscow as a whole.

The tables were turned when Peter, aged 17, deposed his sister, in part with the assistance of the ever restive Streltsy, and in part by deploying his own ‘play’ regiments that Sophia had carelessly allowed him to equip and drill outside Moscow.

It is believed that Peter’s violent and unsettled childhood was a contributory factor to his decision to move his capital from Moscow to fortifications on the Baltic Sea, built on land taken from the Swedes which he named Saint Petersburg.

The illustration above is one of the illustrations from my talk, ‘The Bronze Horseman’, which tells the story of Saint Petersburg through references to the giant statue of Peter the Great that still graces Senate Square today, and also Alexnder Pushkin’s poem of the same name.

Diplomatic Immunity

Right: Charles Whitworth, 1st Baron Whitworth (1675-1725)  Guillaume Birochon

Left:  Andrey Artemovich Matveev (1666-1728) Artist unknown

My Royal Connections talk is now complete and I recently delivered it for the first time at Brantham Historical Society.  I think that it went well, although it was challenging to fit almost a thousand years of history into an hour.

While researching the topic I discovered that in the early years of the eighteenth century Peter the Great established the first Russian permanent embassies in every European capitals.  Prior to that time envoys were sent on diplomatic missions on an ad hoc basis as circumstances demanded.

Our first ambassador to the Russian Court was Charles Whitworth, later Baron Whitworth (1675-1725), a career diplomat who had served in Berlin and Vienna prior to his appointment to Russia between 1705 and 1712. In addition to trying to improve the regulation of the tobacco monopoly held by the English Russian company,  it fell to Whitworth to smooth over the relationship between the two countries following the scandal surrounding his ambassadorial counterpart in England,  Andrey Artemonovich Matveev.

Matveev was the son of a Moscow family with close familial ties to Peter, who as a youth had spent time at the Matveev family home during the irregular reign of his sister, Sophia.   Matveev was dispatched  on assignments to the Dutch Republic and Austria before settling in London in 1705.  He was clearly a copious spender since, just prior to leaving the city in 1708, he was abused physically by bailiffs and incarcerated in the ‘sponging house’ (debtors’ prison ) for non-payment of his debts.

Andrey Artemonovich was finally bailed out but, despite apologies from Queen Anne and the Government, his detention and treatment scandalized other foreign ambassadors in London who complained vociferously.  The result was the passing of the Diplomatic Immunities Act of 1708, the first instrument of its kind.  The Act was repealed in 1964 and superceded by the international Vienna Convention, which is the reason that diplomats in London flout the congestion charge and  don’t pay their parking fines!

A modest proposal

Ivan the Terrible showing his treasure to the English Ambassador. (Alexander Litovchenko 1875) The Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Did Ivan the Terrible propose to Elizabeth the First of England?

I have been researching my Royal Connections talk that I will be giving to several historical societies later this year.

Relations between the Russian and English royal families go back further than you might think. The later Tudors, starting with Mary and Philip, were in regular contact with Russia. Their correspondence related to the privileges enjoyed by the English Muscovy Company, founded in 1555, which enjoyed special trading rights with Russia for 100 years.

In 1556 the first Russian envoys reached the English court and after that time what were called ‘embassies’ travelled with some regularity between the two countries, although no permanent physical building was established in England at that early date.

Relationships between the two countries became very cordial under Elizabeth (1533- 1603) (reigned 1558 – 1603).  The Queen’s advisors wrote a letter on 1st May 1570 offering asylum to Ivan lV (better known as Ivan the Terrible) in the case of his needing to flee Russia as a result of the ongoing Livonian War.  The letter was signed by Bacon, Leycester and Cecil.

There is no document in the archives relating to the rumoured, and often still asserted, offer of marriage from Ivan to Elizabeth. This was not altogether surprising.  It is said that the highly sensitive matter could not be trusted to paper and that the message from the hopeful bridegroom was conveyed orally through the English envoy, Anthony Jenkinson. 

            A letter in October 1570 refers to ‘secret business of great value’ that was entrusted by Ivan to Jenkinson.  Ivan would have been 40 years old at the time. He had been a widower twice, and rumours suggested that he had poisoned two of his previous wives. In the light of this, having already dodged much more attractive suitors, it is not surprising that Elizabeth refused.

Ivan, possibly upset by the brush-off, is known to have written a fairly abusive letter back to Elizabeth, saying that she was not really in control of England, but simply a ‘common girl.’

Communication ceased for some years, but then, still seeking a wife, Ivan turned his attention to Elizabeth’s lady in waiting, Lady Ann Hastings. Ivan dispatched a Russian boyar, Grigory Pisemkoy, to England to make a formal request. He was accompanied back to Russia by an English envoy, Sir James Bowes, who ‘threw every obstacle in the way of the match’ much to Ivan’s irritation.

Ivan died the following year with the matter unresolved. A period of relative inactivity between the two courts then followed as Russia fell into the chaotic period known as the Time of Troubles.

Fortune’s Price is published!

Fortune’s Price, the sequel to my first novel Small Acts of Kindness, was published last week.

The book’s action commences in the summer of 1830, a time when Russia experienced an uprising in the Kingdom of Poland and the arrival from the east of a cholera epidemic. The main characters, many of whom the reader will know from the previous book, are fated to interact with these major historic events while confronting their own personal issues.

The Polish revolt was stimulated by the July Days, an uprising in France which toppled the Bourbon monarchy. This event ignited a series of popular revolts across Europe, disturbing the settlement achieved at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.  In Poland, Russia’s failure to allow the Poles to exercise previously agreed liberties had upset liberals for some time, and at the end of November 1830 a group of young soldiers rose up against the Tsar of Russia, who was also the King of Poland.  War was swiftly declared and, after a chaotic and irresolute campaign, the insurrection was finally put down in the early autumn of 1831.

Not much attention  was initially paid in Russia to the spread of cholera, until it started to threaten the towns on the Volga, and ultimately Moscow and beyond.  Very little was understood about the causes of the disease and how it spread, which led to panic and rioting among the people and heavy-handed responses from the authorities.  The government struggled with what measures should be taken and society was swamped by conspiracy theories leading to civil unrest.

When researching these events I dug into the historical sources available, using both personal memoirs of eyewitnesses and also more general histories. The latter included an exhaustive (and exhausting) diplomatic history of post-congress Poland which, for the benefit of the reader, I hope I have managed to condense into a few hundred words. More lively were the relevant parts of  General Orlov’s 1880 history of The Saint Petersburg Grenadiers, later renamed for the King of Prussia, a regiment that fought with distinction in the Polish war.

The family drama that is central to Fortune’s Price is of course fictional, but the issues of legitimacy, heredity, nobility and religion on which it touches were matters of great importance in early 19th Century Russia.  The difference in life expectations experienced by people of different status and rank was very stark. Only legitimate members of the nobility were allowed to own land and serfs; they were exempt from taxation and the officer ranks of the army and civil service were in general exclusively open to them.   Contentious matters were decided by the courts, but the Emperor, as supreme autocrat, had the power to overrule their decisions and often did so, although as time went on they became increasingly reluctant to exercise this prerogative.

Although I have tried hard to ensure the book’s historical accuracy, like its predecessor Fortune’s Price, it is above all intended to entertain.  I hope to transport the readers to a different time and place and to keep them turning the pages until the end.  I also hope that they will learn something new, since the book depicts events in Poland and Russia that are not particularly well known in the UK and also have some resonance today.

Primarily to be read for pleasure, Fortune’s Price does have an underlying message, and the clue is in the title. Having worked in the City of London for many years, I know that wealth and status seldom come without strings attached, and the question therefore arises as to how far people will compromise to attain their desires.  It seems in fact that generally there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Fortune’s Price is available now from the publisher, The Book Guild, and from all good bookshops.  An electronic version is available on Amazon. 

The soviet dacha

Soviet-era dacha in Resheti, near Ekaterinburg

I have just dusted down a talk that I gave some years ago about Russian dachas. I have been asked to give it again in early December. The lecture traces the history of this aspect of Russian life from its start in the 18h Century to the recent past.

In his excellent book, Summerfolk, a History of the Dacha (2003. Ithaca and London), Stephen Lovell describes the Russian dacha as ‘not a place but a way of life’, representing as it does a place of recreation where Russians have, since the mid eighteenth century, escaping the busy pressures of the cities.

In the immediate post-revolutionary period, Dacha ownership came under serious threat.  The notion of holiday homes for the better off was condemned by the intellectual avante guard, for whom ‘the dacha was synonymous with the social and cultural arrière’ (Lovell p. 134).  Indeed, in those early years many dachas were confiscated not only for ideological reasons but to alleviate the chronic housing shortage that existed at the time.

Despite everything, however, the private dacha survived, and in the 1920s came to be tolerated.  Some town dwellers moved to their dachas permanently and others were able to retain them by appealing to friends in high places. In addition, the peasants resumed the pre-revolutionary practice of renting out their homes during the summer period to those escaping the cities.

At the end of the twenties the campaign against so called ‘former people’ resulted in the confiscation of some dachas, but this period of repression did not last long.  The original notion of a dacha as something ‘given’ by the state revived, and workers were encouraged to aspire to own a dacha as a reward for their hard work.  Co-operatives were set up, and books of architectural plans featuring proletarian dacha were published.  Self-build schemes were encouraged, and it was mandated that new dachas should be simple in appearance and not resemble town houses, or pre-revolutionary bourgeoise structures.

The concept of official dacha settlements came into being: holiday homes, approved by the authorities, aimed at accommodating specific  groups of privileged people, such as artists, factory workers and party members. One of the earliest of these was the Polotsov Mansion, an early 20th century building that was converted to a house of rest for workers and opened by Vladimir Lenin in the 1920s.  The poet Boris Pasternak had a dacha at the famous artists’ colony of Peredelniko outside Moscow.  He spent a good deal of time here, seeking to escape the terrible living accommodation available in the city rather than to avoid official attention as is sometimes thought.  In fact, the eyes of the government were firmly focused on the colony, and indeed  both Boris Pilnyak and Itsak Babel were arrested there during the Terror. Chukovsky, the children’s author, described it as ‘Entrapping writers within a cocoon of comfort, surrounding them with a network of spies’ (quoted in The Zhivago Affair. Peter Finn and Petra Couvé, 2014 London, p. 4.).

When it came to holiday homes for the highest echelons of the Party different rules applied.  Lenin enjoyed the luxurious surroundings of a former noble estate near Domodedovo, where he kept his Silver Ghost Rolls Royce. Stalin had several dachas in the Moscow region.  Other party members  enjoyed similar privileges, while they remained in favour. Their story is a long one, and  must therefore form the subject of another post.