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Text 11: A Visit to Moscow at the 1990

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Mr. Smith is an old man. He's recently retired and so he's got a lot of time for travelling. He's come to Moscow as a tourist.

Now he's sitting in the hotel hall and talking to Leonid Petrov, his guide.

Petrov : Is this your first visit to Moscow, Mr. Smith?

Smith : Yes. But I've heard a lot about Moscow from my father. He was here before the Revolution. Moscow wasn't the capital then, was it?

Petrov : Quite right. It only became the capital in 1918.

Smith : The city has changed very much. You can hardly recognize many of the streets and squares. I don't think young people like you remember the dirty, narrow streets my father saw in the suburbs, and in the centre, too, during his visit.

Petrov : I'm afraid I don't. I wonder what you will say after you've seen our new district in the South-West.

Smith : Oh, I've heard about it from a friend. He told me it was a beautiful place with wide, straight streets and many gardens. We are going there, aren't we?

Petrov : Yes, we'll see it on the way to the new building of Moscow University.

Mr. Smith also said that he had heard a lot about the Tretyakov Picture Gallery and would like to see it. Leonid told him that they were planning to see the Gallery in a few days. They were also going to see towns and villages, hospitals, collective farms, museums, exhibitions and many other interesting things. Mr. Smith hoped he would see several other important industrial and agricultural centres in the Soviet Union, in addition to Moscow.

WATCH LIVE: MSNBC presents special coverage of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Seven GOP lawmakers make a misguided trip to Russia

On Tuesday afternoon, the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee issued some important findings, concluding that the U.S. intelligence community was correct in its assessment: Russia attacked the U.S. elections in 2016 and did so in the hopes of putting Donald Trump in the White House.

It was right around this time that seven Republican members of Congress -- six senators and one House member -- were in Moscow. Making matters much worse, however, is what the GOP lawmakers had to say while they were there. The Washington Post  reported :

Republican members of Congress sounded a newly conciliatory tone in meetings with Russian lawmakers and officials here on Tuesday in a rare visit to Moscow and a preview of the looming summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) told Russia's foreign minister that while Russia and the United States were competitors, "we don't necessarily need to be adversaries." ... "I'm not here today to accuse Russia of this or that or so forth," Shelby told Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.

In addition to Shelby, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and has limited foreign policy responsibilities, the official congressional delegation featured Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas).

On the surface, official foreign visits like these -- known as "codels" (for "congressional delegations") -- are as routine as they beneficial. I've seen some suggestions that members shouldn't be abroad during the 4th of July, but that doesn't matter much to me. Lawmakers are out this week for the holiday, so it stands to reason that they'll schedule international travel at a time when they won't miss votes on Capitol Hill.

What's far more alarming are the specific details of this particular trip.

At issue is seven Republicans traveling to an adversary's capital less than two years after it launched an attack on our sovereignty. Did the Americans make the trip to take a firm stand against our attackers? Hardly. They had no interest in confronting Russian officials over their election interference, preferring instead to let bygones be bygones.

There was no reason for the delegation to be partisan, but it was. There was no reason for these Republicans to give the Kremlin a pass on its misdeeds, but they did. There was no reason for the GOP lawmakers to downplay the significance of election meddling and the fate of Crimea in their discussions, but based on multiple accounts, they did that, too*. [ corrected: see below ]

Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov said on Tuesday that he's met with many American lawmakers before, but this week's meeting " was one of the easiest ones in my life ."

If the Republicans who were in Moscow consider this a compliment, they're badly missing the point.

As the 2018 midterm elections approach, there are widespread concerns among U.S. officials about Putin's government launching another intelligence operation against our political system. The more Russia thinks it can get away with these attacks, the more emboldened it will be to launch them.

And yet, there was Alabama's Richard Shelby, traveling to Moscow and signaling weakness, reluctant to make accusations about "this or that or so forth."

In the recent past, Republicans saw Russia as an adversary, convinced of the need to show strength. That was before it became Donald Trump's party.

* Correction : I'd originally noted in this post that election meddling and Crimea were excluded from the delegation's talks with Russians, which was incorrect. I meant to say the importance of the issues was downplayed, and the above text has been corrected accordingly.

Soviet Union: UKE Moscow telegram 423 to FCO (1330Z) ("Mr Healey's Visit to Moscow") [Soviet response to proposed visit] [released Jul 2017]

View this document (PDF, 933.07 KB)

THE NATIONS: Mr. Molotov Comes to Town

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When his airplane landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Walter Bedell Smith was pale and tired. His limping but cheerful wife (she had strained a muscle playing badminton) was there to greet him, and so was a cluster of Western diplomats, generals, newsmen. But no Russians. Said Bedell Smith: "Fine weather you're having here."

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, mr smith goes to moscow: russian editions of the wealth of nations.

A Research Annual

ISBN : 978-0-76230-847-7 , eISBN : 978-1-84950-137-8

Publication date: 30 January 2002

Adam Smith never travelled to Russia but his published works certainly did. This short research note chronicles some pertinent facts on this topic, tracing the publication of editions of Smith's The Wealth of Nations in Russia in the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century; in particular it highlights a remarkable edition of this work published in the USSR in 1935. It also sketches some interpretations of Smith's ideas as given in Russian encyclopaedias and journals, and briefly chronicles the influence of some of Smith's ideas on policy-makers and economists in Russia in the nineteenth century. This account does not claim to be definitive, only to provide an introductory description of the propagation of some aspects of Smith's teachings in Russia from the end of the eighteenth century to World War Two. Smith himself was at least a little interested in Russia, as the three volumes on various aspects of Russia in his personal library indicate (Bonar, pp. 51, 111, 161), although unlike John Milton he never wrote a history of Moscovy.

Barnett, V. (2002), "Mr Smith goes to Moscow: Russian editions of The wealth of nations", Samuels, W.J. and Biddle, J.E. (Ed.) A Research Annual ( Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 20 Part 1 ), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(02)20020-6

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Copyright © 2002, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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On this day: Samantha Smith visited the Soviet Union

Samantha Smith, an American schoolgirl who visited the USSR.

Samantha Reed Smith was an American schoolgirl and peace activist, who became famous in both the Soviet Union and U.S. during the Cold War. In 1982, Smith wrote a letter to the newly appointed CPSU General Secretary Yuri Andropov, asking why relations between the Soviet Union and America were so tense. A year later, after Samantha’s letter was published in the Soviet newspaper Pravda, she received a personal reply with an invitation to visit Russia , which she accepted.

On July 7, 1983 she flew to Moscow with her family and spent over two weeks there. After her visit she wrote a book dedicated to her trip.

Tragically, Samantha died in a plane crash at the age of 13. Mikhail Gorbachev sent his condolences to her family, saying that “Everyone in the Soviet Union who knew Samantha Smith will forever remember the image of the American girl who, like millions of young Soviet men and women, dreamt about peace and about friendship between the peoples of the United States and Soviet Union.” 

Smith attracted huge media attention in both countries as a "Goodwill Ambassador" and became known as "America's Youngest Ambassador.”

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Mister Rogers shows pictures of the night and day skies. He plays with a star on a string and then remembers his trip to Moscow, where he met Russian children’s television program producers.In the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, there is a falling star–a pretend star falling from a string.

<i> Moscow Diary</i> by Walter Benjamin, edited by Gary Smith; translated by Richard Sieburth (Harvard University: $25; 150 pp.)

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Walter Benjamin was a luminary of 20th-Century literary thought; a dull notion, unless it is understood that the light came from 800 or 900 glowworms collected in his paper hat.

He was that altogether uncommon figure, the critic disarmed. As Franz Kafka stripped away the assurance of civilized reality, Benjamin--Kafka’s spiritual kinsman--eroded the apparatus of critical and scholarly authority and walked away barefoot.

In the ‘20s and ‘30s, he was a Jew in Berlin, a visitor to the Russian Revolution, a refugee in France, a citizen of the world in flames. More man of letters than scholar, and more poet than either one, he wandered through Western culture as if it had been destroyed centuries earlier, and he were a revenant poking through its remains. He amassed quotations and collected books and toys, with no illusion of finding a living civilization, but seeking the artifacts of a shattered one.

His preferred form of writing was shattered, as well: fragments, short paragraphs, aphorisms, metaphors. He was brilliant but childlike, even naive. The emperor and he were naked together. He was culture’s holy fool; without defenses and making art out of precariousness.

His allure today is almost as much moral as intellectual. He inspires a kind of love. Hannah Arendt, who presented him to English-speaking readers in the ‘60s, wrote of him almost maternally. “Mr. Bungle,” she called him--German children who spill or break things are told that “Mr. Bungle sends you his regards”--and noted his tendency to drift into intellectual disfavor and personal catastrophe. In 1940, fearing that Paris would be bombed--it wasn’t--he fled to Meaux, a troop center, which was. Trying to cross the Spanish border to escape the Nazis, he got caught in a brief bureaucratic freeze, and committed suicide without trying again to straighten the matter out. His Baedeker, after all, was “The Trial.”

Love, mixed with obsession, is at the heart of “Moscow Diary,” the private record of Benjamin’s two-month visit to the Soviet Union in the winter of 1926. Edited and with an afterword by Gary Smith and lucidly translated by Richard Sieburth, it is a many-faceted jewel: a portrait of the Russian revolution in its still unsettled transition to Stalinism, a vivid picture of Moscow life, Benjamin’s intellectual journal, and above all, the tragicomic story of his pursuit of the Estonian actress, Lacis Asja.

If you were not assured of the identity of the protagonist, whose worried face with its small black mustache peers out of a photograph, you would swear that it could only be Charlie Chaplin. Trotting along, slanted in a slanting world, and carrying--because he and Asja loved to eat--not a bunch of wilted flowers but propitiatory parcels of caviar, cakes and tangerines.

In one sense, the diary is the raw material for “Moscow,” a celebrated essay he published on his return to Germany. “Moscow” is partly political analysis and partly travel literature, but essentially, it is something more.

Some of Benjamin’s most original work took the form of pieces written about places. His method for striking at reality was to stroll through it. He found in shop windows, the manners of a crowd on a streetcar, the intimate quality of a cafe, clues to the temper or a society and its underlying political, psychological and artistic energies.

The essay treats the diary entries with greater formality. It works to extract more explicit reflections from them, and to give them an aesthetic shape. It also curbs their remarkable spontaneity. The essay portrays the intellectual results of Benjamin’s cultural and personal shocks; the diary, on the other hand, contains the shocks themselves.

Benjamin was a radical Marxist who went to Moscow in hopes of finding the New Man and the New Society. He went, that is, as a later European visit Havana in 1960, and as some people go to Nicaragua today; and what he found was not dissimilar. A sense of possibility with signs of curdling. The purges hadn’t really started, though one of Benjamin’s first visits was to a writer who was receiving friends on the eve of his polite but involuntary departure to a settlement 1,000 miles east.

Stalin was promoting a mixed economy in the hope of greater efficiency. There were beggars and millionaires, a former Czarist general teaching at the military academy, private shops and restaurants, a semi-free theater, a buttoned-up cinema--all this alongside a resurgence of party control and unpredictable patterns of tolerance and repression, vitality and confusion.

Benjamin was in a whirl. He tried to like the cult of the dynamo and to understand the replacement of Vorticist art by the early precursors of socialist realism. But indoctrination was producing a younger generation “who don’t come to the Revolution as an experience but only as a discourse.”

He debated endlessly whether to join the Communist Party for the sake of power, or to stay out because of the constraints. He noted that his Moscow host, Benjamin Reich, who was a theater critic and party member, was part of the ruling class, and went on:

“It is precisely this transformation of an entire power structure that makes life here so extraordinarily meaningful. It is as insular and as eventful, as impoverished and yet in the same breath as full of possibilities as gold rush life in the Klondike. The dig for power goes on from early morning till late at night. The entire scheme of existence of the Western European intelligentsia is utterly impoverished in comparison to the countless constellations that offer themselves to an individual here in the space of a month. Admittedly, this can lead to a certain state of inebriation. . . .” The inebriation waned; back in Germany, he never did join the Party.

All these things are vivid enough, but they are both enhanced and confused by the author’s passion for Asja. A man in love sees everything else with a feverish clarity and in a feverish daze. Benjamin, in Moscow and in love, was in a double fever.

Given his propensity to disaster, it was fitting that Asja was the lover and steady companion of Benjamin’s host, Reich. Yet she returned his love, though grudgingly and with exceeding complication. It was an entirely lopsided triangle, and Benjamin was the obtuse angle.

Almost every page of the diary is full of his strategies to get Asja alone; and when alone, to obtain some sign of affection. What he usually got was refusals and complaints about his presents of food and clothes.

Benjamin’s entries are touching and absurd. He records her mood--usually bad--and notes that at one point, when he gave vent to his jealousy of Reich, Asja bestowed a kiss, “even hugging me in the process.” After being held off so long, he was unprepared for one evening of relative passion when she came to his room, lay down with him, kissed and caressed him, and talked about Proust. “It took some time before it made me happy,” he wrote. “I was like a vase with a slender neck into which liquid was being poured from a pail.”

This was exceptional; far more common are entries in which he prepares for a visit, rests up, brings in food, and waits in vain for Asja to show up. It is not surprising that Chaplin comes to mind. Benjamin was the Little Tramp of a teetering Western culture; and in love, besides. What a movie his diary would make!

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This Day In History : July 7

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11-year-old Samantha Smith leaves for visit to the USSR

Samantha Smith, an 11-year-old American girl, begins a two-week visit to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Some American observers believed that Smith was merely being used by the Soviets for their own propaganda purposes, while others saw her visit as a positive step toward improving U.S.-Russian relations.

In April 1983, the Soviet government released a letter written by Smith to Andropov as part of a school project. In the letter, Smith asked Andropov about his country and whether he wanted peace with the United States. Surprisingly, Andropov answered the letter personally, assuring Smith that he had the greatest friendliness toward America and wished only for peace and mutual understanding. He ended by inviting Smith to come see the Soviet Union for herself. The fifth grader accepted Andropov’s offer and the trip was set for July 1983. 

Almost immediately, Smith’s family was flooded with letters from Americans, most of whom supported Samantha’s decision. Many, however, sharply criticized her upcoming visit, claiming that it was merely a propaganda ploy by the communists. To some extent, they were right: Andropov clearly saw the Smith visit as an opportunity to try to dispel some negative impressions of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Andropov also was clear about wanting closer relations with the West, and his invitation to the small girl was one way of indicating this desire.

During her two weeks in Russia, Smith was treated as a VIP and given a carefully arranged tour of the Soviet Union. However, she also found time to speak to groups of Soviet citizens who made no attempt to hide some of the problems facing their nation, particularly food shortages. For her part, Smith absolutely charmed her hosts and became a famous figure almost overnight. Arriving back in the United States two weeks later, she indicated that she firmly believed that the Soviets “want no harm to the world, just like us.” When asked whether she would like to live in Russia, she praised her communist hosts but declared that she would “rather live in my own country.”

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• Mister Rogers Visits Russia

Mister Rogers and a translator meet Tatiana Vedeneeva, the host of  Good Night Little Ones . She shows them the television studio where she films her children’s program. Mister Rogers plays the piano and meets the crew. Daniel Tiger even overcomes a bit of shyness to meet one of the puppets. After spending time behind the scenes, Mister Rogers appears as a special guest on the Russian children’s television program.

When the filming is done, Mister Rogers gives everyone  Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood  t-shirts. Fred’s visit to Moscow was part of an exchange; Tatiana also traveled to the United States to appear on the  Neighborhood .

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Mission to Moscow

&#8212;Theodore Shabad

• March 18, 1973

MOSCOW—The talks with the Russians, Secretary of the Treasury George P. Shultz told Western correspondents here last Wednesday, were “serious, professional ... I tried to explain the nature of the problem as we see it ... the character of the American political process involving interaction between the President and Congress.”

It was part of the “quiet diplomacy” undertaken by the Nixon Administration to overcome what has developed into a serious hitch in plans to expand Soviet‐American trade: a drive in Congress to block such expansion unless the Soviet Government removes restrictions on the emigration of Jews and other Soviet citizens. And, judging from the Soviet reaction to Mr. Shultz's meetings last week with Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet officials, the impasse, if anything, has hardened.

The Nixon Administration, though sympathetic to the plight of would‐be emigrants from the Soviet Union, insists that the problem should not be linked to the Washington‐Moscow agreement of last October that would permit the Russians to sell their goods to the United States at tariff rates no higher than those levied by the United States on other nations. Without such an easing of laws governing trade with the Communist bloc, long‐term expansion of balanced trade between the two countries would seem unfeasible. Refusal by Congress to approve the agreement, Secretary of State William P. Rogers said recently in Washington, would be a, “very serious setback for our foreign policy.”

Yet the Congressional sponsors of legislation to deny most‐favored‐nation status to the Soviet Union until Moscow eases its so‐called “head tax” on those wishing to emigrate have won powerful support in the Senate and House, and they insist they are not bluffing and will not back down.

“There is still time to avoid an open confrontation,” said Senator Abraham Ribicoff, Democrat of Connecticut, “but the next move is up to the Soviet Union, and I hope that our diplomats—at the highest level—are conveying this message to Moscow.”

But what the Russians seem to have told Mr. Shultz during his hastily arranged three‐day visit here last week was: “The next move is up to you.” There can be no fundamental change, Soviet spokesmen seemed to be saying, in a long‐standing policy that does not permit unrestricted emigration for any Soviet citizens. The exit fees imposed about nine months ago on those who are permitted to leave are defended as recompense to the state for the costs of free education. It is, the Russians insist, an internal domestic matter.

According to a brief communiqué issued after a three‐hour meeting between Mr. Shultz and Mr. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader stressed “the need for building trade and economic relations between the two countries on the principles of complete equality and mutual benefit.” If there was any single message that Mr. Shultz was taking back with him to Washington, it was that Mr. Brezhnev and the other officials with whom the Secretary conferred expected Mr. Nixon to carry out his commitment.

Actually, during the Presidential election campaign last autumn, the Soviet. Union granted exit permits' to a number of Jews who had been frustrated in their efforts to leave for Israel. The concession was an avowed goodwill gesture toward Mr. Nixon. There has been a significant exodus of Jews, running around 2,000 a month. Soviet Jews, in fact, have been a privileged group among other ethnic groups in the Soviet Union in being allowed to leave in significant numbers.

There remains, however, a hard core of prominent Jews who wish to leave and have been unable to obtain the required permits. Yet even if a symbolic few among them were permitted to leave, it would not meet Congressional demands as now formulated. The campaign in Congress does not appear to be aimed at obtaining the right of emigration for Jews alone. As written, the bills introduced in the Senate by Henry M. Jackson, Democrat of Washington, and in the House by Wilbur D. Mills, Democrat of Arkansas, call for a lifting of restrictive emigration practices in general.

Caught between the seemingly adamant attitude in the Kremlin and the strong feelings aroused on Capitol Hill, the Nixon Administration appears still to be debating its tactics. The future of Soviet‐American trade, including the huge potential deal for developing and importing natural gas from Siberia, appears to be hinging increasingly on how the emigration issue is handled between the President and Congress.

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Something about Moscow: a new look at a great city – archive, 1959

26 February 1959 : Michael Frayn writes about the Russian capital while covering Harold Macmillan’s 10-day visit to the USSR

Moscow, 25 February It is a pity Mr Macmillan had to be out of town to-day for talks at his dacha. He leaves for Kyiv and Leningrad to-morrow and all he can have seen of the Russian capital so far – unless he creeps out of his house in Pomerantsev Lane at night disguised as a muzhik – is a flickering of flashbulbs and a hovering of journalists.

Today in the crisp February cold, with a few snowflakes falling out of a grey sky, it was bracing weather for a stroll round town. Moscow is a city which needs to be seen – to be believed as much as for any other reason. “Why do they have such high walls round the Kremlin, Mummy?” the Moscow child is supposed to ask his mother. “To keep the robbers in, dear,” replies mother. The really intelligent mother might say, however, “To keep the Soviet architects out.” For the Kremlin, with its three onion-domed cathedrals, is almost the only relic of roaring old Moscow – and almost the only object left in the city which it is not painful to look at.

Great, but ugly With a population of some eight million, Moscow is one of the world’s great capitals. Was there ever another capital so blindingly ugly, so devoid of taste or style, and so dull? The best bits are probably the slums around Novoi Alekseyevskaya Street – old timber houses of one and two storeys leaning drunkenly in the snow and due for clearance if they do not fall down of their own accord first. But the majority of the city’s housing consists of apartment blocks of indeterminate age. Everywhere the paint is coming off the window frames and the window frames off the hinges. Inside them, there are often two families to a room, communal kitchens, and no baths.

The housing problems have always been a millstone round the Muscovite’s neck. But things have got noticeably better the last few years – conservative sources reckon that three out of 10 families have been rehoused since 1956. The skyscraper blocks of flats lined with marble and speckled with steeples to which Soviet architecture sank a few years ago (dragging with it human taste to what must be its lowest watermark ever) were found to be too expensive – to the resounding credit of Soviet accountants, and the authorities have now switched to building enormous apartment blocks which are free of any evidence of design whatsoever.

These have sprung up fastest and thickest in the south-western district of the city, the so-called “New Moscow”. Here the uniform blocks, built in a curiously depressing grey brick stretch as far as the eye can see; and the forest of power cranes is still at work. It is an odd experience seeing slums actually being built in front of one’s eyes. But inside they are light and equipped with bathroom, lavatory, and kitchen, which probably counts for more than setting with the Muscovites.

“You’ll be lucky” But it is still extremely difficult to find accommodation. The noticeboards which are to be found on nearly every street carry many advertisements offering to exchange rooms (“Exchange room with all conveniences 12 square metres in Kazan for a room in Moscow”). But few are offering accommodation for those with nothing to exchange. The ones that do, look sinister – “Offer part of a room near Metro station. All conveniences except bath.” Two women who are searching the advertisements demand suddenly: “What do you want to exchange, young man?” “I haven’t got a room in Moscow.” They laugh derisively “You’ll be lucky,” they say.

The noticeboards are interesting windows of Moscow life. They are covered with offers of jobs. There are advertisements, too, inserted by private individuals who want to teach English, typing for the blind, theoretical mechanics, and dress-making. There are also plenty of signs of the new rich – the intelligentsia; demands for a daily help and even for servants to live in. One offers “350 roubles a month (about £9 at a reasonable rate of exchange). Separate room. References essential.”

The signs one sees in the streets offer another perspective: “Sputnik Cafe” on the Lenin prospect in the south-west district; a significant absence of any names at all on what used to be the Lubyanka, now the headquarters of the KGB – the secret police; few hoardings everywhere: “Don’t Cross in Front of the Bus – It’s Dangerous”, “Save Time – Try Powdered Soups”, “Save Money”, “Work and Live in the Communist Way”.

Eating out In the centre, the buildings are all marble magnificence. But the true Moscow lies farther out. A good way to see it is to take a stroll along the rather slummy Baumanskaya Street. In the scruffy “Dietary Dining Rooms” here you can buy about five roubles’ worth of meal tickets from the cashier, exchange them at the self-service counter for a sloshy meal and eat alongside men in suits and ties.

Farther down the road is a beer shop. Here everyone is in fur hats and felt boots, drinking beer and eating bread and cheese. A sign on the wall says: “‘It is forbidden to bring and consume spirits.” A man buys a paper cup of cherry juice with his beer, empties it into the ashtray, and fills it from a half bottle of vodka which he takes out from under his coat. In the corner two very drunken men are holding one another up, kissing each other’s cheeks, and explaining to anyone who will listen, “We haven’t seen one another for 23 years.”

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There are far fewer drunks on the streets now than there were two years ago and the swarms of beggars who used to shove the raw stump of their amputated arms in your face have disappeared. There is far more traffic on the wide streets, too. There are still peasants up from the country for a few days and their appearance has changed very little since the last century.

Smell of Russia There is something about Moscow which grips one in spite of all the seaminess of the place. Perhaps it is just the unforgettable smell of Russia. A combination, it seems, of stale smoke, sweat, pickled cucumber, and cheap scent which goes wherever Soviet rule extends – to Russia’s embassies abroad, even to her aircraft. Perhaps it is the spirit of the people still profoundly Slavonik which bursts forth in the supreme brio of the ballet dancers at the Bolshoi and in the intense, humility of the thousands of Muscovites, many of them old and bent, who pack the churches every Sunday to chant the Orthodox mass and bow their foreheads to the ground, rapt in the service, surrendering all hope of any high station in life simply by being there.

Anyway, whatever it is, Moscow has plenty of admirers. There is a fountain in Sverdlovsk Square in front of the Bolshoi theatre into which people throw coins and wish that they may come back to Moscow. Now the fountain is silent and choked with snow, but in summer the water is full of 10 kopek pieces. Anyone who is prepared to pay 10 kopeks for the privilege of returning to Moscow must think something of the place.

For a report on the results of the visit see Further blow to hopes based on premier’s visit: cool company in Kremlin .

• From the Guardian archive
• Moscow holidays
• Michael Frayn
• Harold Macmillan

Most viewed

Episode 1587

Topic: Nighttime Air Date: March 8, 1988 Previous Episode: 1586 - Nighttime Next Episode: 1588 - Nighttime Purchase/Stream: Amazon

In the kitchen, Mister Rogers puts on his glasses and uses a piece of construction paper to cut out a star which he attaches to a string.

Using a globe, Mister Rogers shows the United States and then points out Russia reflecting on his recent visit to Moscow. Mister Rogers marvels at St. Basil's and other parts of Moscow before stopping with Daniel Tiger to visit with a group of Russian children. Visiting the set of a childrens' television program, Good Night Little Ones , Mister Rogers meets the program's host, Tatiana Vedeneeva. With the help of a Russian puppetteer, Mister Rogers' introduces Daniel Tiger to Khrusha, a character from Good Night Little Ones . After his appearance on the program, Mister Rogers presents everyone with Mister Rogers' Neighborhood t-shirts.

After his reflection on his visit to Moscow, Mister Rogers mentions that just because he can not see the people he met in Russia, they are still there. He then sings You Are Special .

In the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, Lady Aberlin and Daniel are talking about the night sky when a pretend star drops from a string near the clock. At the Museum-Go-Round, Lady Aberlin finds that Neighbor Aber and Lady Elaine are behind the "falling star." Lady Elaine provides telescopes which they use to view the night sky.

Back at the house, Mister Rogers concludes after cleaning up the kitchen.

The Trolley enters and exits the Neighborhood of Make-Believe on the alternate set of tracks.

Appearing In This Episode

• Daniel Striped Tiger
• Lady Aberlin
• Lady Elaine Fairchilde
• Mister Rogers
• Neighbor Aber
• Tatiana Vedeneeva
• It's Such a Good Feeling
• The Weekend Song
• Won't You Be My Neighbor?
• You Are Special

Episode Credits

With Fred Rogers Neighbors: Chuck Aber , Betty Aberlin , Nona Perez, Tatiana Vedeneeva Special Thanks to the Staff of Gosteleradio (USSR), Belka International Inc. (New York & Moscow), Finnair Executive Producer: Fred Rogers Producer: Margaret Whitmer Director: Paul Lally Associate Producers: David Kholodenko, Masha Nordbye, Susi Simons Music Director: John Costa

Produced in association with WQED/Pittsburgh A production of Family Communications © 1988 Family Communications, Inc.

This site is best viewed using the most current version of Google Chrome. Content copyright © The Fred Rogers Company. Used with permission. Corner image by Spencer Fruhling . Used with permission. Do not duplicate or distribute any material from this site without the consent of The Fred Rogers Company.

‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ & More TV Hotels You Can Visit in Real Life (PHOTOS)

A Gentleman in Moscow

Despite its Russian splendor, the Metropol Hotel seen in the  Ewan McGregor-led  A Gentleman in Moscow  is just a set. But Count Alexander Rostov’s gilded cage in which he serves his lifelong house arrest is based on the real hotel of the same name, and it’s a place you can visit in real life.

A Gentleman in Moscow premieres Friday, March 29 for Paramount+ With Showtime app subscribers and Sunday, March 31 at 8/7c on the Showtime network (now also called Paramount+ With Showtime), with one episode coming out weekly.

The series joins shows like The White Lotus , Griselda ,  Succession , American Horror Story , Twin Peaks , and more that filmed in and/or are inspired by real-life hotels.

Here, scroll through 12 locations used for TV lodging that you can actually visit in real life.

A Gentleman in Moscow , Series Premiere, Sunday, March 31, 8/7c, Showtime, Available now, Paramount+ With Showtime

Metropol Hotel, A Gentleman in Moscow

The Showtime limited series is set inside Moscow’s Metropol Hotel , but it wasn’t filmed there. Situated in Moscow’s historic Theatre Square, the hotel opened in 1905 and quickly became a bustling hub for people looking for luxury.

The hotel became a battleground between Tsarist loyalists and the Bolsheviks during the Bolshevik Revolution. The victorious Bolsheviks then used it as temporary lodging for their officers and soldiers.

The Metropol remains a luxury hotel today. A Gentleman in Moscow author Amor Towles first stayed in the hotel in 1998, and it inspired his best-selling 2016 novel .

Four Seasons Maui, The White Lotus Season 1

The White Lotus Season 1 filmed at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea. The cast also stayed in the resort during filming. Since they filmed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, staying in the hotel allowed the cast and crew to quarantine together.

San Domenico Palace, The White Lotus Season 2

Sicily’s San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel served as the setting for  The White Lotus  Season 2.

Juvet Landscape Hotel, Succession

The lavish Norwegian hotel where Lukas Matsson ( Alexander Skarsgård ) hosts the Waystar-Royco crew in Succession ‘s final season is the Juvet Landscape Hotel in Valldal, located on the west coast of Norway.

Cecil Hotel, American Horror Story: Hotel

American Horror Story ‘s Hotel Cortez was inspired by Los Angeles’ Cecil Hotel, but it didn’t film there. That was probably for the best, considering the Cecil is considered one of the most haunted hotels in the world!

The interiors were a soundstage, with its lobby being directly inspired by L.A.’s Cicada Restaurant. The exteriors were filmed at The Oviatt Building, an art deco building that houses the Cicada.

The Hotel Cortez ballroom was filmed in the Los Angeles Theatre, which can be seen during the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Broadway Historic Theatre and Commercial District Tour .

The Mutiny Hotel, Griselda & Hotel Cocaine

The Mutiny Hotel was the epicenter of Miami’s cocaine scene in the 1970s and ’80s. Infamous drug lords like Pablo Escobar and Griselda Blanco walked its halls, as well as the notorious Mutiny club.

The Mutiny, which still operates today, is the Scarface hotel and is also depicted in Netflix ‘s  Griselda starring Sofía Vergara (above, left). The Mutiny Hotel’s history will next be depicted in MGM+ ‘s Hotel Cocaine , with Danny Pino (above, right) playing Roman Compte , the man behind the hotel. The series premieres this summer.

Kearsney Manor, 1923

The lush Kearsney Manor seen in Africa in 1923 Episode 2, where Spencer Dutton ( Brandon Sklenar ) first meets Alexandra ( Julia Schlaepfer ), was used to depict Nairobi’s famous Stanley Hotel. The mansion is actually located in South Africa, not Kenya’s capital.

The Stanley Hotel is Kenya’s first and oldest luxury hotel. It looks different now than it did when it was first built in 1902 (it was torn down and rebuilt in the 1950s), so  1923 used the Kearsney Manor as a stand-in for what the Stanley used to be. The manor can be booked as a wedding venue and for other events.

Skipass Colfosco, Mr. & Mrs. Smith

The Italian ski resort seen in Prime Video ‘s  Mr. & Mrs. Smith   Season 1 Episode 3 is the Skipass Colfosco, located near the small village of Calofosch, Italy. Here, Donald Glover and Maya Erskine ‘s Smiths were on a case involving Sharon Horgan and Billy Campbell .

Lotte New York Palace Hotel, Gossip Girl

This hotel in Midtown Manhattan served as the exterior setting for Serena van der Woodsen’s ( Blake Lively ) apartment building in the early seasons of Gossip Girl .

The hotel has been used for a slew of TV shows. So much so, in fact, that the hotel has a page dedicated to the shows that filmed there on its website. Check out the additional shows here .

Salish Lodge & Spa, Twin Peaks

The Great Northern Hotel in Snoqualmie, Washington was Dale Cooper’s ( Kyle MacLachlan ) home base in Twin Peaks . The hotel used for its exteriors was Seattle’s Salish Lodge & Spa . The Salish is seen in the show’s opening theme and in many shots throughout the series.

Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Sex and the City

The iconic Parisian hotel Carrie Bradshaw ( Sarah Jessica Parker ) stays in during the Sex and the City series finale is the Hôtel Plaza Athénée . The five-star luxury hotel is still operating.

The Elms, The Gilded Age

While they’re not hotels, we’d be remiss not to mention that the stunning mansions of HBO ‘s The Gilded Age are places you can tour in real life. The Russell’s Newport, Rhode Island mansion is the famed Elms estate. The Elms’ exterior, as well as its ballroom (seen above, with Carrie Coon and Nathan Lane ), were both used as filming locations for Season 2.

Marian’s ( Louisa Jacobson ) engagement in the Season 2 Episode 6 garden party scene was filmed at the Old Westbury Estate in Long Island, New York. TV Insider was on set for that day of filming. Get the behind-the-scenes details here .

Newport’s The Ledges house was the setting for Mrs. Fish’s ( Ashlie Atkinson ) summer home in Season 1. There are also hotels in Newport, Rhode Island, like the Castle Hill Inn, that inspired the series’ locations, even if they didn’t film there. Get a full breakdown of the Newport mansions and other famous locales used in The Gilded Age here .

American Horror Story

American horror story: hotel, gossip girl (2007), hotel cocaine, mr. & mrs. smith (2024), sex and the city (1998), the gilded age, the white lotus, twin peaks (1990).

[Linda Smith's visit to Moscow]

• PMID: 2198421

Publication types

• Historical Article
• History, 20th Century
• International Cooperation*
• Nursing / trends*
• United States

Personal name as subject

‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ Creators Say Sofia’s Arrival Brings Whole New ‘Level of Purpose’ to the Count

“When you become a parent, you’re no longer the most important person in your life,” showrunner Ben Vanstone tells TheWrap

Episodes 4 and 5 of “A Gentleman in Moscow” mark a turning point for Ewan McGregor’s Count Alexander Rostov as he gets to put his paternal nature to the true test.

In the Paramount+ and Showtime series, adapted from Amor Towles’ best-selling novel, the count becomes confined to the Metropol Hotel after the Russian Revolution due to his class and title. The penalty for his leaving the hotel is death, so he makes the most of his situation by befriending those who frequent the building.

One friendship he makes in the beginning with Nina Kulikova (first portrayed by Alexa Goodall and later, Leah Balmforth) changes the course of his life. A grown-up Nina leaves her daughter Sofia (portrayed by twins Billie and Beau Gadsdon) in the care of the count when she decides to follow her husband, who gets arrested and sentenced to five years of corrective behavior in Sevvostlag, a camp in Russia.

“So much of the story is about the count rediscovering a sense of purpose, but it comes in shifts. Initially, the purpose is to get along and survive life in the hotel. But then as the waiter, it’s sort of to have a job and have comrades and colleagues in the kitchen that are his friends,” author Towles told TheWrap. “And then with the arrival of Sofia, it’s a whole ‘nother level of purpose when he’s suddenly put in the position of being a parent. You’re ramping up, as you go, his involvement in what he’s facing.”

This surprise development takes place in 1938, Day 6,213 of the Count’s imprisonment, and the plotline follows that of the book. Showrunner Ben Vanstone sees it as the midpoint of the series.

“It’s such a pivot point in the series when that little child is dropped off in the hotel to be left with the Count. And the whole novel just shifts from that moment,” he said. “It felt to me that that’s our midpoint from the very beginning, it was the end of Episode 4 when she should arrive, and Episode 5 is the sort of growth of that relationship with Sofia.”

Forced to entertain the child, Alexander first tries to read to her, but then plays a hide-and-seek game with her instead, in which she quickly bests him. He also struggles to brush her hair at first, but he eventually figures that out, too. When he makes a spot for Sofia on the floor of his room, she winds up in his bed, leaving him to make the sacrifice to sleep on the floor instead. 

“The interesting thing for me about that, as well, is when you become a parent, you’re no longer the most important person in your life, and that sort of fundamental shift in the Count’s perspective makes the ending inevitable, in a way, which is really satisfying,” Vanstone continued.

The arrival of Sofia parallels the relationship between her mother at a younger age (Goodall) and the Count. Towles described that point as a new beginning for the Count when he is “at one of his lowest points” in isolation after losing his family, possessions and familiar Russian homeland.

“That relationship is really where he begins his new life — the kindness and the curiosity and the enthusiasm of that young person is a window on how he could start to rethink his life; while under confinement,” the author added.

The Count even tells the same story to Sofia that he first did to Nina when she sought his companionship as a child.

“Amor’s created a really interesting take on the father-daughter relationship because it’s not just the count imparting knowledge to a daughter figure,” Vanstone said of their bond. “Nina has so much to teach the Count, and it’s almost as if it’s inverted how your usual expectations for that relationship would be, which I think makes it so fascinating and interesting, really makes you lean into the relationship.”

The first five episodes of “A Gentleman in Moscow” are now streaming on Paramount+. They air on the streamer Friday before arriving on Showtime the following Sunday .

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