Notes to and Comments on A Gentleman in Moscow, Book Four

Notes to A Gentleman in Moscow, Book Four

Page 330 Soviet architecture. Moscow and other cities from the Soviet era are indeed full of identical, dull, uninspiring apartment buildings that just go on for miles. They are poorly designed, but if anything their build quality is worse. Poor build quality was one of the few things in the USSR about which it was permitted to joke. There was a Soviet humor magazine called Krokodil (crocodile). I remember seeing a cartoon in it that showed one of those wretched apartment buildings being constructed at one end while it was already falling apart at the other end. High quality really wasn’t something you found in much of anything Soviet (other perhaps than military and space equipment). The quality of building construction was no exception.

Page 338. Irina Arkadina. Irina Arkadina is one of the central characters in Chekhov’s play The Seagull (Chaika in Russian). Back when I used to own boats I named the first one Chaika and the second one Chaika II.

Page 338 Their menus. Menus in Soviet Russia were an interesting experience. We didn’t go to restaurants often, but when we did we’d be handed a big menu with dozens or more of entrees listed. However, you had to ask the server what the restaurant actually had, which usually turned out to be maybe two or three items. As I’ve said before, the Count is living a life very, very different from that of most Soviet people. Very few Soviets other than high Party officials would ever experience anything like the Boyarsky.

Incidentally, there really is a restaurant in the Metropol Hotel called the Boyarsky. Boyarsky is the adjectival form of the Russian word boyar. In medieval Russia a boyar was a noble of the highest rank, just below the ruling prince or grand prince. The Soviet Communists would of course have seen them as nothing but evil oppressors of the people, which I suppose to a considerable extent they were. The grand princes of Moscow, even after they started calling themselves tsar, always had to pay attention to and deal with the boyars. I know that Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV, ruled 1533-1584) had a good deal of trouble with them.

Page 339 Zut alors! Zut alors is a French expression that means something like “O shoot!” (at least according to the internet). That the Count uses this French expression rather than a Russian one reflects how he was brought up mostly in western not Russian culture. Such an upbringing was common for people of his elevated class in prerevolutionary Russia.

Page 346 Zakuski. The Russian word zakuski means snacks or refreshments.

Page 347 The Molotov Plan. The Molotov Plan was indeed a Soviet equivalent of the Marshall Plan. Both were intended to help rebuild a superpower’s allies after WWII.

Page 347 The Cominform. Cominform is short for the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties. Dissolved as part of Khrushchev’s program of de-Stalinization, it had been an organ of the international Communist movement controlled by the Soviet Union. The Cominform was not really a Soviet equivalent of NATO. The Communist bloc equivalent of NATO was the Warsaw Pact. Roughly speaking all of the Communist countries of eastern Europe other than Yugoslavia were members. The treaty that created it provided for mutual defense and the stationing of Soviet troops in the other member countries. Of course, it’s not like the Communist countries of eastern Europe had any choice in the matter. The Red Army was pretty much there already.

Page 347 Za vas. This Russian phrase means “to you,” using the formal form of the pronoun you.

Page 348 The death of Stalin. Towles here lists some of the names and titles by which Stalin was known. Sosa, as we’ve already seen, was his nickname, Koba was a name he used in revolutionary work in tsarist Russia before he adopted the name Stalin. Vozhd is the Russian word for Leader, the Russian equivalent of the German word Fȕhrer, the title Hitler used. Kuntsevo is a locale outside Moscow where Stalin had a sort of country residence. He would often meet other Soviet leaders and even foreign heads of state there. It is indeed where he died.

Page 349 ZIM limousines. The ZIM was indeed a Soviet automobile. It was produced from 1950 to 1960. According to Wikipedia it was intended mostly for mid-level Soviet Party and governmental officials.

Page 365 Nachevko. This character appears to be fictional.

Page 369 Okhrana. Okhrana is the common name for the secret police of prerevolutionary Russia. Tsar Alexander III created it in the aftermath of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1880. Its nominal task was to protect the royal family, but it became the tsar’s primary antirevolutionary organization. It infiltrated revolutionary organizations as a way of keeping tabs on them and thwarting at least some of their activities.