The Kremlin Ball (New York Review Books Classics)

Interesting. What life was like between the 1917 Revolution and World War II in Moscow.

Malaparte's recollections were composed in the early 1950's but his recollections seems as fresh as the moment he witnessed them. His knowledge of all things 'soviet' is encyclopedic as he jumps from one famous luminary to another and then to an unknown while explaining to the reader who and what they were - Lunacharsky, Kalinin, Trotsky, Trotsky's sister Madame Kameneva, Mayakovsky, Florinsky (couldn't locate this personality), - a truly well written piece. It tends to repeat itself about certain individuals but it is still worth the read after you get through the first 40+ pages. It is a mere 211 and the last section is a separate story from the preceding text. The author's knowledge of the arts and individuals both in the CCCP and outside it is staggering the detail that he lists considering the brevity of the work and the exhaustive nature. The stories are well done and you see his deep faith in Christ as he makes sure THAT fact is rammed at the red monsters whenever a 3rd party can do so.Read it!

Curzio Malaparte is an author known for his fantastic stories from the Second World war (one of the most famous is the tableau of frozen horses in Lake Ladoga). He was a former fascist who stayed in the Soviet Union during the late twenties and early thirties and wrote a book about Lenin, becoming more and more leftist, but never a Bolshevik. The Kremlin Ball is an unfinished book with lots of repetition about the Soviet elite during the period when even Trotski was active, but with the hindsight of knowing what had happened (Malaparte started the book only in the forties). The main protagonists are famous communists and their wives, with a mixture of Western diplomats who entertained them. The main interest is in the wives and their luxurious lifestyles before the Terror changed the landscape. As always with Malaparte, the book is best in details, in describing extravagant behaviours and strange personalities, like the Foreign Ministry head of protocol who moved about in Moscow with a horse-drawn carriage, but was very sharp in politics, or the different valuable jewels and clothes that the Bolshevik ladies loved to wear. There is a fascinating atmosphere which feels true, but as with Malaparte always, we will never know which details are really true and which are just his imagination. In the end, it becomes clear that Malaparte takes the side of the new Stalinist Guard and doesn't regret the demise of the Old Bolsheviks, who for him were corrupt and actually much worse than Stalin and his henchmen. Something which we will never know for sure.