May Day (4): The May Day Ball
“We’ve arrived….”
Mikoyan’s agent delivered me before the Palladian propylaea—the monumental gateway that once served as the entrance to the Acropolis.
In modern Russia the Smolny Institute bears the double-headed eagle of the tsars, but in those days the portico still carried the hammer and sickle of the Soviet state. A skeletal framework for a statue of Lenin already stood on the grounds; history would see it finished in 1927.
Had Trotsky gazed upon that unfinished figure, he might have written: Lenin, clearly indifferent to the prolonged ovation rolling around him, was already thinking of what would come after the revolution.
“From here you’ll have to go alone.”
The agent’s words were brief. He had no intention of escorting me inside. I stepped down from the car into the cold evening air and looked up at the Smolny Institute. The classical Palladian building, washed in pastel yellow, spread before me.
Raised in the eighteenth century, it was pure Classicism rather than Neo-Classicism—until only a few years earlier it had been a finishing school for the daughters of wealthy hereditary Russian nobility taking their first steps into society.
It was here that Lenin had proclaimed the birth of the world’s first officially recognized workers’ state, the Soviet Union.
Afterward the institute was closed, its functions transferred to Serbia; the Party and city government—the Leningrad regional and municipal committees of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)—turned the place into their headquarters and ruled Leningrad from its halls.
And that custom has survived into modern Russia; the very word “Smolny” now simply means the building that houses the St. Petersburg city government and the governor’s residence…
I fastened the collar of my coat and started toward the portico. The hammer-and-sickle gate drew nearer with every step.
— Thud, thud, thud.
Two sentries armed with Mosin-Nagants barred my way.
— Snap.
“Only authorized senior personnel may enter from this point.”
One guard jerked his chin, ordering me back; the other held out his hand. I quietly produced the invitation from my breast pocket and gave it to him.
— Whisk!
He unfolded the paper roughly, scanned it, and touched the red seal at the bottom with a fingertip. The wariness drained from his eyes at once.
“…You may enter, Comrade.”
The sentries stepped aside and opened the doors. I nodded and walked in with deliberate confidence.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the knife-edged wind outside was cut away as if it had never existed. While I glanced left and right, a uniformed attendant approached from within.
“This way, Comrade.”
He bowed and led the way, clearly intending to guide me somewhere. I followed him into a corridor where, not long ago, noble young ladies had once hurried along in formation. Above us, instead of gilt portraits of the tsar, hung a framed slogan: All Power to the Soviets.
As we neared the end of the red carpet underfoot, the murmur of voices and the sound of strings grew steadily clearer. At last the attendant opened a pair of tall doors.
— Thud.
I stepped inside, then slowed my pace to take in the scene.
The vast ballroom of the Smolny Institute was another world entirely from the square I had left that afternoon. Chandeliers poured brilliant light across the entire hall; beneath them people stood in small clusters.
Men and women wore elegant tailcoats and gowns that might have stepped straight out of the old empire. Nowhere among them was there a single brown worker’s coat of the kind that had filled the square by day—nor a hammer and sickle, nor a red banner.
Far across the room I caught sight of Chairman Zinoviev. Even he was dressed like a splendid peacock, his tailcoat glittering with assorted jewels. I turned and surveyed the rest of the company.
Officers in full dress with rows of medals on their chests mixed freely with women in low-cut gowns who approached them to clink glasses. In one corner a string quartet spun out languid melodies that raised the tone of the entire ballroom.
Low laughter drifted past. — Clink…! Crystal glasses of antique style met with a clear note, golden champagne swirling inside them. My stomach gave a simultaneous lurch.
…This was supposed to be the workers’ country?
Only a few hours earlier, on the square before the Winter Palace, Zinoviev had shouted himself hoarse about an eight-hour day, a country for the proletariat, a nation of the people…. Lenin had overturned the world with the idea of Marxism. Yet the summit of that overturned world looked exactly as it always had.
The seat once occupied by the tsar was now filled by a dictator who merely spoke in the name of the proletariat; the glass once held by a nobleman was now raised by a Party committee man. The food on the tables had changed only in appearance and variety.
“…Haha.”
Vladimir Lenin, who had rejected social democracy and founded the Soviet Union through violent revolution—what would he have said if he had seen this? Would he not have rebuked Zinoviev for “the birth of a new bourgeoisie”?
I swallowed a bitter smile. Karl Marx had written that men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.
The Bolsheviks, having seized absolute power, had regardless of Lenin’s ideals converged into a new ruling class that monopolized political authority and the means of production exactly like the nobles and bourgeoisie before them. The May Day gathering unfolding before my eyes displayed that truth without the slightest concealment.
“So you’re the promising cadet from the Military-Political School that Misha mentioned. A pleasure. Pavel Kuzmin.”
Valentin Kuzmin’s father, Pavel Kuzmin, extended his hand.
“How do you do. Yakov Svanidze.”
I took his hand and met his eyes. Valentin, once he grew older, would look exactly like this man.
“My brother-in-law couldn’t stop singing your praises. I’ve never seen that taciturn fellow elevate anyone so highly.”
Pavel tipped his glass and continued.
“My own Valentin is supposed to be an outstanding student, yet not a single word about the boy. That Misha—stingy with compliments to a fault, isn’t he?”
He spoke lightly, yet a faint bitterness clung to the end of the sentence. A father could not help feeling slighted when his own son was passed over for another family’s child. From everything I had gathered so far, the “Misha” he meant was almost certainly Savelyev. Instructor Savelyev’s given name is Mikhail. Note that.
“…Well then, young Svanidze. I hear you come from Georgia?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Georgia….”
Pavel’s father smacked his lips thoughtfully.
“It reminds me of a wine I once drank. First the scent of vishnya—sour cherry—then the tartness of klyukva, cranberry, coating the back of the tongue, and finally the peculiar fragrance of thyme lingering at the finish. A curious wine.”
He slowly swirled the red wine in his glass and cast a sidelong glance my way. I answered in the same easy, reminiscing tone he had used.
“That’s Tavkveri. A well-known wine from Kartli. No matter the method of vinification, it always carries notes of sour cherry, cranberry, and herbs.”
“…Ah, yes! Sour-cherry flavor—that was it!”
The knowledge was not my own. It had simply spilled from the tip of my tongue out of the memories left in this body. A Korean had no reason to know Georgian wines. Pavel, however, looked thoroughly pleased and went on.
“Exactly… As a Georgian you naturally know your wines!”
“Not necessarily… though Georgia is the homeland of wine, after all. One picks these things up.”
“Indeed…. My late father took a keen interest in wine, so I encountered Georgian vintages quite naturally myself. No doubt it was the same for you.”
It was not a question that required an answer, so I merely smiled in reply. He stroked his beard and nothing more.
“Heh… Forgive me. I’ve been rambling on at a young man I’ve only just met. But you’ll understand. When Anastas Ivanovich recommends a youngster, one can’t help wondering what sort of person he might be.”
Pavel smiled with a kindly face. For an instant I nearly let my expression harden. Had this man known from the start that I was Stalin’s son and been testing me deliberately? On second thought it was entirely possible. His brother-in-law Savelyev already knew through Mikoyan.
“As a matter of fact this place was originally meant for Comrade Mikoyan. A few days ago word arrived that urgent business had called him back to Moscow, and that he would send a promising young man in his stead. That young man is you. And since I heard you had helped my son Valentin, I sent the invitation at once.”
…So that was it. This gathering was apparently a proxy appearance for Party Secretary Mikoyan. Pavel stroked his beard calmly and continued.
“Still, it’s quite remarkable. Anastas Ivanovich almost never recommends anyone.”
He regarded me over the rim of his glass.
“What exactly is your connection with him?”
“…You don’t know?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking you directly. Among the comrades I know, at least, there is no committee member who uses the surname Svanidze….”
…Wait.
For a moment I paused. Was it possible this man did not know I was Stalin’s son? Because Mikoyan had singled me out and sent me, I had assumed he knew the full background. I probed again, indirectly, to learn whether he was aware of my parentage.
Pavel Kuzmin merely shrugged.
“He recommended someone, so I took it at face value. It was only a matter of issuing one extra invitation.”
He spoke with complete composure. His face truly showed no knowledge at all.
“I see…. I must have misunderstood.”
“…?”
I quietly refilled my empty glass and wet my dry throat. Pavel continued to look at me with a faintly puzzled expression, then laughed it off as something of no importance.
“Well, in any case you are here as Comrade Mikoyan’s proxy, so you ought to pay your respects to him first. Come along.”
He gestured for me to follow. I walked behind him in silence. And a short while later, at the place he led me to….
“Comrade Revolutionary…! This young man is Yakov Svanidze, arrived as the proxy of Comrade Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, First Secretary of the North Caucasus Regional Committee…!”
“Svanidze…?”
There stood Grigory Zinoviev, one of the highest members of the Soviet.