Spaso House - Late 1930s and World War II

Late 1930s and World War II

After July 1935, when the Soviet Government invited the American Communist Party to take part in the anti-western Communist International (Comintern), Soviet-American relations turned increasingly chilly, and Bullitt held no more memorable parties.

In 1936 Bullitt was replaced by a new Ambassador, Joseph E. Davies, who was married to Marjorie Post, heiress to the Post Foods fortune. Davies and his wife made major repairs to Spaso at their own expense, rewiring the house and installing American bathtubs. They also used their private yacht to bring 2000 pints of frozen ice cream to Moscow, much of which spoiled when the power in the house went out.

Davies and his family were also subjected to intense surveillance from the Soviet Government. They learned that their domestic staff were spying on them, and discovered microphones hidden throughout the house.

Davies left Moscow in June 1938, but relations with Moscow remained tense; his successor, Laurence Steinhardt, did little entertaining at Spaso House.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 led to dramatic changes in the life of Spaso House. Spaso House was slightly damaged by German bombing in the autumn of 1941. In October 1941, most of the American diplomatic staff were evacuated to the city of Kuibyshev, 540 miles southeast of Moscow. A six-man team of American diplomats, led by Second Secretary Llewellyn Thompson, kept the Embassy functioning, issuing transit visas and reporting to Washington on the military situation. The new U.S. Ambassador, Admiral William Standley, based in Kuibyshev, traveled regularly to Spaso House to meet with Soviet officials to discuss American military assistance.

In August 1943, as the Germans began to fall back from Moscow, Ambassador W. Averell Harriman replaced Standley, and the full American diplomatic staff returned to Moscow. supplemented by many military staff helping to bring American military aid to the USSR. Spaso House became an office building, a dormitory for staff, and a hotel for important visitors. Spaso House guests included Presidential advisor Harry Hopkins, former Presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, Secretaries of State Cordell Hull and Edward Stettinius. In August 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower came to Spaso House to celebrate the Allied victory in Europe.

In August 1945, a delegation from the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union presented a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman, as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally. Unbeknown to anybody in the Embassy, it contained The Thing, a covert listening device (or "bug"), enabling the Soviet Union to spy on the United States. It hung in the ambassador's residential study undetected until it was exposed in 1952.

From March to April 1947, Spaso House was the site of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, including Secretary of State George Marshall, who met in Moscow to draft the final peace treaties with Germany and Austria.