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The Red Hotel

Auteurs

Alan Philps

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The untold history of Moscow's Metropol hotel reveals a hub of intrigue and propaganda during WWII. In 1941, as German forces advanced on Moscow, Lenin's body was moved to Siberia. By 1945, Stalin had transformed a struggling nation into a superpower. At Churchill's urging, an Anglo-American press corps was allowed in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front, but Stalin imposed strict controls: censorship, no access to the battlefront, and bans on contact with ordinary citizens. The Metropol Hotel, a gilded cage, provided lavish amenities for reporters, including caviar and young women as translators, while masking Stalin's ambitions to control Eastern Europe. While some translators acted as mouthpieces for Kremlin propaganda, others were secret dissidents who shared the harsh realities of Soviet life, often facing severe punishment. Utilizing British archives and Soviet sources, the book highlights the dual roles of the women at the Metropol as both propagandists and dissenters. After the war, as Lenin returned to Red Square, the reporters departed, but Stalin's manipulation of the wartime narrative lingered in the Kremlin. The story of the Metropol reflects ongoing struggles with disinformation, historical falsification, and the erosion of independent states in today's world.