It is fascinating how an object can embody the best and worst of us. Take this lovely and delicately decorated piece of Russian art. Shown below is an ornate chalice commissioned by Catherine thd Great in 1790. The craftsmanship and beauty are an homage to something higher and better, to God. The Czars under whom this art flourished were, of course, famously cruel and despotic.
This article isn’t about Czars, but rather about events that took place later, in the 1930’s. The art tells us also about a more banal, if no less sinister, form of evil. The reason I saw this little gem is that literally tens of thousands of priceless pieces of art were lifted from Russia during the dark days of Joseph Stalin, by another Joseph, to whom we shall return in a moment.
I have read the fascinating little 2009 book by Tim Tzouliadis called The Forsaken, An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia. This book chronicles the tragic fates of thousands of Americans who migrated to Russia in the 1920’s, in hopes that the Communist experiment might offer them a better life, or because work relocated them there (in the case of an auto factory that Henry Ford moved to Gorky). Upon arrival, their passports were immediately confiscated by Soviet officials. During the purges and horrors of the 1930s, most of these Americans were arrested and either summarily executed with a bullet in the back of the head, or sent to gulags where most of them died of disease and starvation.
The Americans were by no means alone in this nightmare. An internal report by Nikita Khrushchev stated that from 1935 to 1941 the NKVD had arrested 19 million citizens, of whom 7 million were shot immediately. (Tzouliadis, p.159)
The terrified American emigrants tried to turn to the American embassy for help. As the book put it:
In Moscow, the American diplomats understood very well that low-level negotiation with the Soviet Foreign Ministry was entirely useless, given the fact that the entire Commissariat was petrified of the NKVD and were themselves frequent victims of the Terror. Clearly more forceful intervention was required at the very highest levels of government. Had the diplomats been willing, action might still have been taken, and the lives of the American emigrants might well have been saved.
But what was abundantly clear was that if this was about to happen, the “captured Americans” needed a heroically protective figure to intervene on their behalf—someone with the courage of Oskar Schindler or Raoul Wallenberg—someone willing to lend sanctuary, to hand out passports, to speak to the president, and to kick up a very loud and very public fuss in a time of peril. Someone, in short, who might hold a protective hand over them when their lives were so evidently endangered.
What they got instead was Ambassador Joseph Davies. (p. 106)
Joseph Davies was happy to praise the Soviets and turn a blind eye to the plight of the Terror victims. He even attended some of the “Show Trials”, and wrote favorably of the proceedings, even as most foreign press and even his own staff differed:
“Ambassador Davies was not noted for an acute understanding of the Soviet system, and he had an unfortunate tendency to take what was presented at the trial as the honest and gospel truth. I still blush when I think of some of the telegrams he sent to the State Department about the trial…”
“I can only guess at the motivation for his reporting. He ardently desired to make a success of a pro-Soviet line and was probably reflecting the views of some of Roosevelt’s advisors to enhance his political standing at home.” (Charles E. Bohlen (1973) Witness to History, New York: Norton. Page 52)
His wife at the time was the heiress and multimillionaire Marjorie Merriweather Post, founder of General Foods. She and her husband lived in the manner to which the richest woman in the world was accustomed. They entertained lavishly at the newly renovated Spaso House in Moscow.
At night, Marjorie’s sleep was disrupted by the noises attending the activities of the secret police.
Only years later, after their divorce, did Marjorie Merriweather Post reveal how she had listened to the NKVD vans pulling up outside the apartment houses that surrounded the Spaso House gardens. In the middle of the night she had lain awake listening to the screams of families and children as the victims were taken away by the secret police. (Tzouliadis, p 120).
Every night she also heard a lot of gunfire emanating from the basement of a nearby Moscow building, due to prisoners being executed. She confronted her husband about this chilling sound and he soothed her by telling her that it was probably just construction noises from the expansion of the subway.
This insomnia perhaps could have been part of the reason that Davies and his wife endeavored to spend most of their time away from the embassy, traveling the world, and sailing the Baltic on their luxury yacht, the “Sea Cloud”. They also scoured the land buying up at discounted prices the art that the Bolsheviks had confiscated from Orthodox churches and the Romanov government. Marjorie had an eye for art, and built from scratch one of the largest private collections of Russian art outside of the Hermitage. The scope of the purchases was breathtaking. In one letter, Mr. Davies recounts the excitement of art collecting:
As usual we cannot resist them [the commission shops] and have been having somewhat of an orgy again of picking up these interesting souvenirs. (Tzouliadis, p118).
Much of the interesting souvenirs, representing this great heritage of art is now on display at Hillwood, the mansion that was Marjorie Post’s final home in Washington, DC. This priceless horde is a testament to the best and worst of humanity.
