02897cam a2200361 i 4500 889028306 TxAuBib 20230801120000.0 230616s2023||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u bl2023021995 9781639364275 HRD 29.95 1639364277 HRD 29.95 TxAuBib rda Philps, Alan, author Red hotel. The Red hotel [BOOK] : Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the untold story of Stalin's propaganda war / Alan Philps. First Pegasus Books cloth edition. New York : Pegasus Books, 2023. 450 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references (pages 429-433) and index. In 1941, when German armies were marching towards Moscow, Lenin’s body was moved from his tomb on Red Square and taken to Siberia. By 1945, a victorious Stalin had turned a poor country into a victorious superpower. Over the course of those four years, Stalin, at Churchill's insistence, accepted an Anglo-American press corps in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front. To turn these reporters into Kremlin mouthpieces, Stalin imposed the most draconian controls – unbending censorship, no visits to the battle front, and a ban on contact with ordinary citizens. The Red Hotel explores this gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel. They enjoyed lavish supplies of caviar and had their choice of young women to employ as translators and share their beds. On the surface, this regime served Stalin well: his plans to control Eastern Europe as a Sovietised ‘outer empire’ were never reported and the most outrageous Soviet lies went unchallenged. But beneath the surface the Metropol was roiling with intrigue. While some of the translators turned journalists into robotic conveyors of Kremlin propaganda, others were secret dissidents who whispered to reporters the reality of Soviet life and were punished with sentences in the Gulag. Using British archives and Soviet sources, the unique role of the women of the Metropol, both as consummate propagandists and secret dissenters, is told for the first time. Provided by publisher. 20230801. Hotel Metropol (Moscow, Russia) History 20th century. World War, 1939-1945 Propaganda Soviet Union. World War, 1939-1945 Soviet Union. World War, 1939-1945 Journalists. World War, 1939-1945 Press coverage. Communism Social aspects Soviet Union History. War correspondents Soviet Union History. Soviet Union History 1925-1953.