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approvingly.
    “Wonderful story,” an editor diagonally across the table from Comrade Stalin said. “Can I print it in my newspaper?”
    My boss bristled. “Out of the question,” he snapped. “We Bolsheviks pride ourselves on being modest, on discouraging a cult based on our persons.”
    While the waiters were distributing silver trays piled high with small salmon wedges, I had Yusis retrieve from the boot of my Packard the straw hamper containing the food that had been prepared
at a Cheka laboratory and then sealed and marked Certified free of poisonous elements . The khozyain , who was something of an expert on poisons—he once informed me that prussic
acid smelled like burnt almonds, hemlock like a rat’s nest, oleander like chocolate, arsenic like a decomposing supper—categorically refused to eat at public receptions unless he broke
the seal and opened the hamper himself. Reaching around him, I set the box down on the table. Comrade Stalin slit the seal with one of his nicotine-stained fingernails and sniffed at the cold perozhki filled with ground pork before popping one into his mouth.
    At the head of the table, Gorky climbed to his feet and tapped a knife against a bottle of mineral water. “Everyone talks about Lenin and Leninism, but Lenin has been gone a long time. I
say, long live Stalin and Stalinism!” he called, raising a wineglass over his head. “Long life, energy, wisdom and stamina to triumph over the many enemies of the first Socialist state
on the planet Earth.”
    In an instant the guests were on their feet. “To Comrade Stalin,” they cried in chorus and drank off the white wine.
    Stalin wagged a pinky at Gorky. “How can you say that? Lenin was a fist, Stalin a little finger.” The guests at Stalin’s end of the table who heard the comment broke into
applause.
    I took a turn around the kitchen to be sure the servants with Israelite surnames had been sent home. When I returned to my post near the khozyain , I discovered he was telling a joke; the
boss could charm the skin off a snake if he put his mind to it. “If you’ve heard it before, stop me,” he informed the guests within earshot. “So: A Turk asks a Serb why they
were always waging war. ‘For plunder,’ the Serb responds. ‘We are a poor people and hope to win some booty. How about you?’ the Serb asks. ‘We fight for honor and for
glory,’ the Turk replies. At which point the Serb says”—the khozyain started to chuckle at his own story—“he says, ‘Everyone fights for what he
doesn’t have.’ ”
    “Everyone fights for what he doesn’t have,” Gorky repeated, and he burst into peals of girlish laughter. The guests around Stalin slapped the table appreciatively. After a
moment someone asked if the khozyain thought Soviet Communism would spread to other industrialized countries.
    Comrade Stalin was in his element now. “When we Bolsheviks took power,” he said, “several of the more naïve comrades thought our uprising would spark revolutions across
capitalist Europe—someone even suggested, half jokingly, that we ought to construct a high tower on the frontier and post a lookout to keep an eye peeled for world revolution. Stalin, who
believed in constructing Socialism in one country at a time, Russia first, told them such a scheme would have the advantage of providing permanent employment for at least one worker. Well, you get
the point. Which countries are ripe for revolution? Certainly not America, where everyone is too busy accumulating wealth, or holding on to what they’ve already accumulated, to take to the
streets. The French are too preoccupied with eating and drinking and fornicating to make a revolution. As for Great Britain, the English are unable to rebel against the king because revolution
would involve ignoring signs that prohibit walking on lawns.”
    “That leaves the Germans,” Gorky offered.
    “Every child knows the Germans would be incapable of storming a railroad