Overview

The untold history of Moscow's Metropol hotel--a fervent spot of intrigue, secrets, and the center of Stalin's nefarious propaganda during WWII. *A Washington Post Best Book of the Year* 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. At the end of the war when Lenin returned to Red Square, the reporters went home, but the memory of Stalin's ruthless control of the wartime narrative lived on in the Kremlin. From the weaponization of disinformation to the falsification of history, from the moving of borders to the neutralisation of independent states, the story of the Metropol mirrors the struggles of our own modern era.

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9781639364275

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Reviews

"""A riveting trip down the corridors of Soviet deception. Philps's book is almost faultlessly balanced between racy narrative and historical analysis.""--Sunday Telegraph ""In a fascinating and surprising narrative, Alan Philps reveals the untold story of the foreign press and its struggle to circumvent the brutal censorship in Stalin's Russia to bring the true story of the brutality of life and war in the Soviet Union to the world. Through fine research and engaging writing, The Red Hotel unveils an untold tale of life on the Eastern front during one of the most titanic conflicts in human history.""--Laurence Jurdem, author of The Rough Rider and the Professor ""The Red Hotel is a vivid, intimate, and engaging account of foreign journalists confined to Moscow's Metropole Hotel by Stalin during World War II--and their relations with young women translators sent by the Soviets to spy on and assist them. Philps's fascinating narrative details the brutal suffering of innocent Russians in Stalin's Gulag and evokes dark parallels between Stalin and Putin in their obsession with controlling the flow of information at home.""--Susan Wels, author of Assassin in Utopia ""'The truth was the first casualty' in Alan Philps's The Red Hotel, a disturbing expose of Stalin's ruthless control of the media narrative during WWII. At center stage is the harrowing plight of female translators at the Metropol, forced to perpetuate a Soviet disinformation campaign. A timely and sobering reminder of how the absence of a free press can forever change the course of history.""--Lisa Brahin, author of Tears Over Russia: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine's Pogroms ""Alan Philips has given readers a true gem. The Red Hotel is by turns harrowing and heart breaking, heroic and squalid, arousing and soul-destroying, epic and claustrophobic. There are a myriad of books of Russia's war time experience, perhaps the most profound episode in the history of the modern west, but The Red Hotel stands out among them for its humanity, scholarship, and brilliant, captivating prose.""-- ""Michael Broers, author of Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821"" ""An unsettling account of how a cadre of foreign correspondents in Moscow during World War II were pressed to acquiesce to the Kremlin's censorship. Philps's thoughtful narrative puts their work into the appropriate historical context. An authoritative history of the terrible ramifications of the silence about Stalin's lies.""--Kirkus Reviews ""Ostensibly the story of the Allied reporters based during World War II in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, the real heroes of the book are the female translators who at great personal risk sought to tell the truth about Stalin. A timely reminder of Russia's ambitions and desire to shape the historical narrative.""--Andrew Lownie, author of Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess ""The best histories set in Russia during World War II call to our sensual appreciation of tangible tastes and sensations--lavish wealth with a dark river running through it; passionate courage on the part of the subjugated and impoverished. Alan Philps, veteran Moscow correspondent, skillfully delivers this chilling tale cloaked in a mood steeped in velvet luxury and fitted with a poison lining.""--Carole Adrienne, author of Healing a Divided Nation ""Alan Philps tells the provocative story about foreign journalists who were sent by Winston Churchill to Russia in 1941 to report on the Eastern Front. The Red Hotel exposes the extraordinary lengths to which Stalin went to control the media narrative in World War II. This history may also be critical to our present day appreciation of how Putin, adopting Stalin's playbook, is attempting to control the media narrative, thus swaying public opinion and, ultimately, winning a war. The Red Hotel is a must-read for all students of history and public policy.""--Lis Wiehl, author of A Spy in Plain Sight"

Alan Philips has given readers a true gem. The Red Hotel is by turns harrowing and heart breaking, heroic and squalid, arousing and soul-destroying, epic and claustrophobic. There are a myriad of books of Russia's war time experience, perhaps the most profound episode in the history of the modern west, but The Red Hotel stands out among them for its humanity, scholarship, and brilliant, captivating prose. -- Alan Philps tells the provocative story about foreign journalists who were sent by Winston Churchill to Russia in 1941 to report on the Eastern Front. The Red Hotel exposes the extraordinary lengths to which Stalin went to control the media narrative in World War II. This history may also be critical to our present day appreciation of how Putin, adopting Stalin's playbook, is attempting to control the media narrative, thus swaying public opinion and, ultimately, winning a war. The Red Hotel is a must-read for all students of history and public policy. --Lis Wiehl, author of A Spy in Plain Sight

Author Information

Alan Philps served as Moscow correspondent for Reuters and the Daily Telegraph. He has been foreign editor of the Telegraph and editor of The World Today, the Chatham House magazine. His book, The Boy from Baby House 10, captured the mood of Russia in the 1990s through the experience of an abandoned child. It has been translated into five languages, turned into an NBC documentary, and the film rights are currently optioned by Footprint Films.

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