The Hotel Lux: A Communist Contact Zone in Moscow in the 1920s

Introduction

The Hotel Lux was located at Tverskaia Street 36 (Gorky Street 10) at the very centre of Moscow, with the Red Square and the Kremlin at one of its ends. ¹ It had hundreds of rooms for guests, an outstanding façade, a big restaurant, and great interiors. The hotel was originally owned by Ivan Filippov who ran the bakery, but his son renovated the building as a luxurious five-story hotel in 1911. ² Soon after the Bolshevik Party's takeover of power in October 1917, the hotel became a Soviet government asset and was renamed the Hotel Lux. ³

As the capital of the Soviet regime moved from Petrograd to Moscow and the Communist International (Comintern) was established in 1919, the Hotel Lux became the centre of the world communist movement – the place where leading communists from outside the USSR resided while working for the international workers’ movement and the Comintern. In the 1920s, the Comintern agents viewed the hotel as the headquarters of the global revolution. ⁴

However, the abiding legacy of the Hotel Lux in the twentieth century has been its reputation as one of the most notorious hotels of the Soviet era. In the mid-1930s, there were purges against the residents of the Hotel Lux to ensure that its dwellers were only reliable communist agents. ⁵ During the Great Terror period of the Stalinist regime, many residents became victims. Since the 1970s, the horrors associated with the hotel have become well known as memoirs of former residents of the Hotel Lux were published and circulated worldwide; those by Ernst Fischer and Ruth von Mayenburg (both originally published in German in 1969 and 1978, respectively) were especially influential in creating a poor image of the hotel. This Austrian couple arrived in Moscow and started their life there at the Hotel Lux in 1938. Moreover, after Adolf Hitler's takeover of power in Germany in the early 1930s, the Lux turned into ‘a refugee camp’ for German communists. Simultaneously, in 1936–1938, the Great Terror was in full swing in the USSR and the foreign residents of the Hotel Lux were prime targets of the purges because they were suspected of being foreign espionage agents. ⁶ Many residents were arrested at midnight by the NKVD (the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Life in the Hotel Lux was ‘absolutely isolated from normal Soviet people’, and the residents rarely knew each other as there were few opportunities to speak frankly inside the hotel. ⁷ Fischer and Mayenburg survived until the end of the Second World War, and were able to publish their memories of the fear and danger they experienced there. Their memoirs promoted an infamous representation of the Hotel Lux, which persists to date.

Aside from the hotel's history from the 1930s, little is known about the actual living experiences and political and cultural practices in the Hotel Lux from the revolutionary period to the end of the 1920s. Mayenburg's account include the lives of the hotel's residents in the 1920s but they rely on the memories of selected residents, chosen to reinforce the negative impressions of the hotel. These accounts promote an understanding of the hotel as a place of fear and danger, filled with many victims of the Purge throughout the pre-World War II years. Hermann Weber's essay is one of the few scholarly explorations of this topic. Yet, it only briefly examines the experiences of German leftists inside the Hotel Lux in the 1920s and its primary focus is on the tense atmosphere experienced by the residents after Stalin consolidated power in the USSR. ⁸

The recently published monograph by Maurice J. Casey is a notable exception in this regard. Casey primarily focuses on May O’Callaghan, who lived in the hotel for several years during the 1920s, working as a translator. Referring to various types of historical sources, Casey seeks to explore the actual living conditions and intimate relationships established inside the Lux. ⁹ He highlights that in contrast with the prevalent understanding, several sources, including the memoirs of the former dwellers and visitors of the Lux, confirm that residents’ life and experiences in the hotel during the 1920s were filled with enjoyment and excitement; some even described their time at the Lux as the experience of a lifetime. The residents enjoyed the cultural mix, international interactions, and transnational friendships with foreign communists at the Hotel Lux in the 1920s. In the words of J. T. Murphy (known as Jack Murphy), who was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and worked and lived as a British representative in Moscow in the 1920s, the Hotel Lux was ‘the most interesting hotel in which I have ever stayed’. ¹⁰

Such a mixture of and interactions among worldwide communists highlight the political significance of the Hotel Lux. The residents and visitors exchanged crucial information about the Comintern and communism owing to friendship and personal encounters. Thus, the Hotel Lux during the 1920s functioned as a crucial ‘contact zone’ – in the words of Mary Louise Pratt: ‘the space in which people geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other’. ¹¹

Against this backdrop, this article argues the following. First, during the 1920s, the residents of the Hotel Lux established an international and transnational network of information among communists from across the world under relatively unrestricted conditions. While Casey primarily illuminates the personal experiences and non-political aspects of the residents, this article examines the ways in which significant political experiences and political education were promoted among the communists through friendship and international encounters. Inside the building, these people could spread knowledge of the theories of Marxism-Leninism and obtain first-hand information on both the USSR and the communist parties in other countries. It functioned as a space for lobbying and informal political campaigning by individual Communist Party members and other groups to execute politics ‘from below’ towards the Soviet and Comintern officials.

Second, the article highlights that this transnational network inside the hotel had been established by sometimes bypassing the Soviet and Comintern officials. Some of these leaders often visited the Hotel Lux for various reasons but they stayed elsewhere. The residents of the hotel, especially the long-term dwellers, gradually built firm friendships, giving them significant opportunities to exchange information and discuss political issues with little interference from the Comintern officials. Subsequently, the hotel became a space where residents could complain and express oppositional opinions against the official Soviet and Comintern policies. The hotel also provided a learning space for residents at a distance from the official arena of meetings and the Comintern Congresses of the Comintern. This perspective enables us to shed new light on the history of interwar Communism and examine the 1920s not simply as a prologue to the Third Period and Stalinization, but as the decade during which the communists experienced their life in Moscow differently from the 1930s.

Moreover, the hotel helped reinforce national bonds among some communist parties. Away from their homes, these visitors to Moscow gathered at the Hotel Lux, making it a political and cultural confluence for the communists. The bond between the members of these parties was reinforced in Moscow as much as at the communist party headquarters of each country.

Recently, historians of the interwar period have focused on the city and particular spaces as transnational hubs where networking across national borders among communists, left-wingers, and anti-colonial activists was established, facilitating the exchange of ideas. Michael Goebel and Jennifer Anne Boittin explore the transnational network developed in interwar Paris among the future politicians of and intellectuals from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. ¹² Tim Harper also examines the ‘underground network’ of anti-colonial revolutionaries in the interwar period and highlights the transnational networks established outside of one's homeland. ¹³ Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Burak Sayim, and Andrée Lévesque focus on Moscow as a transnational hub from the perspectives of travellers and young communists from abroad. ¹⁴ Among them, Brigitte Studer explores the lives and experiences of the Cominternians – Comintern officials – who lived in Moscow and globalized their revolutionary ideas and worldviews. She reveals their rich life experiences in Moscow and elsewhere, and the transnational network they established. ¹⁵ Studer's recent comprehensive monograph on Comintern agents in the interwar period also briefly examines the living conditions at the Hotel Lux during the early 1920s. ¹⁶ This article seeks to extend the recent developments with respect to the study of transnational hubs as ‘contact zones’, by situating this inside the Hotel Lux during the 1920s. It posits that not only cities but also certain buildings can be transnational hubs and focal points of a global and transnational history.

Since the Russian Communist Party and Comintern archives were opened in the early 1990s, research on these topics has progressed significantly. Historians have provided detailed accounts of inner Party politics and the individual lives of the party members. ¹⁷ However, these historians have paid more attention to the 1930s, often regarding the previous decade as simply a prologue to the repressive and depressing era of Stalinism. By examining the living experiences and political and social practices inside the Hotel Lux from the revolutionary years to the end of the 1920s, this article enhances our understanding of the Comintern and interwar communism. It also unveils an important political space inside the Hotel Lux and the significant experiences of communists from outside the USSR in Moscow during the 1920s.

The De Fact Headquarters of the Comintern (1919–1922)

When the Soviet government moved the capital from Petrograd to Moscow in 1918, the Hotel Lux temporarily assumed the responsibility of the NKVD's central office. ¹⁸ When the Comintern was founded the following year (1919), it became necessary to accommodate many Comintern staffs and foreign communists in Moscow; subsequently, the Hotel Lux was chosen as the appropriate accommodation as it was located within 15 minutes’ walking distance from the Comintern headquarters near the Kremlin. ¹⁹ On 29 June 1920, the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party officially designated the Hotel Lux as the residence for foreign Comintern agents staying in Moscow. ²⁰

The hotel was expected to assume a pivotal role as the centre-point of the Comintern from its foundation years. In fact, an insufficient budget, paucity of human resources, and political instability in the early Soviet years hindered its functioning as the Bolshevik leaders had expected. However, it gradually acquired organizational leverage and political significance for the work of the Comintern. At the time of the Comintern Congress in the early 1920s, lobbying and important clandestine discussions took place inside the Lux, wherein behind the scenes politics (not always, but sometimes) resulted in the establishment of official policies. Moreover, the relatively unrestricted and somewhat chaotic situation in this period created socializing opportunities for the residents and visitors to the hotel. The hotel provided the residents and visitors not only with enjoyable experiences but also with a significant political and social space for interaction and communication.

The Second Congress of the Comintern was scheduled to take place in July–August 1920 in Moscow. Yet, the Lux was not yet ready to accommodate all the participants of this Congress from abroad; most of the delegates stayed at the Dielovoi Dvor hotel in Moscow, while only a fraction stayed at the Hotel Lux. ²¹ The Second Congress of the Comintern is well known in that it provided entertainment to the participants, including an open-air stage performance of Towards the Worldwide Commune, presented by around 4,000 performers from Petrograd, as well as offering tourism opportunities to certain delegates. ²² In contrast to these extensive entertainments and tours, the Russian Communist Party and the nascent Comintern were not able to provide sufficient hospitality and services to the delegates under the revolutionary upheavals and the Civil War. Many delegates who stayed at either Dielovoi Dvor or Hotel Lux complained about their accommodations, the scarcity of food, lack of hygiene, insufficient staff and service, and poor security. ²³

After the conclusion of the Second Congress, the foreign communists staying in Moscow began moving into the Hotel Lux. Alfred Rosmer, a French journalist and one of the founders of the French Communist Party, was staying at the Dielovoi Dvor during the Second Congress. Upon the extension of his stay in September 1920, he was ordered to move into the Hotel Lux where he stayed until October 1921. Rosmer's impressions of the Lux were negative; he thought it was too luxurious and useless. He wrote that the hotel was ‘on one of the busiest and noisiest thoroughfares in the city, the Tverskaia, a huge monster of a building, where everything was in bad taste—the façade, the furniture, the remnants of the “luxury” that had given the hotel its name’. He therefore felt his stay at the hotel was always ‘unpleasant’. ²⁴ Another contemporary resident similarly noted that ‘although it was a first-class hotel by the standards of the day, the traffic noise from the street robbed it of any real feeling of comfort’. ²⁵

Another Lux visitor at this time noted that no one in Moscow, including the Lux residents, was exempted from surveillance. Konstantin Umanskii, a Soviet diplomat and a correspondent of TASS, was arguably engaged in eavesdropping on the conversations of the foreign communists at the Lux. Remembering Jules Humbert-Droz, who stayed briefly at the Hotel Lux in 1921, Mayenburg writes that the first ‘purge’ against some residents of the hotel was conducted around that time. ²⁶ These accounts promote and reinforce the fact that the hotel residents were under strict control and supervision even in the early years of the Comintern. However, most other relevant sources, including the archival materials and memoirs of dwellers, present a very different reality of the hotel in the early 1920s.

Despite some residents’ negative impressions, the Soviet leaders had launched a serious attempt to establish the hotel as the Comintern headquarters and the main accommodation for its Third Congress delegates. In April 1921, like Rosmer, some Comintern executives had already lived and worked in the Lux. ²⁷ Comintern officials resolved to transform the Lux into an exclusively Comintern building. ²⁸ The Third Congress was expected to begin at the end of June 1921. On 6 June, the members of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and Soviet officials were ordered to vacate the rooms in the hotel. ²⁹

At the Third Congress, the Hotel Lux was one of the main accommodations for the foreign delegates. Communists from across the world arrived in Moscow and began to assemble at the hotel. The rooms, corridor, and lobby became gathering places for the leading members of the leftist movements around the world. Some of them approached Comintern officials to appeal each Party's interests, and others expressed their needs to other Congress participants. Thus, the interior of the Hotel Lux became a significant political arena for the Comintern, similar to its plenums and Congress.

The de facto headquarters of the Third Congress was set up in Room 284 of the Hotel Lux, which was witness to many requests and political negotiations. Sam Barlin and David Ivon Jones, the South African Communist Party delegates, sent a letter to Room 284 addressed particularly to Mikhail Kobestkii (the secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Comintern), asking to appoint Ivon Jones as a member of the Executive Committee. ³⁰ Their collective motion was successful as, at the twenty-third session of the Third Congress (a month after the letter was sent), Ivon Jones was allowed to make a speech. He argued the need for representing the workers’ movement in South Africa. The Congress approved Ivon Jones to represent South Africa at the Executive Committee of the Comintern. ³¹ The German delegates, who later dominated the Third Congress, had a fierce discussion with the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party on 15 June about the failure of the March action in Germany. Next day, they crafted a letter in one of the rooms of the Lux and sent it to Room 284, in which they reluctantly agreed to amend the draft thesis on the German question. ³²

The delegates of the Indian Communist Party did not show any interest in issues plaguing the Comintern and Soviet officials, such as the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) and the German question, and ‘their only activity was to march up and down the long corridors of the Hotel Lux, buttonholing other residents to tell them all about the inequities of the British rule in India’. However, the Indian communists’ campaign at the Hotel Lux did not attain sufficient attention from the other residents. ³³

The Hotel Lux accommodated nearly 150 delegates, dozens of staff members, and many guest attendants at the Third Congress. ³⁴ The delegates were grouped together by nation. Members of many Western communist parties, including Rosmer and his colleagues at the French Communist Party, used the hotel for their accommodation. ³⁵ From this Congress onwards, the Lux was expected to function as the centre of the Comintern and its Congress, and as the temporary headquarters of each national communist party when its leaders stayed over. The Organizational Committee of the Congress, which undertook all administrative tasks, held its pre-Congress meetings at the hotel. While the Congress was in session, the secretaries were stationed at the Lux, and delegates could contact Room 2 for assistance, where the Comintern's Organizational and Information Department was stationed. ³⁶ This room actually functioned as the organizational and information centre where communists from abroad could arrange their visits with interpreters to key Soviet institutions, such as the Supreme Economic Council, Educational Commissariats, and the communist universities. ³⁷ Also, each Communist Party was asked to send one delegate to Room 2 of the Hotel Lux for the pre-arrangements of ‘the Demonstration in Memory of the Comrades Who Fell in Defending the Revolution’ and the laying of wreaths on the graves in Red Square during the Third Congress. ³⁸

Along with the official functions, the Hotel Lux became the unofficial arena of discussion and exchange of information. Some important but unofficial meetings were held in its rooms and hall. ³⁹ The hotel presented an unofficial channel of information and human networking between the leaders of the leftist parties around the world with little interruption from the Bolshevik and Comintern leaderships. Victor Serge recalled that he met Andreu Nin (one of the founders of the Spanish Communist Party) who attended the Third Congress as a delegate of the CNT (National Confederation of Labor). They discussed ‘art, the Red Army, the Red Terror, and organization, and toss[ed] around all the great problems that there are’ in the room of Joaquin Maurin, the then CNT representative. ⁴⁰

Bernhard Reichenbach, one of the founding members of the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD), arrived in Moscow in late March/early April 1921 for the Third Congress and stayed at the Hotel Lux. Reichenbach's stay began in the immediate aftermath of the Tenth Party Congress of the Russian Communist Party, at which the Workers’ Opposition, led by Alexander Shlyapnikov and Alexandra Kollontai, was defeated by Lenin's group, and the sailors’ uprising at the Kronstadt naval base was suppressed. ⁴¹ While Reichenbach attended the meetings of the Comintern executive committee regularly, he remembered that no one was willing to talk about the Workers’ Opposition and the Kronstadt uprising at the official meeting held at the Kremlin. However, once they came back to the hotel, the opposition group gathered and discussed their next plan, and, as Reichenbach recollects, his room ‘became a meeting place’ for the remnants of the Workers’ Opposition. Indeed, Kollontai met Reichenbach at the hotel and gave him a copy of her pamphlet (The Workers’ Opposition), fearing arrest for opposing the NEP. Reichenbach passed it to an envoy to Berlin, and thus the Workers’ Opposition programme was exported to Germany. ⁴² Reichenbach shared a room with Otto Kuusinen, a key Finnish Communist Party official. Their room inevitably became the place of debate after the official session of the Comintern Congress. In his conversations with Kuusinen, Reichenbach criticized the Comintern Executives for their wavering stances on the failure of the March action by the KPD, especially accusing Grigorii Zinoviev and Radek of irresponsibility. ⁴³

Not only Reichenbach but some other communists also criticized the Comintern and Soviet leaders once they returned to the Hotel Lux after the official sessions. Kollontai visited the room of Sen Katayama (the Comintern representative of the Japanese Communist Party [JCP]) in the hotel to complain against the Soviet leaders for their treatment of the opposition groups. ⁴⁴

The unprecedented scale of guests and political functions caused chaos inside and outside the Hotel Lux. During the Third Congress, a serious traffic problem occurred in Moscow because of the delegates staying at the Lux. One participant recollected a major traffic jam in front of the Lux because ‘rows of motor cars and motor lorries stood for days on end in order to save the delegates ten minutes’ walk to the Kremlin’. ⁴⁵ The tumultuous conditions extended to inside the hotel as well. The registration desk was rather chaotic as more people than it could accommodate stayed at the Hotel Lux during the Third Congress. Karl Retzlaw, a German delegate who unlike Rosmer recorded a positive impression of the Lux, remembered his experiences of the Third Congress:

The huge building was filled to the roof with delegates who had come from all parts of the world. Soon there were not enough rooms and one morning when I woke up, I saw two figures wrapped in blankets sleeping on chairs put together. They were delegates who could no longer get a room and had been billeted with me. I had gone to bed late and was exhausted and had not noticed the nocturnal influx. Both were about my age. They came from the Balkans and remained my guests until their departure. ⁴⁶

These unrestricted and messy conditions produced opportunities for spontaneous transnational and transcultural encounters between delegates. The Indian delegate M. N. Roy recalled it as the ‘richest experience’ of his life:

In the Hotel Lux they were all equals and in our midnight parties we met like equals, all human beings, with virtues which need not be magnified with artificial dignity, and frailties of which none need be ashamed. ⁴⁷

At the time of the Third Congress, the Hotel Lux was ‘a great buzz’; the workers and people of Moscow ‘looked askance’ at the Hotel Lux because ‘beautiful furs, valuable golden watches, nickel samovars, suits of clothing and whatnot’ were given to some delegates through special arrangement with the Comintern staff despite Moscow suffering from a serious shortage of goods. ⁴⁹ Emma Goldman's memoirs also state that the delegates to the Comintern Congress ‘needed no money’ because of the special hospitality provided. ⁵⁰ Mayenburg wrote about the prostitutes, most of whom successfully ‘conquered’ and earned money from ‘the red foreigners’ staying in the Hotel Lux. ⁵¹

The Soviet and Comintern leaders were concerned about the unrestricted situation inside the Hotel Lux. They soon set about expelling those who had stayed at the Lux but were no longer involved in the tasks of the Comintern after the Third Congress had concluded. ⁵² Zinoviev and Bukharin wrote to Piatnitskii, asking for improvements in the living conditions for the Fourth Comintern Congress scheduled next year, as an issue of ‘utmost importance’. Piatnitskii was allowed to spend a huge amount of money and hire educated officials for this task. ⁵³

The Comintern officials also cared about inroads made by the bourgeoisie into the Hotel Lux. Since 1921, the Soviet government had adopted the New Economic Policy which facilitated a small-scale capitalist economy and private trades to stabilize the economic condition of the state. The Soviet officials understood it only as a respite for the socialist state but were concerned about the invasion of a bourgeois lifestyle. ⁵⁴ They regarded the NEPmen (new private and small-scale traders who emerged during the NEP years) as harmful intruders and sought to keep them away from the Comintern officials. Thus, during the Fourth Congress in December 1922, identity checking was introduced at the entrance of the hotel to restrict the entry of strangers. ⁵⁵

A Political and Social Space for Communists (1923–c. 1928)

Eventually, the identity checking at the entrance of the hotel was removed after the Fourth Congress for financial reasons, which relaxed entry conditions. Thus, almost anybody was able to get inside the hotel. The Soviet and Comintern officials soon realized that NEPmen were still approaching Comintern officials inside the hotel and decided to monitor the flow of people to and from the hotel. ⁵⁶

In March–April 1923, a strict supervision of visitors was proposed. First, the hotel introduced strict identity-checking at the entrance of the building by making it compulsory to show one's propusk (entry-pass) to the guard at any moment. This was meant to isolate the foreign residents from other guests. ⁵⁷ The propusk checking was conducted throughout the 1920s and continued afterwards. ⁵⁸ An investigation of the residents was also conducted, and those whose profiles did not match Comintern-related work were reported. ⁵⁹ In addition, the guard at the entrance was replaced with a reliable communist to make entry-checking more rigorous. The reorganization of the residents took place to ensure the hotel was occupied only by people connected to Comintern executives and Profintern (the Red International of Labor Unions). ⁶⁰

Around this time, the hotel became a city in itself. Residents did not need to go out except for Comintern-related work and meetings at the Kremlin and elsewhere. By the end of 1925, the number of residents reached nearly 600, including a doctor, nurses, and technical workers; there was even a kindergarten set up inside. ⁶¹ The residents thus became isolated from the outside or a non-communist world. Nevertheless, or because of this, the Lux's interior turned into a significant political and social ‘contact zone’, where communists from across the world could discuss political issues and exchange information in a very friendly manner. Friendships and personal bonds among the residents were common and the secrecy of the environment provided the residents with a political safeguard.

Official documents rarely reflect what happened inside the building from the mid-1920s. Yet, the memoirs of some residents reveal the living conditions and political discussions held at the hotel in the second half of the 1920s. Jack and Molly Murphy provided one of the most vivid descriptions of this life. Jack Murphy was one of the founding members of the CPGB and acted as the chief British Communist Party official in the 1920s. He married Molly in 1921, who had been politically active since her teens as a suffragette and joined the CPGB after her marriage. The Murphys stayed at the Hotel Lux for a short while in 1921. They returned to Moscow with their son, Gordon, when Jack Murphy was appointed CPGB representative in the middle of 1926, where they remained until the end of 1927. Their individual memoirs were published in the 1940s and 1990s respectively, but historians have not paid sufficient attention to them. Jack Murphy's recollection of their social and political life at the hotel illuminates the development of a transnational network by the communist residents from different parts of the world, especially the long-term dwellers, who had gradually built very firm friendship with each other.

Jack described the Hotel Lux as ‘the most interesting hotel in which I have ever stayed’ because of its international or transnational environment. As he describes:

The stream was constant. The visitors came from the ends of the earth: workers, intellectuals, artists, ambitious politicians, revolutionaries, all vital, alive, intelligent, battling with ideas, some playing their own hand, other deputising for somebody else. Here were love affairs and tragedies, new political stars in the revolutionary firmament, damp squibs, fun, fights, storms, celebrations, conspiracies, disclosures, jealousies, the clash of national customs, and such a variety of appearance that variety itself became commonplace and hardly noticeable. ⁶²

The international atmosphere was also promoted by the multilingualism at the Hotel Lux, which impressed many communists. In the words of Molly Murphy, the residents of the Hotel Lux

… formed the most international ensemble that ever gathered under one roof. They came from near and far, from neighbouring countries and from countries far away … Never was there in one hotel such a colourful gathering or such a mixture of language. ⁶³

As with the Comintern Congress in the early 1920s, the living space inside the hotel became the discussion centre for the policy and practices of the communist parties, with relatively stricter control for the visitors from outside. Molly Murphy remembers the intensive political discussions continued in the Lux rooms after the official Comintern sessions. ⁶⁵ Jack Murphy frequently had political conversations at the hotel with the foreign communists and other dwellers, including Kuusinen and Joseph Freeman (the American writer and editor of a Marxist magazine). ⁶⁶ At times, some prominent Soviet leaders, such as Molotov and Bukharin, visited the Murphys’ room unofficially. ⁶⁷ The Hotel Lux was thus not just a living space, but a learning and discussion arena for many aspects of the international workers’ movement and the communist parties in different settings. Rosmer notes that, at the time of the foundation of the Comintern, the residents already discussed and debated issues until midnight, a culture that continued until the end of the decade. ⁶⁸

For the Murphys, their closest communist ally was Katayama, who became a key member of the JCP when it was founded in 1921. Both the Murphys mention their friendship with Katayama who had resided in Room 16 since 1921. ⁶⁹ Jack describes their friendship: ‘I was to learn much about Japan from him and the relays of young fellows from the land of cherry blossoms and terror. A lovable character, he and Gordon became great friends’. ⁷⁰ Katayama's daughter, Yasu, who also lived in the hotel for several years with her father, recalls that Katayama liked cooking and serving food to his comrades in the hotel. Katayama often baked bread, but he also served Japanese food to the visitors. ⁷¹

Besides his role at the Eastern Commission of the Comintern dealing with China and Japan, Jack Murphy also worked for the Dominions, India, and the other British colonies. He had numerous opportunities to meet communists from all these areas at the hotel. His 18-month experience at the Lux meant exceptional educational opportunities that he would not have had anywhere else. He especially enjoyed his discussions with the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, indigenous Australians, and Javanese ‘often through two translators, over questions of theory and practice’. He states:

It meant such an intensive reading of the history, geography, economics of the countries that there hardly ever seems to be an hour free for social life, though somehow or other we managed to squeeze it in. ⁷²

Interactions among the residents were sublimated to the opportunities for political experiences and political education. The English-speaking female Communists developed friendships inside the Hotel Lux. They gathered in someone's room to watch over the Soviet public demonstration at Tverskaia Street, and they were ‘fortunate’ to observe Soviet festivals from the best seats. ⁷³ These interactions also provided a significant learning space in terms of the theory of communism, the situation in the USSR and outside one's own party, and even foreign languages. Instant study classes were held everywhere in the hotel. Japanese communists asked Russian agents to help them read Soviet newspapers in Russian by translating important articles into English. ⁷⁴ Sano Manabu from Japan recalls that he learned a lot about political and philosophical issues by visiting Eugen Varga from Hungary when he lived in the Hotel Lux. ⁷⁵

The hotel became the centre of an information network as it accumulated updated information on each communist party, which sent periodical reports to the Comintern and their representative. For example, the CPGB's headquarters in London sent their weekly reports to the Hotel Lux, and they were further transferred to the headquarters of the Comintern. Arahata remembers he was embarrassed to see how voluminous reports were sent from London to the Hotel Lux every week, in comparison with the JCP's short reports arriving from Shanghai. ⁷⁶

Along with this transnational network, the hotel provided a significant space to establish a national network of communists. When foreign communists arrived in Moscow, their first destination was usually the Lux to visit the representative of each national communist party. In the case of the CPGB, the residents included George Aitken (originally an engineer from Scotland and later a commissar in the Spanish Civil War), who studied at the International Lenin School in Moscow and lived in the Lux with his wife, Agnes, and George Hardy who served in the National Minority Movement and the Profintern. ⁷⁷ Rose Cohen was in and out of Moscow during the 1920s, but she was a part of the British residents group of the Lux. ⁷⁸ All these families became friends in Moscow. Moreover, surrounded by British comrades, each resident developed their own national sentiment. Molly Murphy recalls the time of their evening parties:

Back would go the furniture to the walls and we would all indulge in song and dance until far into the night. Then we became really ‘nationals’ away from home letting rip with all the old songs we could remember, “from ‘Tipperary’” and the Wobbly songs, from ‘Irish Eyes are Smiling’, the race to Loch Lomond and lots more. And ‘Highbrows and Lowbrows’ joined in. ⁷⁹

As these prominent communists and Comintern agents stayed at the hotel, it was ‘the first port of call’ when communists from any part of the world visited Moscow for any purpose. At the time of the Sixth Comintern Congress and the Fourth Congress of the Profintern in 1928, the CPGB sent many delegates to Moscow, who visited the hotel, creating ‘an English speaking colony’ inside the most international space. ⁸⁰ The British communists found their politically and socially significant space away from home at the hotel. The rooms of the hotel constituted a national gathering space for many communist groups and leftist visitors to Moscow by the end of the 1920s. For the American left, the room of William (Bill) Haywood, who had lived on the second floor of the hotel since 1921, was ‘always the central gathering place’ until his death in 1928. ⁸¹ When Theodore Dreiser arrived in Moscow to attend the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution in November 1927, he visited Haywood's room and found it ‘crowded with dubious radicals’. ⁸²

Japanese communists, too, created a national assembly inside the Hotel Lux. Many of them visited Katayama when they arrived in Moscow, and his room assumed the function of a debating centre. ⁸³ This room became the official policymaking space for the JCP at the end of the 1920s. In 1927, when the restructured JCP prepared a new thesis, Room 37 became the official arena of discussion. The meeting of the national secretariat of Japanese communists began on 26 April; seven Japanese communists (five travelling from Japan and two already in Moscow, including Katayama) and seven Comintern executives attended. Jack Murphy chaired this meeting as the responsible secretary. ⁸⁴ The series of meetings in the Hotel Lux effectively concluded JCP's inner-party struggles, and the composition of a new leadership was confirmed at these meetings. Bukharin was asked to present the JCP thesis, which was published in December 1927 in the Inprecor as a thesis on Japan, and it became the de facto platform of the JCP until 1932.

Inside the Hotel Lux, crucial transnational and national spaces for the communists from outside the USSR existed from the middle of the 1920s to the end of the decade. The strict control of the entry of visitors enabled the residents to form a markedly communist space at the heart of Moscow.

Conclusion

Moving into the 1930s, the Hotel Lux changed significantly as the residents came under intense control and surveillance. It eventually witnessed the mass arrests and executions of its residents during the period of the Great Terror. ⁸⁵

It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the reasons, process, and exact timing of this turn. However, against the prevailing view, this article highlights that, by the end of the 1920s, many residents of the Hotel Lux recalled their living experiences as pleasant and enjoyable. Communists from different corners of the world interacted in a friendly manner inside the building, which became the centre of a human and information network. For the residents and visitors, the Hotel Lux was a significant place, presenting transcultural experiences and learning opportunities derived from their encounters with foreign communists and discussions about the theory and practices of communism as well as other communist parties’ activities. The hotel also offered the space for information exchanges and political discussion with communists from varied backgrounds. As Molly Murphy recollects: ‘The Hotel Lux was the most remarkable of hotels in which I have ever lived, not because of anything special about its structure, but because of its inhabitants’. ⁸⁶

This article uncovers the unidentified functions and transnational interactions within the Hotel Lux during the 1920s. It provides an important perspective to the history of interwar communism and the Comintern. Scholars of interwar communism have been keen to explore the experiences of only the communist agents who travelled beyond national borders. This study illuminates that even a static space such as the Hotel Lux can be the subject and focal point of a global and transnational history.