The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz

Author:Catherine Grace Katz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358117827
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2020-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

February 8, 1945

As Kathleen and Averell drove to the Koreiz Villa for Stalin’s dinner, Kathleen was feeling “horribly embarrassed.” She had been invited to the banquet along with Anna and Sarah, but she had not realized, until just before dinner, that her invitation had come at the expense of others. With Kathy attending, one of the chiefs of staff, either General Marshall or Admiral King, would be left out. As little as Kathy cared for deference to social and political hierarchy, it simply was not right that she should be at the banquet when the heads of the army and navy were not. Kathy knew how much “bad feeling and upset pride” was “caused by people left out of social gatherings,” even more so than “official ones.” She had hurriedly found Anna and told her, “For God’s sake,” please “change . . . the list and leave me off.” Averell tried to intervene as well, but Anna refused to make any modifications. FDR wanted dinner to be a “family party.” In his allotted ten people, he had also included Ed Flynn, the powerful New York Democratic politician and one of his closest advisers. Flynn had no part in the official business and had nominally been included in Roosevelt’s entourage to serve as a Catholic representative for post-conference discussions in Moscow about religion in the Soviet Union. It seemed, however, that he was at Yalta chiefly to serve as someone whose company FDR enjoyed. Thus far, he had spent his time hanging around the room he shared with Dr. Bruenn, drinking tea poured from an enormous samovar, and sitting on the Livadia Palace terrace as he looked contemplatively at the sea. With both Flynn and Kathy in, Marshall and King were out.

Like Kathy, Averell was uncomfortable with the arrangements. Whatever Marshall’s and King’s personal feelings were on the matter, they did not say, but the situation would look very odd if the British and the Soviets brought their military chiefs, as they surely would. As their car wound along the dark coastal road, Averell turned to Kathy and said that since she was coming to the dinner, she would “damned well have to make a speech in Russian.” Neither Anna nor Sarah would be able to make a proper Russian toast, so the “price” of her “meal ticket” would be a toast on behalf of the three daughters.

Kathy felt her “stomach sink.” A toast “in English would have been hard enough to do,” she thought. Having to toast in Russian—in front of Stalin, Molotov, the Soviet ambassadors, and the chiefs of staff of the Red Army, no less—“made it that much more scarey [sic].” Nerve-racking as it was, as they pulled up at the Koreiz Villa, she had to concede it was “a good idea.”

While Averell had ventured to the Koreiz Villa several times that week, this was Kathy’s first visit to Stalin’s residence. Like Livadia, the Koreiz Villa was designed by the architect Nikolai Krasnov. It was built from gray

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