Culture, Power, and Mission to Moscow: Film and Soviet-American Relations during World War II

Abstract

Following a sumptuous feast (and copious amounts of vodka), the guests, gathered around a banquet table deep within the Kremlin's walls in May 1943, toasted SovietAmerican friendship. Premier Joseph V. Stalin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov praised the Grand Alliance. Anastas I. Mikoyan, the Soviet commissar for foreign trade, Lavrenty P. Beria, the head of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Del, NKVD), and Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, offered toasts, and the Anglo-Americans present-including the British ambassador to Moscow, Adm. William H. Standley, the reigning United States representative, and Joseph E. Davies, Washington's former ambassador-reciprocated. The American emissary from 1936 to 1938, Davies was there because President Franklin D. Roosevelt had sent him to arrange an introductory summit with Stalin, a meeting at which Roosevelt was sure all outstanding Soviet-American differences could be ironed out. Although Davies' presence was unusual, thus far the evening had been little different from similar receptions held by Soviet leaders for their Allied comrades during World War II. On this occasion, however, the former ambassador had brought with him a movie that both he and Roosevelt hoped would convince the Soviet dictator to eschew separate peace negotiations with Adolf Hitler and to remain within the tenuous Big Three