SPRING FESTIVAL AT SPASO HOUSE / TEA PARTY AT LEPP HOUSE 

Staircase in Spaso / Lepp House 

U.S. Embassy photographer Valeriy Yevseyev - U.S. Embassy Moscow Press Office
ELFH photographer Kumari Vaim - Endel Lepp Fasion House Press Office 

The stairway of Spaso House in Moscow, which inspired a scene in Mikhail Bulgakov's Novel "The Master and Margarita" 

The stairway of Lepp House in Kürbla, which inspired a scene in Endel Lepp's Novel "The Tailor and Kumari"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Festival_at_Spaso_House#/media/File:Spaso_House_Stairway.JPG

#SpasoHouse #ValeriyYevseyev #EndelLeppFashionHouse #KumariVaim #Bulgakov #TheMasterAndMargarita #EndelLepp #RätsepJaKumari #GentlemenFromEstonia #ExcavanzaKomatsu #Meestemoemuuseum #TheKirblaMethod #KumariImedemaa #ELFHTrends #MartinTeeSuviKirblas #TangoKyrblium #TheGardenOfMensFashionDelights #GentlemensFloralCabinet #MeMoMu  

The Spring Festival at Spaso House was an event held on the night of April 23 to April 24, 1935, at Spaso House, the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow. Approximately 500 guests and members of the American diplomatic corps attended the event. According to the embassy secretary, these included "everyone who mattered in Moscow, except Stalin". 

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The Spring Festival and its preparation process are described in detail in the memoirs of Charles Thayer, an employee of the American embassy in the 1930s, titled Bears in Caviar, published in 1951,^[76] and translated into Russian in 2016.^[77] Another detailed account of the festival's preparation and celebration is included in the memoirs Around the World at 20 Years, published in English in 1962, by Irena Wiley, the wife of an American diplomat, sculptor, and painter.^[78] A brief fragment on the ball and its preparation is provided by Mikhail Bulgakov in Elena Bulgakova's Diary, first published in 1990,^[79] and later republished in 2004.^[44] 

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Wikipedia:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Festival_at_Spaso_House 

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The Spring Festival at Spaso House was an event held on the night of April 23 to April 24, 1935, at Spaso House, the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow. Approximately 500 guests and members of the American diplomatic corps attended the event. According to the embassy secretary, these included "everyone who mattered in Moscow, except Stalin". Alexander Etkind highlighted three groups of attendees: Bolshevik intellectuals, senior military commanders, and the theatrical elite. The event was organized by the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, who served as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of State from 1933 to 1936, William Christian Bullitt Jr.. The arrangements for decorating Spaso House and organizing the festival program were handled by embassy staff member Charles Thayer and the wife of one of the diplomats, Irena Wiley.

On October 29, 2010, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle hosted a reception to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the ball at Spaso House that inspired Mikhail Bulgakov. In 2024, an exchange of remarks regarding the Spring Festival took place between the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, and the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy. The topic of the Spring Festival has been frequently covered by Russian mass media, sometimes including details absent from the memoirs, letters, and diaries of its organizers and guests.

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William Bullitt described the Spring Festival in a letter dated May 1, 1935, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt:^[75]

The Russians still dare to come to my house for large entertainments when there can be no possibility of private conversation. There was a good turnout for the ball I gave on the 23rd of April. Litvinov came with his wife and eldest daughter. It was an astonishingly successful party, thoroughly dignified yet gay. Everyone happy and no one drunk. In fact, if I can believe the letter I got from the British Ambassadress and many verbal messages, it was the best party in Moscow since the revolution. We got a thousand tulips from Helsingfors and forced a lot of birch trees into premature leafage and arranged one end of the dining room as a collective farm with peasant accordion players, dancers, and all sorts of baby things, such as birds, goats, and a couple of infant bears about the size of cats. We also had pleasant lighting effects done by the best theater here and a bit of a cabaret. It was really great fun and the Turkish Ambassador and about twenty others remained until breakfast at eight…

The Spring Festival and its preparation process are described in detail in the memoirs of Charles Thayer, an employee of the American embassy in the 1930s, titled Bears in Caviar, published in 1951,^[76] and translated into Russian in 2016.^[77] Another detailed account of the festival's preparation and celebration is included in the memoirs Around the World at 20 Years, published in English in 1962, by Irena Wiley, the wife of an American diplomat, sculptor, and painter.^[78] A brief fragment on the ball and its preparation is provided by Mikhail Bulgakov in Elena Bulgakova's Diary, first published in 1990,^[79] and later republished in 2004.^[44] 

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