Sunday, 26 September

The Grand Theatre has reopened. The Soviet Foreign Office invited me and Ambassador Kerr to sit in the same box. The Swedish Minister and Satō shared the same box. The Swedish Minister was very unhappy with this so he immediately left. The name of the opera: Ivan Susanin. Music was by M.I. Glinka. The opera had four scenes. It was about patriots during the Soviet-Polish war. The outline of the opera was that when Poland occupied the Soviet Union, people in all places resisted. In one village, an old fisherman had a daughter and a young son. The girl was engaged to a man and her fiancé did not wait until her marriage but rushed to join the army. The Polish King heard about this resistance and led soldiers to crush them. The second scene described the luxury in the Polish palace and the corrupt behaviour of the high officials. The dance was performed by a few well known actors and actresses. (O.V. Lepeshinskaya and A.M. Messerer). This part was particularly good. When the Polish soldiers arrived in the village they captured the fisherman to lead the way. The fisherman (Ivan Susanin) was played by a very famous bass M.D.   Mihailoff. His songs were wonderful. His daughter was played by the famous character V.V. Barsoba (soprano). The parting song she sang was lovely. The young son Vana was played by the well-known female soprano B.A. Elatogoroba and she sang very well. The fisherman knew he would certainly die, so he secretly told his children and asked his son to join the army. He deliberately led the Polish army to the forest and they got lost, so the Polish army could not join up with the others in Moscow. The Polish army was defeated. They were so angry that they burnt the fisherman to death. The opera scenery was very good. The last act in which the Soviet army successfully marched into the Kremlin in Moscow was marvellous.

The American Counsellor told me that Standley did not want to come back to the Soviet Union. If he didn’t come back, then the American Government would soon send someone else because they didn’t want people misunderstanding thinking that this was revenge for the recall of Litvinov.