In 1934, a young, bedazzled diplomatic team joined William C. Bullitt, recently appointed US ambassador to Moscow, at his handsome new Spaso House residence. Their arrival marked the first American diplomatic relationship with the Soviet government since it came to power in 1917. They reached the Soviet capital in a year that became legendary among the State Department’s foreign service officers.

Bullitt, the scion of a wealthy Philadelphia family, had been deeply involved in negotiating the Versailles peace settlement in 1919. He returned to Washington deeply troubled about both the agreement and president Woodrow Wilson, infuriating the president by testifying against the conditions of the treaty. Bullitt’s private life was also at odds with the establishment. He was briefly married to Louise Bryant, the young widow of leftist writer, John Reed. A favorite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), Bullitt was sometimes described as a character out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

Bullitt’s close-knit group at the US embassy in Moscow was to have an outsized influence on Soviet-American relations in the final years of World War II. One such old “Russia hand” was Charles “Chip” E. Bohlen, Roosevelt’s chief diplomatic aide at all the important postwar summits. Then there was Charles W. Thayer, Bullitt’s personal secretary, and a key member of the committee which drafted the terms of Nazi Germany’s surrender. He also authored the best-selling Bears in the Caviar, describing the high life in Spaso House.