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The Red Hotel: The Untold Story of Stalin’s Disinformation War Hardcover – 27 April 2023

by Alan Philps (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 81 ratings
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'A riveting trip down the corridors of Soviet deception' Sunday Telegraph (Five-Star Review)

'Philps' book vindicates the value of truth' Washington Post

'Philps has an eye for detail and a heart for those left behind' The Times

'A tale of intrigue and suppression' The New York Times

'A compelling and often horrifying tale of moral degradation and occasional heroism superbly told' The Economist

'An engaging and insightful account of foreign correspondents living in the Moscow landmark during the Second World War' History Today

Reporters. Translators. Lovers. Spies.
In THE RED HOTEL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF STALIN'S DISINFORMATION WAR, former Daily Telegraph Foreign Editor and Russia expert Alan Philps sets out the way Stalin created his own reality by constraining and muzzling the British and American reporters covering the Eastern front during the war and forcing them to reproduce Kremlin propaganda. War correspondents were both bullied and pampered in the gilded cage of the Metropol Hotel. They enjoyed lavish supplies of caviar and had their choice of young women to employ as translators and to share their beds.

While some of these translators turned journalists into robotic conveyors of Kremlin propaganda, others were brave secret dissenters who whispered to reporters the reality of Soviet life and were punished with sentences in the Gulag. Through the use of British archives and Russian sources, the story of the role of the women of the Metropol Hotel and the foreign reporters they worked with is told for the first time. This revelatory story will finally lift the lid on Stalin's operation to muzzle and control what the Western allies' writers and foreign correspondents knew of his regime's policies to prosecute the war against Hitler's rampaging armies from June 1941 onwards.

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  1. Print length
    464 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Headline Book Publishing
  4. Publication date
    27 April 2023
  5. Dimensions
    16 x 4.2 x 23.6 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    1035401304
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1035401307
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From the Publisher

Red Hotel
By Russian expert

research

untold stories

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Metropol Hotel

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Review

A riveting trip down the corridors of Soviet deception . . .Philps' book is almost faultlessly balanced between racy narrative and historical analysis ― Sunday Telegraph

A fabulous book, packed with untold stories, written with the lyrical empathy of an author who knows and feels his subject deeply -- Patrick Bishop

The Red Hotel is a sizzling read full of bitchiness and high jinks. But it is also a deeply moral book, outlining a simple truth: that the press pack abroad often operates in a bubble and is deeply dependent on local translators and fixers. Philps has an eye for detail and a heart for those left behind as the press caravan moved on ― The Times

Philps adroitly uses the experiences of the wartime correspondents incarcerated in the Hotel Metropol in Moscow to tell at least part of the story of Stalin's campaign to dupe the West about the nature of his regime ... The Red Hotel gives a superb flavour of the compromises, betrayals and self-delusions require to report on the USSR ― Literary Review

Philps's book vindicates the value of truth, most of all by depicting the lengths that a rare few will go to share it ― Washington Post

Philps is terrific at training a spotlight on the local staff who are so often forgotten, and exposing the moral ambiguities of journalists ― Spectator

The Red Hotel is a compelling and often horrifying tale of moral degradation and occasional heroism superbly told by a seasoned reporter ― Economist

Balanced between racy detail and historical analysis...a riveting study ― Daily Telegraph

An engaging and insightful account...an experienced and accomplished foreign correspondent himself, Philps does an excellent job of recreating a sense of time and place ― History Today

A fabulous book, packed with untold stories, written with the lyrical empathy of an author who knows and feels his subject deeply. -- Patrick Bishop

About the Author

Alan Philps is a fluent Russian speaker, who has worked as a reporter in Moscow on and off since he was the Reuters trainee there in 1979 - in the Brezhnev era when the system of isolating correspondents from the local people, except for some authorised ballet dancers and such like, was very much still in place. As a senior reporter, he worked there in the 1980s under leaders Mikhail Gorbachev, and the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin. Alan has kept up a connection with the Metropol Hotel, staying there several times to attend charity balls.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Headline Book Publishing (27 April 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1035401304
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1035401307
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16 x 4.2 x 23.6 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 81 ratings

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Alan Philps

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Wszedobylski
    5.0 out of 5 stars Page Turner
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 August 2024
    Verified Purchase
    Page turning account of journalists and local Russians trying to make sense of Soviet Russia after Hitler's betrayal.Well researched from respectable sources.
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 April 2024
    Verified Purchase
    Well researched fascinating biographies of a wide cast of people who led extraordinary lives. A definite must read for history buffs
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  • MICHAEL O'SHEA
    4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting, but not quite what it says on the cover.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2024
    This is an interesting and enjoyable book, well written and worth reading. But do not be misled by the subtitle “the untold story of Stalin’s disinformation war”. Soviet disinformation certainly features prominently, but the real focus of the book is the behaviour of about a dozen people, some western journalists, some Russian secreta/mistresses/wives, who were based in the Metropole during the war. As for the “untold story”, the great majority of material in the book is from published sources which are fully acknowledged in the footnotes.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Hugh I Axton
    5.0 out of 5 stars arrived on time
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 August 2023
    Verified Purchase
    An amazing book on Stalins Kremlin
    One person found this helpful
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  • David James
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent history of an infamous place
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 June 2023
    Verified Purchase
    This book brings history and important historical personalities to life.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Simon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and informative
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 June 2023
    Fascinating and informative
    One person found this helpful
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  • G. Sanders
    2.0 out of 5 stars Thin stuff
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 July 2023
    'This is not a book of academic history but an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the Metropol Hotel in wartime,' Philps writes in his introduction.

    Take that as a big caveat lector. The book, drawn largely from the writings of the correspondents themselves, is too often anecdotal, with little detailed supporting material, and very little evidence of the mechanisms of how Stalin pursued his disinformation war.

    In fact that objective of the book's subtitle disappears for many of the later chapters, particularly in paraphrasing at too great length the largely irrelevant post-release memoirs of Russians who, as a result of their work support supporting the foreign correspondents, fell foul of the NKVD and were fed into the Gulag system for years. We have read prisoner memoirs before, Gulag Archipelago onwards.

    Furthermore, the book suffers from repetition, many surprising infelicities of language, and some irritating lack of detail and/or errors (there is confusion, for example, over the dates of the Webbs's notorious visit to the USSR and the subsequent publication of successive editions of their curious volume 'Soviet Communism'), which a decent editor should have shaken out.

    The book did, however, point me towards a small volume of letters of interest by the artist Feliks Topolski, which, though published 34 years ago, I had managed to miss. A copy is now in my library, and for that fact I am grateful that The Red Hotel is now ensconced on a nearby shelf.

    This could and should have been a much better book, and there is certainly a story to tell, even without access to the NKVD archives. However, it is what it is and I hesitate to recommend it, even to Stalinschina specialists.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Matthew S
    5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Book!
    Reviewed in Australia on 20 December 2023
    Verified Purchase
    Gives a fantastic insight at how supposedly intelligent people can be so easily deluded. Frightening really.
    Do yourself a favor and read this .
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  • Jose Maria Navarro
    5.0 out of 5 stars Cómo informar en un régimen totalitario
    Reviewed in Spain on 11 August 2023
    Verified Purchase
    El libro nos muestra la situación en que se encuentran los periodistas occidentales alojados en el Hotel Metropol de Moscú durante la segunda guerra mundial, intentando mandar buenos artículos, esto es, información veraz sobre la guerra y, básicamente, fracasando ante una censura implacable. Stalin los cuida adecuadamente (todo el caviar y vodka que desees), a fin de cuentas en aquellos días eran aliados y se trataba de tenerlos contentos para manipularlos a su conveniencia.
    Rara vez logran ir al frente, rara vez pueden hablar libremente con los ciudadanos (mejor súbditos) rusos (si te relacionabas con extranjeros podías terminar en el Gulag). Como regla general escriben lo que la propaganda soviética les suministra: una situación un tanto aburrida.
    El autor se centra en diversos personajes (Charlotte Haldane, Ralph Parker, Nadya Ulanovskaya...) , y sus interesantes biografías constituyen la materia del libro, destacando los capítulos finales en los que sabiamente recapitula lo que nos ha ido mostrando.
    Uno se queda pensando como, en aquellos días, podía Stalin tener tantos defensores, y tan pocos atacantes (o éstos eran muchos pero estaban eficazmente silenciados). Siempre había un anglosajón que creía sus mentiras, aunque bastaba abrir los ojos para comprobar que eran falsedades.
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