Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals
Maurice J. Casey, Footnote, £22

IMAGINE a political and cultural revolution that shakes the world. Now imagine you are part of that revolution. In fact, part of your role is to celebrate its initial success as manifested in the country where it is occurring, while another is to spread the word in the country you reside in. This means writing, speaking and organising. It also means being aware of and staying ahead of the enforcers of the structures threatened by the revolution’s success.

This scenario was a reality in the wake of Russia’s 1917 October Revolution. Hundreds of revolutionaries (maybe thousands) boarded trains and ships with tickets to Moscow.

For many of these travelling revolutionaries, their Moscow residence was a hotel on what became Gorky Street Number 10. It served as a primary residence for many if not most European and US communists during their stays in the Soviet Union. In 1921, several hundred delegates to the Third World Congress of the Communist International stayed in the hotel’s 300-plus rooms. This might be considered its christening as the headquarters of the world revolution. 

As time moved on, that characterisation was cemented. While the Soviet military fought of the counterrevolutionary forces sponsored by capitalist governments in Europe and North America, the revolution continued remaking the economy, culture and social relations of the new nation known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). As any student of the history knows, it was a time filled with debate, struggle, celebration, subversion, subterfuge and uncertainty. The residents of the Lux were involved in it all.

This book examines the lives of some of the hotel’s residents, focusing on a group centred around Irish revolutionary Mary O’Callaghan. Known to her friends as OC, O’Callaghan grew up on the Irish coast and moved to London after attending university in Vienna, Austria. By 1916, she was working with the socialist feminist Sylvia Pankhurst as a writer for Pankhurst’s newspaper The Women’s Dreadnought and as a revolutionary organiser. 

OC’s work brought her into contact with other revolutionary women, some of whom she would remain friends with most of her life. Among them were Nellie and Rose Cohen, whose roles in the Communist International meant travel and intrigue. Given their youth and beauty, these sisters would also become friends and lovers with revolutionaries around the world. May O’Callaghan watched these relationships, encouraging some and warning the sister about others. The lives of these women was one shared, at least in a general way, with many other residents of the Lux Hotel. 

Casey’s text balances the exploration of the personal and communal lives of the hotel’s residents with an ongoing discussion of the politics of the time and place. After Lenin’s death in 1924, as history tells us, the forces around Stalin came out on top. Stalin, ever distrustful of foreigners, intensified surveillance of the hotel’s residence, arresting several and creating a culture of paranoia. Some of those arrested were imprisoned, some deported and some executed. The author Casey tells this part of the story in a manner that is honest in its tragedy.

As the friends and comrades scatter into the future, some of the friends stay in touch. Some temper their revolutionary aspirations and get jobs in the countries where they started. Others continue acting and living politically. The author follows to this point. In his telling, he describes the nature of his research: a letter found here that points to another thread to follow. Then another reference that in turn leads him to another place and time. As he follows the trail he is forging, he discovers a friendship that is both unexpected and an almost perfect resolution to the story he has uncovered.

Hotel Lux is a wonderfully human biography. It reminds us that humans exist in and for their dreams and that for many of us, those dreams include a better and more just world for everyone. For those who tend to see the history of the world in terms of armies, guns, politics and conflict, it keeps the fact that it is human love and hope that have at least an equal place in that history. 

Ron Jacobs’s latest book, Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com