One guest, Mikhail Bulgakov, wrote about the bash in his novel “The Master and Margarita.” Another, Karl Radek, a co-author of the 1936 Soviet constitution, got the bear drunk. The bear might have survived the decade. Radek, who fell out with Stalin, did not.
What does “Another, Karl Radek, got the bear drunk?” mean?
Another guest, Karl Radek…
We’d need more context to explain ‘got the bear drunk’. I suspect ‘the bear’ stands for Russia (which may in turn be represented through Stalin himself).
Only 1 is correct.
–I can only guess that the bash in question was one of the parties Stalin liked so much to arrange in order to get his cronies drunk and keep them constantly under his thumb. Along with the Communist Party leaders, famous writers, musicians, artists were often invited (like M. Bulgakov, whose novel has been considered some page-turner since its publication in the late 1930s.)
The author mentions a tamed bear—one of the attractions of the bash—to have fallen prey to K. Radek, perhaps already drunk himself.
Many of those attending the parties with Stalin, were destroyed during the 1930s’ ‘purge’. Karl Radek was among them…
In January, 2012, Michael McFaul, a tenured political scientist from Stanford and President Obama’s chief adviser on Russia through the first term, arrived in Moscow with his wife and two sons to begin work as the United States Ambassador. In Palo Alto and Washington, D.C., the McFauls had lived in modest houses. In Moscow they took up residence at Spaso House, a vast neoclassical mansion that was built by one of the wealthiest industrialists in imperial Russia. Spaso features a vaulted formal dining room and a chandeliered ballroom, where William C. Bullitt, the U.S. Ambassador in the thirties, used to throw parties complete with trained seals serving trays of champagne and, on one memorable occasion, a menagerie of white roosters, free-flying finches, grumpy mountain goats, and a rambunctious bear. One guest, Mikhail Bulgakov, wrote about the bash in his novel “The Master and Margarita.” Another, Karl Radek, a co-author of the 1936 Soviet constitution, got the bear drunk. The bear might have survived the decade. Radek, who fell out with Stalin, did not.
In that case, it was a real bear which Karl Radek gave alcohol to, thus getting the bear drunk.