Then one day in 1926, Comrade Krakovitz, who happened to be an undersecretary in the Department of Residential Accommodations, asked if Pushkin would wait in line for a case of French champagne. When Pushkin succeeded, Comrade Krakovitz was loath to show his appreciation by giving up a bottle; so, instead, with the stroke of a pen he reassigned Pushkin to a generous apartment in the Nikitsky Towers – a brand-new complex on the banks of the Moskva River.

Later that night, when Pushkin got home and explained to Irina what had happened, Irina soberly considered the turn of events. It was a common misconception – or so her thought process unfolded – that Communism guaranteed an identical life for all. What Communism actually guaranteed is that, in place of lineage and luck, the state would determine who should get what after taking careful account of the greater good. From this simple principle, it followed that a comrade who plays a greater role in attaining the greater good for the greater number of people should have greater resources at his own disposal. Just ask Nikolai Bukharin, editor of Pravda and champion of the peasant, who lived in a four-room suite at the Metropol Hotel!

Through this indisputable logic, Irina came to see their improved situation as the natural course of events; and she now often referred to Pushkin as ‘comrade husband’.

But when she reached the corner of Tenth Avenue and 16th Street, she came to a stop. A few strides ahead, a lone woman in shirtsleeves was leaning against a wall and smoking a cigarette while a crowd across the street milled in front of a loading-dock door. In a single glance, Irina recognized the people in the crowd. She recognized them from the ruggedness of their clothes and the determination on their faces. The only difference between this assembly and the factory workers in Moscow was that they appeared to come from every corner of the globe. In their number were Africans and Asians, Germans and Italians, Irishmen and Poles. Wondering what she had happened upon, Irina looked up and saw a billboard on the building’s roof displaying a golden disk the size of the sun.

Suddenly, the loading door rolled up with a clatter to reveal a man in suspenders in the company of two armed guards. In unison, every member of the crowd began to shout and wave their hands. For a moment, the foreman looked them over, then he began to point.

‘Him, her. Her, him . . .’

Those whom he singled out were waved inside by the guards – having been bestowed the privilege of doing a hard day’s work – while the rest were left to swallow their disappointment just as they had swallowed their pride.

When the loading door came down with a bang, the woman in shirtsleeves was no longer leaning idly against the wall. Having tossed her cigarette into the street, she began thrusting a piece of paper in the hands of every worker who passed. Some of the workers glanced at the leaflet as they walked away, others stuffed it in a pocket, but most let it fall to the ground. When a gust of winter wind raced down the street, one of the leaflets was swept in the air and dropped at Irina’s feet.

Irina couldn’t read a word on the leaflet, but embedded right in the middle of the text, staring back with an expression at once determined and wise, was none other than Vladimir Ilich Lenin.