Spaso House (The Residency of the US Ambassador)

10 Spasopeskovskaya Square
Subway station «Smolenskaya»
In April 1935, Bulgakov and E. Bulgakova were amongst several hundred guests at the spring ball organised by the American ambassador to the USSR, W.C. Bullitt. It is thought that this ball became the basis for Satan's ball in The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov met Antoine de Saint-Exupéry at the reception in Spaso House in May 1935.
E. Bulgakova remembered that, at first, Bulgakov wrote the scene as a small ball in Woland's bedroom, but, whilst he was ill, rewrote it and transformed the ball in the bedroom into a grandiose affair. Many famous people were present at the reception in the American embassy together with Bulgakov – from M. Tukhachevsky to V. Meyerhold. W.C. Bullitt reported with pride to Roosevelt, 'We got a thousand tulips from Helsinki, made a number of birch trees come into leaf early and at one end of the dining room we recreated a kolkhoz [collective farm] with peasants playing the accordion, dancers and all kinds of little childish things – birds, goat kids and a couple of bear cubs. E. Bulgakova added in her diary, 'In the hall with the columns people were dancing. Lights of different colours shone from the gallery. A whole flock of birds fluttered behind a net. The orchestra had been brought down from Stockholm… On the top floor they were serving shashlik. Red roses and French red wine. Downstairs it was all champagne and cigarettes.