"The Ambassador's Daughter, Emlen Knight Davies: a Photographic Journey, Moscow, 1937-1938"

Emlen Knight Davies (1916-2014) arrived in Moscow on January 19, 1937, when she was 21 years old. She had taken her senior year off from Vassar College to accompany her father, FDR’s new Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies and her stepmother, Marjorie Post, to observe “the Russian experiment” first hand, to immerse herself in the Russian language and to take classes at the Russian Juridical Institute in the building that is now Rachmaninoff Concert Hall. Emlen Knight’s archive is an extraordinary account of her time in the Soviet Union in 1937-1938. Her photos of everyday life in Russia from street scenes to dinners in Spaso House, the ambassador’s residence, or The Spiridonovka, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Reception Center (still in use today), are amazingly perceptive. Her stories, recounted with the aid of her diary and letters, and her clear recollections are extraordinary. It is easy to say that my mother’s strong American identity was significantly touched by her time in the former Soviet Union. One hears it in her letters and diaries and sees it in the photographs and scrapbooks.I will take the audience on a “walk about” with her using photos from her albums from 1937-1938 Moscow and the Embassy’s Dacha outside of the city. I will use her captions from letters and diaries, as well as from our interviews together. The presentation will reveal the identity, interests and concerns of a 21-year-old young American in the glaring spotlight of the U.S. Embassy at the very beginning of U.S.-Soviet relations, all the while faced with the looming inevitability of a European war hanging over everyone’s head like a Damocles sword. The talk will be based on the exhibition that was held at the Spaso House in Moscow and funded by the U.S. Embassy in 2008.