Rebecca Matlock - Spaso House

Spaso House

Spaso House is the residence of the American Ambassador in Moscow, and Matlock has written a book ‘’At Spaso House’’ (published in Russian) that describes the period of U.S. Soviet relations 1933-1991. The most famous visitors to Spaso House during her time there were the President and Mrs. Reagan who stayed there in June 1988 during a summit meeting in Moscow.

They said that we would have to cover all of the windows and I said, “That's just fine provided the window curtains are white.” So overnight, practically, in Washington they whipped up window curtains for the whole house, and they came out on the plane with the President's car which was sent for him to use while he was here. One night I went to bed and there were no curtains and the next morning I woke up and there were white curtains all over the house which lightened and brightened it a lot. We were very grateful to the Reagans for that.

I found it particularly difficult to deal with Mrs. Reagan's Chief of Staff who told me that they wanted the only photographs to be the official photographs. Well I didn't much like that. And I did talk with Howard Baker toward the end of the visit since he is also a photographer. And he said, “Well don't pay any attention to him.” So I stopped paying attention and do have a few photos. I wish I had paid less attention all along.

Matlock was in a position to take "people pictures" of her celebrity guests, one of whom was Boris Yeltsin.

Boris Yeltsin looked through the gallery and he looked at these different things and couldn't think of anything to say. Finally, he found a bowl of flowers and stuck his face in it. I had my camera and took a photo. He looked a little bit like Ferdinand the Bull, he was kind of out of it in that way.