Hotel Lux
Coordinates: 55°45′47″N 37°36′31″E / 55.76306°N 37.60861°E
Hotel Lux (Люксъ) was a hotel in Moscow that, during the early years of the Soviet Union, housed many leading exiled Communists. During the Nazi era, exiles from all over Europe went there, particularly from Germany. A number of them became leading figures in German politics in the postwar era. Initial reports of the hotel were very good, although its problem with rats was mentioned as early as 1921. Communists from more than 50 countries came for congresses and for training or to work. By the 1930s, Joseph Stalin had come to regard the international character of the hotel with suspicion and its occupants as potential spies. His purges created an atmosphere of fear among the occupants, who were faced with mistrust, denunciations, and nightly arrests. The purges at the hotel peaked between 1936 and 1938. Germans who fled Hitler for safety in the Soviet Union found themselves interrogated, arrested, tortured, and sent to forced labor camps. Most of the 178 leading German communists who were killed in Stalin's purges were residents of Hotel Lux.
Originally named Hotel Frantsiya, the hotel was built as a luxury hotel in 1911 by the son of Ivan Filippov, a well-known Moscow baker, whose baked goods were delivered widely, even to the tsar's residence. Located at Tverskaya Street 36, it had four stories and housed the Filippov Café. The hotel was taken over by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution and renamed Люксъ, i.e. Hotel de luxe. It came to be used by the Communist International (Comintern) as lodging for communist revolutionaries from other countries. Guests were lodged according to hierarchy, more important individuals received better rooms. Some rooms were also used for meetings.
...
Wikipedia