A Gentleman in Moscow **** (of 4)

 "Either you master your circumstances, or your circumstances will master you."

Soon after the Russian Revolution in 1917, Bolshevik authorities convicted the former aristocrat, Count Alexander Rostov, of crimes against the newly formed government. He wrote a poem critical of the authorities. Instead of martyring Rostov, they ascribed a punishment fit to a Russian, internal exile. Rostov was put under house arrest in Moscow's finest hotel, the Metropol. 

The Piazza, one of the Metropol's dining rooms.

Rostov remained inside for the next 32 years, but throughout his stay maintained unrivaled equanimity, erect posture, impeccable manners, exquisite taste in fine wines and elegant cuisine, and erudite allusions to the world's great literatures and philosophies. In short, while Stalinism and three decades of the Russian revolution played before him from the 1920s through the 1950s, Count Rostov's triumph was his ability to master his circumstances, providing a lesson for us all.