Not since the imperial balls of Czarist days has the Kremlin seen such a night of festive gaiety. A sumptuously ornamented "New Year's tree" towered 50 ft. high in the vaulted St. George's Hall. Ambassadors, bishops, marshals in all their medals and all the top Soviet bosses thronged the long banquet tables and devoured mounds of caviar and salmon as Bolshoi sopranos sang and a symphony orchestra played. At the stroke of midnight,* Nikita Khrushchev raised his glass of Caucasian wine and shouted: "Happy New Year, comrades!" In great good spirits, he tossed out more toasts—"The heroic working class!"...
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