US embassy agrees to pay its dues to Moscow landlords

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Financial Times

By Andrew Jack in Moscow
Published: October 13 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 13 2004 03:00

The US and Russia may not see eye to eye on democracy but they found common ground yesterday on a business matter that had been the bane of their diplomats for more than a decade.

The US embassy in Moscow said it had signed a new, 49-year lease on Spaso House, the 90-year-old city centre mansion that has been the official residence of US ambassadors since the first one was appointed to the USSR in 1933.

The agreement ends years of tense discussions that had reached right up to the offices of Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, and his former counterpart, Igor Ivanov.

Spaso House was built for Nikolai Vtorov, a rich merchant, in the ostentatious New Empire style by the architects Adamovich and Mayat. It was completed three years before the Russian revolution in 1917 after which it was expropriated. But a lack of foresight also plagued its new landlords.
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