Doletsky seemed pleased, but who knows for sure? After all, wasn’t he telling anyone who would listen that he had been received better than M.M. [Litvinov] and MacDonald in the USA? He also hinted quite transparently that when M.M. visited America last year, he ‘muddled things up a bit’ and that if he, Doletsky, had been sent there instead of M.M., things would have turned out much better. Given such a degree of self-love, our modest reception might have struck D. as unworthy of his rank and status.