Rufus Greenlee stated that Stalin attended one of the Moscow performances (Lenin had been dead for two years),[2][3] and a number of scenes of the group’s appearance in the city can be seen in Dziga Vertov’s film A Sixth Part of the World (1926).
American musicologist Laurel E. Fay wrote that, in February 1926, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who was beginning gain international stature, had been attending concerts in Leningrad, which included an outstanding performance of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings conducted by Fritz Stiedry (1883–1968).
But, according to Fay, "the jazz band of Sam Wooding and the Chocolate Kiddies" – performed in Leningrad – "was, to Shostakovich, a musical revelation of America."
By contrast, Wooding's Chocolate Kiddies big band, during the 1926 tour, made a sensation that created demand for jazz in Russia that ended in a Stalinist crackdown.
[5] Arthur Seymour Lyons managed the Russian tour on behalf of Leonidoff (né Leonid Davydovich Leonidoff-Bermann; born abt.