Inspired by Malaparte's visit to Moscow in 1929, the novel consists of scenes and interactions with high-level Communist Party officials.

The novel's protagonist describes and analyses this "communist nobility" as a continuation of the decadent ruling elite it replaced, only more vulgar.

[1] The novel was left unfinished, but the material was published posthumously in 1971 in the last volume of Vallecchi [it]'s edition of Malaparte's complete works.

[1][2] Mario Andrea Rigoni of Corriere della Sera wrote that The Kremlin Ball, if finished, could have been the third part in a triptych about Europe's decadence, after Malaparte's novels Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949).

[3] Publishers Weekly called the book "strange, aimless, and impassioned" in its descriptions and "halfway successful" in its ambition to portray the vanity and tragedy of the Soviet Union before the Great Purge.