In the meantime, things in Constantinople were not going as badly as had been feared. The August 1 deadline had come and gone, but Frederick had not been deported and Maxim had not been seized. Because Turkey was an overwhelmingly Muslim country, there was much talk initially about prohibition, which would have been ruinous for Maxim and other establishments like it. In October 1923, for example, dire rumors had spread that all drinking establishments would be closed, and stores of liquor would be dramatically thrown into the sea. But although some closings did follow, pressure to reverse this policy began immediately. Many Turks were now accustomed to Western-style nightlife and wanted it to continue. Soon, a few private clubs were authorized to provide drinks to members. Maxim, which had become an important part of the city’s increasingly secularized popular culture, was prominent among them. By the spring of 1924, clubs, gardens, hotels, restaurants, and casinos were allowed to serve liquor, provided they had government permits (the Gazi, Mustafa Kemal, himself was reputedly a tippler).
Following the Treaty of Lausanne, the changes in the country’s government and in Constantinople’s administration were rapid, dramatic, and epochal in historical terms. But initially at least they did not affect Frederick’s life and affairs in any very striking ways. The Allied forces began the evacuation of the city on August 29, 1923, only five days after the treaty was signed. It was completed on Tuesday, October 2, at 11:30 in the morning, when the British, French, and Italian commanding generals and their remaining troops carried out a brief but impressive ceremony in the open square by the Dolmabahçe Palace. With Allied and Turkish units drawn up on the sides of the square, and under the eyes of dignitaries including foreign ambassadors and the high commissioners, the generals inspected the troops; then the Allied and Turkish colors were presented, and the Allied forces marched off. “In a twinkling of an eye,” a great, jubilant Turkish throng flooded the square, according to an American who was present. The Allied fleets left the same afternoon and, in contrast to their imperious arrival five years earlier, now seemed to be “slinking out of port.” “Had these vessels had tails,” the American commented, “I can imagine that they would surely have been securely curled behind their hind legs.” Three days later, on October 5, the Nationalist army reached the Asian side of Constantinople; the following day it crossed the Bosporus and landed in Stambul near Topkapi Palace. On October 13, the capital was officially moved to Angora. The final step in the country’s transformation came on October 29, 1923, with the proclamation of the Turkish Republic and Mustafa Kemal’s election as its first president. In 1935 the grateful nation that he created would give him the honorary name Atatürk, “Father of the Turks.”
After the Allies left, the first thing that changed in Constantinople was the appearance of the crowds on the city’s streets. The British, French, Italian, and American naval uniforms that had filled Pera and Galata were replaced by those of the Turkish army and navy. The number of prostitutes working the streets also dropped because the authorities closed many of the city’s “resorts of ill fame.” Shop signs and advertising banners in the European districts began to change in accordance with the new government’s decree that everything would now have to be in Turkish, with foreign lettering allowed only if it was smaller.
The fall of 1923 after the Allies’ departure is probably when Frederick sent his oldest son, Mikhail, to study in Prague. Because all hope of getting American recognition now seemed to be lost, it made sense to get him out of (potential) harm’s way by taking advantage of the Czech government’s very generous offer to provide young Russian émigrés with a free higher education. By 1922, some two thousand had arrived in Prague from all points in the Russian diaspora, including Constantinople. Because Mikhail had been born in Moscow and spoke Russian fluently, he was eligible. (It is also likely that he was motivated to leave because there were still unresolved tensions between him and Elvira.) Father and son would never see each other again.
Despite the tectonic political and cultural shifts in the city, Maxim remained popular with both residents and tourists and continued to do very good business for a number of years longer. This appears to have given Frederick a heady sense of liberation and achievement, and unleashed an extravagant streak in him. He liked to tell visiting Americans about his remarkable life in Russia; about how in Constantinople he surmounted “difficulties that would stagger the ordinary man”; and how he had “once more mounted the pinnacle of success as the owner and proprietor of the most noted and most popular amusement palace in the Near East.” Before long, he started boasting to visitors that he was “conservatively rated to be worth at least $250,000,” which would amount to $10 million today. Even if this was a two-, three-, or fourfold exaggeration, it still suggests the impressive scale of his success.
For many of Frederick’s clients, his appeal as a host was the infectious, personal pleasure he took in the gaiety that he orchestrated in his nightclub. Sergey Krotkov, a Russian émigré musician who worked for him for several years, recalled how Frederick would suddenly decide that it was time for an elaborate spree. He would put on the top hat that had become his signature and would lead a procession of all of Maxim’s employees—waiters, dishwashers, musicians, cooks, performers—from Taxim Square down one of Pera’s main streets, to the accompaniment of the band’s drums and the clash and clatter of its cymbals. They would stop at every bar they encountered and Frederick would buy everyone a round of drinks. Even when he was working in his office at Maxim, he kept a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket on his desk so that he could offer a glass to anyone who came to see him. It was this kind of behavior that led émigrés to see in him the same “broad” Russian nature they valued in themselves.
The other side of Frederick’s expansive generosity was his continued insistence on personal loyalty from everyone he included in his circle. The bond this allowed him to forge with his employees was another reason for his success, and Krotkov experienced this as well. Krotkov was a master of the Hawaiian ukulele, an instrument that was sweeping the world in the early 1920s, and was very popular at Maxim. One evening he had been invited to a private event elsewhere before having to perform at Maxim for another boatload of American tourists. Krotkov arrived very late for his turn onstage, to find Frederick waiting for him in a rage at the entrance: “Tvoya svoloch!” (“Yours a bastard!”), he yelled in his expressive but grammatically flawed Russian. “My your mug will smash! The Americanas came, and yours not played—your run and play!” “Fyodor Fyodorovich,” Krotkov pleaded, “I know I’m late. Please forgive me, I took a taxi.” He then dashed to the stage. When Krotkov had completed his set, a waiter asked him to come to the bar. Frederick was standing there, his face beaming: “Yours played well. The Americanas listened and clapped.” There were two tumblers of vodka before him. “Yours drink good yet?” he asked.