The Vertushka was a special internal telephone system in the Kremlin

Kremlin

A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...

. Parallel systems existed in other cities as well as in the capitals of Soviet satellite states. The name is derived from the Russian word for rotary dial

Rotary dial

The rotary dial is a device mounted on or in a telephone or switchboard that is designed to send electrical pulses, known as pulse dialing, corresponding to the number dialed. The early form of the rotary dial used lugs on a finger plate instead of holes. Almon Brown Strowger filed the first patent...

ers, which were first installed on a special telephone used by Lenin and considered a novelty at the time.

See also

• Breaking with Moscow, Arkady Shevchenko
  Arkady Shevchenko
  Arkady Nikolayevich Shevchenko , a Soviet diplomat, was the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect to the West.Shevchenko joined the diplomatic service of the Soviet Union as a young man and rose through the ranks of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, becoming advisor to Andrei Gromyko, Minister for...
  
  , Knopf (1985) ISBN 0-394-52055-6
• Nomenklatura : the Soviet Ruling Class, Michael Voslensky ; translated by Eric Mosbacher ; preface by Milovan Djilas, Doubleday (1984) ISBN 0-385-17657-0