Moscow Diary Read online

  Slept twelve hours then luxuriated, washing the kitchen walls and listening to a programme of Mongolian throat singing. Quite haunting. Dr Yury Savenko came round in the afternoon and we talked about his Independent Psychiatric Association, then in the evening I went to a Quaker meeting at Tatyana Pavlova’s. She, like Savenko, anticipates ten years’ totalitarianism, but she does not think there will be civil war. She thinks the army is too strong and united. I wonder. We had a very good Quaker meeting, and both of us ministered in Russian. As she walked me to the metro, she rhapsodised about the weather in February, the promise of spring etc.

  Monday 4 February

  I could see what she meant today. The air was lighter, the sun brighter, and I could hear birds on the rooftops.

  I trekked to the Warsaw Highway again with a courier for London, and thought I would buy food on the way back. No go, Joe. The Danilov Market was closed for cleaning, the fish shop was shut and there was no milk in the milk shop. So I came home with half a kilo of cranberries. I made rather a weird soup from my remnants, then carted the computer to the SOVAM computer firm to discuss setting up an electronic mail link. The guy was nice to me, but shouted at four other people who came in. On my way home I spotted a cabbage in the local shop, darted in, and snaffled it up. Found the landlord waiting for me, wanting to talk.

  He is getting edgy about having an AI person as his tenant. He told me a bit about his past: when he was working abroad as an interpreter his wife had a breakdown and had to spend time in a psychiatric hospital. The Foreign Ministry then broke the contract because he and his wife had “spoiled the psychological climate of the collective”. “You may not know what that is, but I do,” he said bitterly, his face twisting all over the place.

  He then spent over an hour trying to unscrew the two nuts on my toilet seat and eventually succeeded. He is very thorough and hardworking; his translation for us was the same. After talking non-stop for three hours and predicting catastrophe and floods of refugees, he turned on his heel abruptly and said goodbye.

  The Sakharov Committee rang at 11.30pm, just making contact about the commemoration they are staging in May.

  Tuesday 5 February

  Probably about -12 degrees today, but it felt mild and springlike.

  The PO box is becoming a bit of a hostage to fate as there is no rhyme or reason to when the post office opens or shuts. Today they locked it in front of another woman and me, then heaped abuse at us through the glass. I somehow found it immensely depressing. On top of that I lugged my laundry to the shop, to find it had been closed “for technical reasons” since 5 January. I’ve also been ringing the Foreign Ministry since Friday but getting the run around. Got very fed up and went to the Pushkin Art Gallery in the afternoon to see the Bernard Buffet exhibition. Pictures of Paris with translucent skies. There are also a few nice Matisses there; when I looked closely I was very struck by what he had painted out.

  Went to bed very early with a cracking headache and feeling exhausted. It seemed a very long day today. I spoke to no one and had my first lonely pangs.

  Twenty-six army lorries passed me on my way back from the market.

  Wednesday 6 February

  My ears seem to have unstopped, my brain has switched to Russian, and I was listening to the radio and whizzing through Izvestiya with ease. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so tired. Today Sokolenko at the Foreign Ministry was apologetic and said he was still “waiting for an answer” about my specific rights here. He also asked if I’d just been to the Baltic – although I can’t imagine how he thinks I would have got there without any documents from him.

  Enjoyed myself in the afternoon drafting letters for a mailing list. Thought I’d go and see Clark Gable in It Happened One Night at The Illusion. But it didn’t happen that night, and I got a mouthful from the ticket seller, because I hadn’t understood the programme correctly. So, watched Waterloo Bridge instead, a 1950s film about London in the First World War, with London shrouded in fog. The place was packed and all the men and women round me were weeping by the end. I love going to the cinema here because the audience is so attentive. Good night out for 7p.

  Thursday 7 February

  Still no progress with my accreditation at the Foreign Ministry. More Izvestiya reading in the morning. They say Margaret Thatcher will not stand again for Finchley. The courier I expected from London didn’t arrive, so eventually I popped out and discovered a funny local shop with motorbike parts and lace shawls hanging on the walls, and jars of stewed fruit on the shelves. Bought stewed grapes for a friend from the UK, who is in bed with bronchitis.

  Another scene at the post office today. This time I was joined by a young man who went demented and almost battered the door down, so they let us in.

  The IRA fired mortars at No. 10 today.

  Friday 8 February

  I had thought I would devote this week to fixing the computer and getting my papers from the Foreign Ministry, but there’s precious little to show for it. Also, the courier from London has still not arrived, so I couldn’t mail our newsletter, or give out the UN materials on the death penalty for translation. On the other hand, I’ve had good food, my Russian has improved, and I’m working out a bit of a routine.

  I’ve been feeling out of touch with no TV this week, so thought on Monday I’d explore the possibility of getting a small new one from a hard-currency shop – over 1,000 hard roubles (i.e. over £1,000)! So I decided I’d try to get a new tube for the big old set in my room. Went to the local TV repair shop, where the woman shouted at me, twice, that they only repair radios. Today I made the trek down to another TV repair shop, past Tula station. I was taken to the back room to meet Oleg Fyodorovich, an exhausted-looking man in a brown overall, sitting in an office lined with books on Lenin and Soviet labour legislation. He promised me a tube for 238 roubles, but I didn’t have enough money with me. Almost everyone I have visited has a large, but defunct, TV. Apparently the tubes began to give out round about the same time.

  I went to the Rossiya Hotel to change more money, then thought I would try getting dinner. Walked into the spacious, empty restaurant, and the woman said they were fully booked. Bit of an argy-bargy then I left.

  I have been thinking about how I will have to let these constant refusals and defeats just wash over me, without letting them affect my basic drive. It occurs to me that this is what Soviets must be doing all their lives. So it is not easy to know how defeatist, or otherwise, people are being. At the beginning of the week the people I spoke to seemed very defeatist, but who knows?

  Visited a friend in her British Council flat in the morning. Comfortable even by London standards.

  Saturday 9 February

  I passed four nicely dressed people in the street, huddled round a corner, tearing up raw steak.

  Amused to see a poster outside the Maly Theatre for an actress celebrating her seventieth birthday and fifty years on the stage. She was starring in The Living Corpse.

  A handwritten notice went up on our door, inviting all veterans and internationalist fighters and some invalids to a gathering on the block, where they would get some ration cards for 1991. I was jostled on the stairs by an old man wearing medals, dashing out the door, and had to read the notice out to two people whose eyesight wasn’t up to it.

  The TV “tube” turned out to be the 23” screen and all that goes on behind it. A really nice man at the shop arranged for it to be delivered to me for 60p.

  Sunday 10 February

  I am fascinated by Fyodor Burlatsky’s memoirs, Leaders and their Advisors. His mother used to carry a small pistol in her hair (?). They’re a bit like Dennis Healey’s in that they’re a tale with a moral. Healey’s moral was that you need planning and a social consensus. Burlatsky’s is that he was the rapscallion of the Kommunist collective, the one who bucked the system and always favoured democracy, trial by jury etc. His account of Khrushchev is
chilling; it’s pure gangland murder. But you’re not quite sure which gang is doing the telling.

  In Soviet style I hung my food out of the window then defrosted the fridge. Bill Millinship took me out shopping then, because we couldn’t find a left turn, drove me 13km north to The Observer for elevenses. He says he feels he’s doing well if he does four things in a morning. I feel I’m doing well if I do two in a day. He also thinks someone high up is protecting the press at the moment.

  In the evening I went to the Quakes. I kept talking about food, and Margaret, who’s finishing four months here, told me to shut up. Tatyana was describing the seven-week fast the Russian Orthodox observe for Lent and we all suddenly laughed, including her. Only seven weeks? When I plugged in my fridge last thing, it wouldn’t work. Hey ho.

  Monday 11 February

  I dreamt I was cycling up a hill where hay carts and donkeys laden with straw kept stopping or breaking down. I also passed huddles of Soviets darting from market stalls, like a Breughel painting set in the snow in the southern ring road.

  Bang on 9.00am my landlord rolled up, wanting to scan the commercial pages of Kommersant. He brought the newsletter, translated, and fixed my fridge. Whatever else, he’s the most efficient and reliable person I deal with, and that’s a relief. Still no courier from London. The Foreign Ministry says there has been some sort of “delay” concerning my status. I took my washing out for its third walk but found no laundry that would take it between here and the Danilov Market. The computer firm needs still more information, so back to square one.

  I decided to send a Valentine’s telegram today. The bad-tempered woman at the desk couldn’t read Latin script and ground to a halt at “y”. She got out a transliteration chart which I had to point to, letter by letter, and then an African in the post office entered into the discussion and started saying, “y grèque – write it down” etc. We both rounded on him at the same time. A funny little bad-tempered scene over something that wasn’t meant to be bad tempered at all.

  Nikolay of the Moscow Amnesty group came round for tea. Both he and Lada are positive and have ideas. “Better an ignis fatuus than no illume at all.” I appreciate that more and more in people. I did before I came here.

  Tuesday 12 February

  I watched some labourers shifting heavy slabs in the snow. They were wearing padded jackets, heavy boots and balaclavas, and crouched down on their hunkers for a break. The foreman then kissed one of them and held her hand.

  I called out a TV repair man today. The young woman at the desk had a permanent scowl and was sitting working with the phone off the hook. I queued for ten minutes, then she suddenly picked up the phone and shouted, “I told you to wait – there are people here!” We all had to say what was wrong with our sets. The woman in front of me said very nicely, “It gives off smoke and smells of burning.”

  Today the USSR Prime Minister accused the West of preparing economic sabotage to overthrow the Gorbachev government. Why would the West want to overthrow the Gorbachev government? It doesn’t make sense even in their own terms.

  Had a lovely visit from a UK friend.

  Wednesday 13 February

  Landlord very excited they’ve removed border restrictions from Sakhalin, as he thinks this means the Far East will become a Free Enterprise Zone.

  I enjoyed my morning reading Izvestiya and making a stock list of all my UN materials. Then I went to the Arbat to drop off the Morocco translation at the Journal of Humanitarian Sciences. I immediately liked Tanya, the woman who is going to do it. She took me to meet Yevgeny Vladimirovich, the Deputy Editor, just so he could see a real live Amnesty person. He was putting food in his mouth when we came in and was pleasantly embarrassed. They were both charming, anxious to help, and wanted Amnesty to contribute a piece to the journal. However, everything he said was unintentionally offputting, e.g. “Since the war the Soviet state has invited lots of foreigners here, but it’s always ended badly, and they’ve been accused of espionage…”, or, “It’s like the Tarzan films and you are Jane…”

  I was too late to meet John and go to a film about Chernobyl, but in the end I came across some of the real thing at Viktor’s house. A strapping man in his twenties came to stay and it turned out he had been off sick for eighteen months and was now on his way to Donetsk in Ukraine for medical treatment. He had spent two weeks in Belorussia during the Chernobyl disaster and now “something is not quite right with his blood”.

  The evening at Viktor’s was like something from Dostoyevsky, and made me quite tense. They are fairly hard up, and a pigeon walks backwards and forwards from the kitchen to the main room. Their ninety-two-year-old grandmother, whom everyone ignored or shunted out of the way, sat in the corner talking to it. When I first arrived a pediatrician was there, who made some disparaging remarks about AI. Viktor’s mother went mad at him and tiraded on, while Viktor and I talked. Then the man with leukemia arrived and later, as he took me to the metro, we passed a woman in the dark on the landing whose face looked familiar to me. We went back in, and spent another hour with Lydia Zapevalova, whose son was sentenced to death in 1989. There were lots of rows and fights all evening, and Viktor kept going for a lie down because he felt so lousy. Anyway the good news is that thirty people have formed an anti-death penalty committee in Moscow. Viktor has ideas for getting Amnesty some premises.

  Thursday 14 February

  This morning the landlord took my breath away. I said how very nicely Soviet children are brought up compared with ours. He said that is because we have sold out to capitalism, but they are “building socialism and so have to be better”. I couldn’t believe this was coming from his lips. He then said he disapproved of pornography, but there was something flickering across his face which belied what he said.

  I had a satisfying morning writing to a member of the Belorussian Clemency Commission who wants contact with other abolitionists. I then got some juice, bread and nice apples and, “Dizzy with Success”, took my laundry for its fourth outing. The dry cleaners took my jeans – 8p and ready in a week. The laundry, however, was just closing and I had to unpack all my things in a great hurry. Then it turned out I needed cloth number tags stitched onto every corner. She wouldn’t let me ink the number on myself. So I had to repack my laundry and run with it from door to door in what was now a small blizzard, trying to find out where to buy these bloody number tags. In the end I had to take my laundry with me into town to meet some of the Amnesty members. Several smiles on the train and Nikolay said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but you look very picturesque carrying that bag.”

  Unexpectedly Semyon Gluzman phoned with Svetlana Polubinskaya, both back from Kiev and here to discuss the new draft law on psychiatry at the Supreme Soviet tomorrow. After years when nobody cared about psychiatry, they say everybody is getting a bend on to try to pre-empt the Review Committee, which the World Psychiatric Association is sending here for an inspection in March.

  I went round to Polubinskaya’s and enjoyed myself very much, hearing their slant on the political scene, both of them gradualists, totally immersed in psychiatric issues. Polubinskaya co-drafted the new law on psychiatry and since October has been sitting on the Supreme Soviet committee which is slowly pulling it to pieces. They’ve only covered six articles so far, mostly preamble. I was struck by the fact that she does all this basically from the bedroom in her flat. She offered me her washing machine and will also get me on her hairdresser’s list.

  I had a very lucky escape tonight. On the way home I heard steps behind me in the snow, turned round and saw a man in a blue anorak gaining on me. I then changed my direction and realised he was aiming for me. We stopped and faced each other out and I screamed. No one came and he started saying, “Go on, louder. That’s better. No one will come. You’ll damage your throat.” I screamed five times and each time he looked round, then stepped closer. I had my eyes absolutely fixed on his and eventually said, “Leave m
e alone.” As I dreaded, he said, “Are you not Russian? Where are you from?” When I told him, he said, “Excuse me”, and walked away. I thought he would have gone for my money too. My throat is sore as I write this.

  Friday 15 February

  I had difficulty getting the man out of my head for the first part of the day. When I was looking him in the eye I kept trying to see him as a whole person. I slept late, slept in the afternoon, and went to bed early.

  In the morning I stitched number tags on eleven sheets and towels, conscious that I was probably doing it wrong for the laundry woman. Sure enough, there on the laundry wall was a large chart showing you how it had to be done, but mine were alright. In the afternoon I popped into the post office, to hear my lady of the PO box explaining to some disgruntled customers that they keep getting contradictory instructions from on high and “we don’t know which God to pray to”. Maybe that’s why the door keeps opening and shutting like a fridge.

  Because Saddam Hussein made a peace proposal, Hella had to write an article about it for her newspaper and so cancelled dinner. To its credit, the USSR Committee for Constitutional Supervision has pointed out three major illegalities in the presidential decrees on joint army and police patrols, according to Izvestiya.

  Saturday 16 February

  I was invited to a grand lunch at Viktor’s, where I would meet Anna Yevgenievna Bochko, a new defence lawyer who is appealing against the death sentence passed on Andrey Zapevalov. She is a specialist in murder cases, in her late twenties, and apparently very clear thinking.

  By the time I arrived, Viktor’s mother and Mrs Zapevalova were driving each other mad in the kitchen. It was a huge five-hour lunch with salads, homemade mushroom pirozhki, fish, homemade pelmeni and sour cream homemade tort, and tea made from handpicked and dried grasses. Lia Davidovna described how she’d swapped some potatoes for some meat and a teapot for some flour etc., and they all said they do the same thing. Everyone was very nice to the children there, particularly Viktor and his mother, who have a real talent. Lia Davidovna explained to them that if it hadn’t been for the Germans they wouldn’t have their crystal light fixture. The Germans invaded Kharkov, built a casino with chandeliers, destroyed it when they left, and Lia Davidovna’s grandmother salvaged one remaining light shade.