Moscow Diary Read online

  Lydia Zapevalova got very tearful as the afternoon wore on. I suddenly saw for myself what an agony the death penalty is for all the relatives concerned. It had been two years for her.

  I came home with half a pig.

  Sunday 17 February

  I was waiting for a UK friend outside the House of Shoes at 3.00pm when a taxi mounted the pavement and drove into a blind man’s leg. The poor old guy was shocked and could hardly walk because his leg was so sore, but the driver got out and shouted at him. We got his number and someone went for the police. Jane arrived in a bad way, having just had an obscene phone call. We had a very pleasant stroll in the Sparrow Hills then tea at her house. On my way back I heard three or four dull explosions in the distance. Everyone in the street looked round.

  In the underpass at Oktyabrskaya I passed an accordionist standing by petitions to save Ilya Zaslavsky as the chief of the local soviet. The music was wistful and people were signing by lamplight, as though they were in some film. I’m getting a bit sceptical about these petition drives. It seems his council, including many ex-supporters, are wanting him out. Isn’t that democracy?

  In the evening I went to an Amnesty meeting with Nikolay and Aleksandr, to discuss the Women’s Campaign. When I got home I was moved by a note which Lydia Zapevalova had left in my door. She had had difficulty finding my address, and wanted me to forgive her for not turning up in time. She had also left some dried mushrooms for me and gave a recipe for making soup, which ended, “At least, that’s how I do it. You may know a better way.” It was kind and dignified and humble, and quite upset me.

  Monday 18 February

  I have to devise a way of getting rid of the half side of pig given to me on Saturday.

  A big box arrived for me today from London with a lot of stuff in it, but still no January newsletter. I was almost apoplectic all morning. I felt my blood pressure was just about up near the ceiling and I couldn’t get it down. I couldn’t do the mailing I want and I couldn’t get through to the Foreign Ministry, the computer firm, Komsomolskaya Pravda or Stolitsa.

  However, I picked myself up, brushed myself off and in the afternoon went to Prospekt Mira, where Maria Esmont has an association of independent women artists. I met her at the Moscow Book Fair in 1989 – a middle-aged woman, very interested in our work. The association has just been given permanent exhibition space in a veterans’ club – rather a seedy room, but some nice paintings. They owed it to a hearty woman on the local soviet. The administrative-command system is not dead, because she came in and told them how they should rehang their paintings.

  Maria invited me to talk to their committee at 5.00pm and explain our Women’s Campaign, which I was glad to do. There was a nice laid-back, women’s-group atmosphere. Maria is quiet with a firm voice, and although people kept making comments out of the corner of their mouths (“What about the veterans?”, “What will the woman from the District Soviet think?”), she kept dismissing each objection and committing them to helping. She said she had kept the Amnesty leaflets from 1989 and had made up her mind then that she wanted to help us. This is what I really like about Amnesty: chance encounters with people who are thinking the same way, and who can really make a difference.

  So it looks like we may be able to sell our publications at the exhibition, collect signatures and possibly get some coverage in the women’s press. By the end of the day I had got through to the computer people, to the Foreign Ministry and to Komsomolskaya Pravda, so it wasn’t such a bad day after all.

  IRA bombs went off today at Victoria and Paddington. One person killed.

  Tuesday 19 February

  An engineer came and mended the TV for 50 roubles (£5). Nikolay popped by and stayed for four hours, partly to help with the truculent engineer. His English is extremely good and he is a nice person. We had an extremely Russian tea-drinking session at 11.00am, discussing the relationship of the Turin Shroud to belief and if we see Christ as a literary hero etc.

  In the afternoon I mailed two lengthy letters and enclosures to Kazakhstan and Leningrad. Farewell dinner with Margaret, who goes back to the UK on Thursday. Disposed of the pig, but came back with sausage and a tin of ham.

  Wednesday 20 February

  So, the Foreign Ministry will not decide finally on my status until mid-March, i.e. this whole visit is a probationary period. It helps to know more clearly where I stand. A journalist rang to arrange an interview on doctors and human rights, and was cut off three times. She then asked me if it would be OK to do the interview in my flat, what with the phone being so funny. The phone does indeed seem ostentatiously bugged. I wonder if the flat is too.

  A conscientious objector asked me to meet him and we spent an hour on a bench in the snow. Afterwards, I popped to Viktor’s to pick up some papers, but got embroiled in another long evening round the teapot, listening to people I’d never met before having flaming rows. I’ll have to adapt to a Russian sort of schedule, because I was dragging myself round all day, totally exhausted and wanting an early night, but in fact I was doing work of some sort from about 10.00am to 12.00pm.

  Anyway, it was very fruitful at Viktor’s. He has positive suggestions for our premises and drafted letters for me to use with a range of officials. He got “Memorial”1 a building and so is a great help to have on our side. He sits in the back room typing messages, because he says he can’t bear the fuss and noise in the front room. It occurred to me tonight that his mother is courting me with food, and always pushing us together. Viktor himself has a natural and lovely charm.

  Thursday 21 February

  Cherry pickers were out knocking long icicles off gutters, and squads were hacking impacted ice on the roads and pavements. It’s very efficient. I popped out early to take materials to the Stolitsa office and stayed an hour, chewing the fat. Apparently a film of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is in the making and a British crew is out shooting scenes of frozen London in Moscow. The rest of the day I worked at home with great pleasure, part of the time copying out Viktor’s draft letters in my best handwriting. It reminded me of school, and I made the same kinds of mistakes.

  In the evening I made myself a vocabulary book. A backlog of letters arrived today, including a cobalt blue tile design from Turkey. The colour was beautiful, brilliant and warm. I opened it in the snow at the bus stop, and thought of heat and sun-baked roofs.

  Friday 22 February

  Hardly anyone slept last night, it seems. Bridget Kendall was on the BBC at 8.00am, commenting on the Iraqi reaction to Soviet peace proposals, which happened early in the morning. John Lloyd of the Financial Times then rang, too knackered to come round because he’d worked till 4.00am. I popped into town to collect Tanya’s translation of the Morocco piece. She staggered in half an hour later, having watched the RSFSR Parliament on TV till 3.00am. Conservative deputies have called for an extraordinary congress to recall Boris Yeltsin before the 17 March referendum on “national unity” takes place. They object to his TV speech on Wednesday, when he called on Gorbachev to resign. They’ve chosen their moment well. I think things could be over quite quickly here.

  When I got home they’d stuck a red flag on the side of the house, preparing for tomorrow’s “Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Day”. It was so sunny today I went out without a hat. The streets are being cleaned and workmen are pushing snow off the roofs.

  In the evening I went to the House of Literary Buffs to hear presentations on Vyacheslav Ivanov, with Viktor and a friend of his from Moscow City Soviet, Lena.

  Lena left the Communist Youth Organisation in 1987, is clever and seems totally enthusiastic about what she is doing. She belongs to a small group of Utopian socialists, and she and her pals have had non-violent action training from Dutch Greens and keep order at mass demonstrations. (I saw them march on 30 October last year and they were good.) She reminded me of one of those politicised young people in early twentieth-century Russian novels, or
the young Golda Meir. She and Viktor took me right home to the flat.

  Vladimir Posner has an interesting talk show with young people. When he asked for a show of hands, all of them said they thought the Soviet media deliberately distorts nationality issues, and they each told him why, with concrete examples. Impressive.

  Saturday 23 February

  The landlord’s brother-in-law rang: the landlord has plans for my old TV tube and had told him to come round for it today. Ye gods! I said that would be difficult as I was going out. Stayed in and carried on with Burlatsky’s memoirs, interesting in many respects, but partly because they explain the names of many Moscow streets: Marshal Biryusov, solemnly catching carp on an official visit to Prague, killed in a plane crash months later; the twenty-six Baku Commissars – apparently Mikoyan was the twenty-seventh, who got away.

  In the evening I saw Tosca at the Bolshoy. The set was good – like a Rococo cathedral – but the singing wasn’t up to much. Nina, the Russian with us, said people are paid to shout “Bravo!” from the audience, and at tonight’s performance I could believe it. Interesting insight from her as we went for our coats: “We can jump the queue, because we’ve got binoculars” – and indeed we could.

  I watched the TV show for Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Day. At home it would be a military tattoo followed by Reach for the Sky and Dad’s Army. Here it was hours of singing and dancing: a tipsy fellow in a greatcoat dancing as an archetypal sort of rascal; and a woman in army jacket, skirts and heavy boots, nevertheless spinning and dancing in folk patterns. It made the army seem like an ancient part of the whole culture, not a thing apart.

  The pro-Yeltsin group in Parliament has apparently won out: they have postponed the extraordinary congress until 28 March, after the referendum. It’s hard to believe, but a land war has started in the Gulf.

  Sunday 24 February

  A most enjoyable day. Friends returned from the UK, bringing me plugs and soap. Then I walked along the boulevards from west to east, about five miles in all, through old Moscow.

  Thence to Quake. Afterwards we were talking and I told them about the man who threatened me. Tatyana said a man had jumped out at her on a walk and tried to rape her. She had started talking to him furiously, and the odd thing was that throughout the whole scene she called him “ty” and he addressed her by the respectful “vy”. She eventually pushed him into a public place and the worst was over. He was shaken and said he’d like to smoke, and she said she would rather too, so they sat and talked. He was distraught to find she was the author of the book his mother had given him the day before. He insisted on walking her to the metro “so she’d be safe”. Weird.

  There were new Quakes there tonight. I can quite understand how some people find Quakers make them sick. So well spoken. So bloody slow to chide. So bloody quick to bless.

  The Daily Mail has finally caught up with Izvestiya and says Margaret Thatcher will stand down at the next election. As I read Izvestiya this morning I listened to my Spanish guitar music. It suddenly made me think of Mexico, and walking along the beach to the hotel; blue sea and black shapes of sharks in the pool. I sat thinking about it, staring at my Soviet wallpaper, with the snow gleaming in through the window.

  Monday 25 February

  I think the landlord sensed he’d overstepped the mark with the TV and was out to appease. He brought the translations then talked for another hour about money. It is very boring. So I joined in and said the TV now has a two-year guarantee – would he like to pay half the repairs? It took some persuading, but he said yes. It’s funny, he tried to win me over by talking about music. He said he’d heard a record of an Austrian tenor, then immediately told me how much the hi-fi cost.

  Had a satisfying day revising translations on Morocco, the death penalty and drugs, and the March newsletter, all very good, and catching up on the newspapers.

  A concert at the House of Composers in the evening – very good pianist, Mikhail Khoklov, who was a totally natural performer in completely unpretentious surroundings. In the ten minutes before the music started I found out where to get my hair cut; heard that the Moscow Amnesty group’s request for registration has come before Moscow City Soviet and will be approved fast; heard gossip from the Clemency Commission – Andrey Zapevalov’s pardon is in the bag; and heard that our application for office premises is going forward. It made me feel more rooted here than I thought.

  Viktor’s mother was at her best after the concert: radiant, benevolent and urging us all to come again. Andrew thought she was the administrator of the House of Composers.

  Tuesday 26 February

  Many a plopping of drops and whooshings of water today as the thaw takes over. It is +5 degrees today, and the benches and trees are standing up to their ankles in pools of brown water.

  Professor Kelina phoned today from the Institute of State and Law, very nice and friendly, and telling me who to contact in the USSR Justice Ministry for death penalty statistics. I then called the Deputy Minister of Justice and he seemed mighty relieved that I was just calling about statistics. I also called Galina Starovoytova, pleasant and anxious to help as always, from providing plates to finding premises. We got cut off three times and she said she would ask Mr Kryuchkov, head of the KGB, to supply me with a better bugging device. Viktor called and has got me an appointment about premises with Krasnopresnensky District Soviet on Monday.

  The landlord’s mother-in-law rang today, offering to get me theatre tickets. I wonder what fine psychological calculations are being made in that household?

  The evening news said Iraq is withdrawing from Kuwait.

  Wednesday 27 February

  Apparently the Soviets have told the World Psychiatric Association Review Committee that they “cannot afford to host them here” – so the visit is off. Wow.

  I wasted a whole day waiting for the courier, which did not come. Near five o’clock I called DH; apparently the man had just buggered off home with my parcel. I was anxious for a change of scene, so went to say goodbye to a friend, who goes back to the UK on Friday. Having worked among Brits in Moscow for three months and lived without TV, radio or newspapers, she was for some reason adamant that things are hopelessly doomed here; that it is useless to speculate otherwise; and that comparisons with Eastern Europe are not just inappropriate, but extremely irritating. Earlier I had told some journalist friends that the head of Deutsche Bank – which is a major creditor and investor here – rates Prime Minister Pavlov quite highly and thinks “perestroyka’s” on course. Their immediate reaction was: “What could someone like that know?” Pretty darn much, if he’s laying out his money, I’d have thought. What is this with everyone? Basically none of us know what is happening, but why always write it off?

  Thence I went for a late dinner with Hella and Siffra. It seemed each room, each cupboard of their flat, contained a computer winking, a fax bleeping, or a telex spewing out agency reports. They find it quite oppressive and sit there writing about the scene, scarcely leaving the flat.

  Viktor has got Sergey Kovalyov, the head of the Russian Parliament’s Human Rights Committee, to support my request for premises. Good guy. A letter arrived from home with 2” of envelope missing.

  Thursday 28 February

  There is a ceasefire in the Gulf! Lunch at Pizza Hut with Irving Rappoport, independent filmmaker who is contemplating doing a documentary about Amnesty. I liked him very much and I liked his conception of the film. No glitz.

  Then I went to meet Peter and Roswitha, here to mediate in the Checheno-Ingush region and to start setting up a Quaker office. We had Gorky Park to ourselves. The wind was blowing a fine snow along the ground. There was ice underfoot, and jolly music was blaring loud and soft through the wind from loudspeakers in the trees. We went up to some massive ethnic sculptures in the middle of the park and found they were made of ice!

  From there I went straight to Viktor’s to pick up
the letters. Zapevalov’s defence lawyer phoned to say the Russian Procurator had just turned her appeal down flat, with no reasons given. She was almost speechless. Viktor’s friend Kostya was there, clever, measuring his words and peering over his glasses. But I found him very depressing and beat a hasty departure. Maybe I should be starting the work from Bobrov, not Moscow, with individual priests, not journalists, and running a commercial (rouble) enterprise at the same time – but I can’t do it and it’s simply disheartening to have every limitation of my work here pointed out. Viktor’s mother gave me a new hat, because she said the old one made me look as though I’m wanted by the police.

  This morning I called Yury Reshetov, head of the Human Rights Division of the USSR Foreign Ministry, asking to meet and to keep him abreast of events. His competent and friendly secretary immediately took all this on board and will ring back with a time.

  Friday 1 March

  Competent, friendly secretary said Reshetov will be away all of March. I wonder if that’s all true, and if it’s not, what it all means. Rang the nice Mr Zhukov to confirm our meeting at Krasnopresnensky District Soviet on Monday. He ended with “So long!”

  It was fresh and bright and I sat in the sun reading my paper till Nikolay came for Gone with the Wind. It was all read out in a monotone by one voice in Russian and the English was audible behind, so it was a real mishmash. After three hours forty minutes of all that I was terribly tired.

  The landlord and his brother-in-law came round to collect a carpet and the TV tube. Both were exhilarated that the Gulf War is over and that they heard lots of foreigners on the metro. They felt this is a sign of life. Brother-in-law really did improve the TV reception. I was thinking all the time what pound of flesh the landlord will try to extract.