Moscow Diary Read online

  Saturday 2 March

  I consulted my dictionary, then set off for the hairdressers. It was upstairs, through beautifully carved Art Nouveau wooden doors – apparently once the house of a poor merchant on Kropotkin Street. There were elaborate cornices, long gilt mirrors and a chandelier.

  My hair was cut by Lyuda, a woman of few words with a beehive and a tracksuit. When I said I had a strong natural parting I didn’t like, she said, “Maybe you should learn to like it.” Last night the landlord’s brother-in-law fixed the TV using a textbook for “people who don’t have the right spare parts”, and she cut my hair in rather the same way. It seemed very Russian – inventive and actually very good. I couldn’t describe what I wanted and she flicked through a magazine till she found something halfway there, then cut my hair in about three minutes flat. I was watching her face in the mirror when she surveyed the results and she was proud. It was an enjoyable experience. £1.90.

  Last night I woke up and a full yellow moon was hanging right in the middle of the window, making the sky quite green. I woke again in the first light and there was a rosy glow on the buildings. It was a spectacular day: clear, bright and sunny. I was down in the dumps one way or another, but the beauty of old Moscow made me shake out of it. On my way home I looked at the Rembrandts in the Pushkin Museum.

  Did my usual trip to the PO box and found a letter, my first. “Someone’s written to you!” cried the nice woman in charge of the sorting office, with just a bit too much surprise in her voice. It was from the abolitionist on the Belorussian Clemency Commission – obviously not quite sure of me, but nevertheless willing to work with Amnesty on the death penalty. He described the uphill struggle he faces, since he is normally in a minority of one, then added, “However, I think one should not lose heart.” That drew me to him.

  Sunday 3 March

  Another wonderful day. The air was hot about your head but cool in your lungs, and altogether invigorating. The meeting for worship was excellent. Diana and John Lampen were there, over from Ulster to mediate in the Checheno-Ingush and to do peace education with children in Minsk. Those of us based in Moscow were all feeling the strain a bit and more mellow than last week. Roswitha told me how Rembrandt uses light. In his Prodigal Son the light falls on the father’s forehead and she thinks this points to his dawning understanding of what it is all about.

  Afterwards Tatyana, Margaret and I walked to Teply Stan summit in the snow, through the birch trees and under a blue sky. In a clearing we came across an elderly woman in hat, coat and ankle boots, who had hung up her handbag and was doing press-ups against a climbing frame.

  This weekend prices rose 5% – the “President’s tax”. I dreamt I was trying to hang up a map of the world. I’d managed to pin up the top left-hand corner, but two people helping me kept getting it twisted, or missing the nail. I was seething inside.

  Monday 4 March

  In the morning I visited Komsomolskaya Pravda. As I was sitting in the waiting room the door to the Sovetskaya Rossiya office swung open, as if on cue, to reveal the administrator receiving a bottle in tissue paper and putting it in his drawer. Svetlana Orlyuk was interested in all our material and also in doing an article about our office. Oddly enough, on her desk she had a copy of Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son. I explained about the forehead and the light, but it didn’t do much for her. She gave me Komsomolskaya Pravda’s latest on the death penalty. Komsomolskaya Pravda is on a street with a number of establishment newspapers, including the CPSU paper, Pravda. I popped into their local Gastronom and was impressed by the mounds of sausage, the smetana, eggs and packets of dried milk on sale. They don’t have them in our area.

  In the afternoon I went to Krasnopresnensky District Soviet to see the lean, charming and rangy Mr Zhukov about possible premises. He said they had promised us an office in November and had set space aside. His deputy came in, rifled through a list of Executive Committee resolutions from 19 November 1990 and came up with our address: 20 Malaya Bronnaya. I asked about rent and Zhukov said, “We know who to soak. We don’t want anything from you.” I was knocked back by their efficiency as much as their goodwill. They said it was local self-government taking over. We should “put our faith in the municipalities, and not in Gorbachev”.

  On winged feet I went to see Taxi Blues and a documentary film on Chernobyl, both made for export, and subtitled by John Crowfoot. The saxophonist from Zvuki Moo was in Taxi Blues; his face is alternately saintly, and totally deadbeat. Great music, good film.

  The computer team rang from London and I got an idea of how hard people are working on my behalf. They can’t yet find me a printer which will produce Cyrillic. One of the consultants they asked about it had said, “Cyril who?”

  Both Latvia and Estonia voted for independence yesterday in their local referenda. I’m sure all these signals – the demonstrations last weekend, the end of the Gulf War, the referenda – are mutually reinforcing. Another wedge is knocked in, I think. My admiration for Muscovites grows. It is very undermining living in this uncertainty, but they are patient and astonishingly good humoured about it – then when they get a chance, they go for change.

  Tuesday 5 March

  I had a vivid dream which made me wake up with a sense of tragedy.

  In the morning I went to the Russian Supreme Soviet to meet people at the Inter-Fax agency. If Gorbachev has changed in the last two years, Pyotr Vasiliev has changed in the opposite direction. He looks lighter and freer. They immediately agreed to take our news releases on the aftermath of the Gulf War and on the women’s publication. They have 170 subscribers in the USSR, so not bad. They are a small group of about seven people with a few computers, but very busy and apparently motivated.

  From there I walked along the Krasnopresnensky Embankment up to the Military Commissariat of Krasnopresnensky District to register our office premises. In the wrong door, into total dilapidation, smelling of semen. Someone had scribbled “No to War” in English on a window. An old woman told me to go to the next entrance. This led to a clean, bare room with a lot of plants in the window. There was an old lady there, a man and me, and I spent an hour there in what seemed like slow motion. I thought the old lady was weeping with her head on the desk when I came in, but she was just extremely short-sighted and poring over the form she was filling in. She then must have asked the woman at the desk at least twelve times if she should leave the form there or bring it back next day. I was beginning to imagine what it will be like running our own office here, and was also looking round the room, admiring it. As we’ve been offered 30 square metres, I leaned over and asked the man how big he thought this room was. He suddenly whipped out a tape measure and began to measure all its dimensions, over and behind my head etc. It was 40 square metres. Only after all this did two very polite official women tell me the office was only open to the public on Mondays and Thursdays. So in fact we’d spent over an hour in an office that was shut.

  I came home via our office space at Malaya Bronnaya No. 20. It is next to a shoe repair shop in a pedestrian area in old Moscow. Things are being rebuilt and it reminds me of Covent Garden before it was tarted up. The actual office is a small, dark shop with a picture window – but that may be good for an information bureau. It needs work.

  The afternoon was a cycle of fruitless phone calls. What a joke Sokolenko is at the Foreign Ministry. I told him I am actually going home in two weeks’ time, so he said he would “put a full stop to the question of my accreditation” on Monday. I wonder if he has done anything at all these last two months.

  I beetled off to another Mikhail Khoklov concert, but I couldn’t find it. I wandered round the Music School attached to the Conservatory and was drawn to piano music thundering out from the fourth floor. I found two adults listening to a seven-year-old oriental child playing without music.

  The London office sent me a wonderful tape of Stan Getz playing Jazz Samba. Definitely music to seduce, a
nd be seduced by.

  Wednesday 6 March

  I had an enjoyable day working quite hard on a mailing to press in Moscow, Ukraine, Leningrad, Uzbekistan. Dr Savenko popped by and I realised how much more fluent my Russian has become since last time. A surprise box of food arrived from London – wonderful! Heather is in town, arranging meetings with all Amnesty’s new members, and we had dinner at the Ordynka – very indifferent – then tort and tea at my kitchen table. It felt nice to have another Amnesty person here in the land of the Soviets – both of us grappling with the enormity of our jobs.

  Thursday 7 March

  Off early to the USSR Ministry of Justice to collect their new statistics on the death penalty. It is a concrete bunker among the nice old houses of Obukha Street. I was taken up to a large reception room by a young man from the Foreign Relations Department, then met by Zoya Grigorievna Yakovleva, an ex-judge, who now heads their Statistics Department. She was animus writ large, but without Professor Kelina’s joie de vivre and warmth.

  We had a very interesting meeting. She came armed with files and was relieved to know I’m not a lawyer. As she relaxed she warmed to her theme: how she personally knew the death penalty was a deterrent and that it is still needed because of the huge rise in serious crimes. After a while I ventured rather mildly: if the death penalty is a deterrent, to what does she attribute the rise in serious crimes? I felt a perceptible reaction from the young man from the Foreign Relations Department, and so for his benefit thought it was probably worth continuing the discussion.

  Zoya Yakovleva, like other Soviets I’ve spoken to, thinks that the death penalty deters; that crime has risen because society has gone soft; and that anyway life imprisonment is harsher than the death penalty (?). I pointed out the contradiction in this but she didn’t see it. The editor of the Journal of Humanitarian Sciences told me that Russians have a taste for blood and I could see it in her. She said it was better to make a few mistakes than to leave people “unpunished”. Our whole conversation took place under Lenin’s head. Non-Party justice has not yet arrived.

  The young man, who was called Yevgeny, showed me out and said, “I do believe that prisoners can have a life. They can read and do sports. I do not agree with Zoya Grigorievna.” He took me out into the street and kissed my hand.

  From there I trekked back to the 40-sq-metre room at Krasnopresnensky War Commissariat to register our premises. This time a woman was speaking, with tears in her voice, about how four of them lived in a room 14 square metres small, and it was suffocating her. It was sad to listen to, but I must say the woman behind the desk was kind and polite. The woman who took my form thinks 20 Malaya Bronnaya may already have been given to a glass-recycling shop.

  In the evening I had dinner at Pizza Hut with Karmit, a friend from Amnesty in the USA, and we were joined by Heather and Viktor from the Prague Amnesty group. Viktor compared the political situation to the physical reactions in a hot cup of coffee. He’s a molecular biologist.

  Friday 8 March

  Tonight we passed two respectable middle-aged women, drunk and singing loudly in the street. It’s International Women’s Day. I took flowers to Yelena’s mother in the morning and asked out of interest if she was observing the Lenten fast. I think she thought I was being sarcastic, because she said, “No, I’ll just put the kettle on in a minute.”

  Enjoyed myself in the afternoon putting together forty sets of Amnesty material for Karmit to take with her to Moldavia, Minsk, Sumgait, the Ukraine and elsewhere. Then, when I’d had enough, I sat and darned my tights, listening to the radio.

  Saturday 9 March

  I went back to vitamin pills today because my mouth is sore. It’s been five days since I found a pint of milk, and I am sick of sleeping on a couch.

  Had a long lie in, then prepared fifty sets of material for Ulla and Heather to take through the Ukraine with them. Also translated Professor Kelina’s speech on the death penalty at the Eighth UN Congress on Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. Took tapes, books and fruit to a UK friend who is recovering from a temperature of 105 degrees and bronchitis. On the tube it struck me that there was a lot of romance in the air – possibly because of the Women’s Day holiday yesterday. Perhaps all those flowers and shopping have a big pay-off. I watched one couple and you could see from her face that she was terribly in love with him. She looked as though she would do anything to protect him from the breezes that blow and, at the same time, as though she wanted to burst into tears with emotion.

  I came home and watched Monsters of Soviet Rock on TV. Quite good music and interesting videos, but funny adverts kept beaming along the bottom, like: “The Red Banner shoe shop requires an electrician and a cloakroom attendant”. It was like glamorous films in St Andrews, which always carried an advert for the North Fife Co-op Society.

  In the evening I went to the Amnesty meeting – a truly international gathering with visitors from Amnesty in Czechoslovakia, Ireland, USA, Sweden and the UK. Ulla Birgegaard gave a presentation on the Swedish Section in Russian and it was just right: her story of group member to Chair of the Board and back to group member. She has a lovely manner. Everyone oohed and aahed at the offer of 20 Malaya Bronnaya, and said it would be a miracle if we got it. At least that’s a sign it’s a desirable address and maybe it will be a miracle, who knows? I was glad to pool ideas with them about the Women’s Campaign and Amnesty’s thirtieth anniversary. Karmit came up with good ideas for Leningrad TV and video sessions with Moscow students.

  Tomorrow is the big pre-referendum demonstration in favour of Yeltsin and “the democratic forces”. Yeltsin was booming out of Tatyana’s radio when I went to visit Chris on his sick bed. It actually reminded me of people crowding round the crystal set to listen to Hitler. Tatyana’s son had gone busking in the metro yesterday and got more money than she gets from the Academy of Sciences.

  Sunday 10 March

  I found a cockroach had suffocated in my muesli bag this morning.

  The street was busy when I set out for the demonstration at 11.30am and it turned out most people were hurrying in the same direction. I felt mounting excitement as the crowd thickened at the Lenin Library Station and poured out onto the street. We were met by a row of police. Two old ladies giggled and said, “Are they not going to let us through?” But they did, and in fact, where I saw it, the policing was perfect. Low key, good-humoured and apparently well planned. No riot gear, no horses, no helicopters, just lorries parked in backstreets and some cars with their engines turning over on the Manezh Square.

  When I arrived a huge crowd was pouring into the Manezh down Kalinin Prospekt, from the north, and another smaller one was filing in from Oktyabrskaya in the south. When they caught sight of each other their roars soared. “Down with the CPSU” was being chanted all the way down Kalinin Prospekt – amazing when you think about it. The two columns met and filled the Manezh. That apparently takes about 200,000 people. People were on the roof of the Moscow Students’ Theatre, hanging on railings and standing stock-still in the park listening to the loudspeakers. Afanasyev, Popov, Gdlyan and Stankevich all spoke, advising people to spoil their ballot papers in the referendum on the USSR and to vote for a republican presidency in the Russian referendum. Some Kuzbass miners also called for a general strike. With the current press restrictions it seemed everyone had turned out basically to find out what they should do. We were standing under the walls of the Kremlin and almost every time Gorbachev was mentioned the crowd shouted, “Gorbachev – out!” I noticed how well Popov and Stankevich were received by the crowd and how well both of them spoke.

  Boris Yeltsin has another of his tactical illnesses, but there was a sinister moment when extracts of the speech he gave yesterday were relayed over the speakers. This disembodied, guttural voice shouting into the air reinforced the dislike I felt when I heard him on the radio yesterday. The crowd listened, rapt, and flags fluttered in front of the monolithic build
ings.

  I saw a nice scene in the park. One speaker talked of the CPSU’s war against the people, and a genteel old lady in furs began to clap as she walked along. She was overtaken at that moment by a punk on roller skates, who was also clapping. According to Radio Rossiya, similar large demonstrations took place in several Russian cities today. At ours people were admiring each other’s posters and enjoying their wit. At one point during the speeches the compère announced that a six-year-old girl was looking for her parents – a nice touch, more like a village fete than a mass meeting of nearly a third of a million people. It was big, but judging from their reaction, the authorities don’t think it was big enough to be a threat.

  Ten of us were at the Quakers tonight. I was struck by the purity and saintliness of Sasha Lukin’s face and on the way home told him so. He was going to say thank you, but remembered that at times like these Buddhists say, “You’re welcome.” Nice.

  I lit my first cigarette for six years today but put it out. I’m definitely needing more stimulus/stimulants than I’m getting.

  Monday 11 March

  I reached some sort of a personal crisis today. I have got to get away from what I am doing and find some more fun. At the same time I was ready to murder someone in the morning. The computer man, having put me off from Thursday, is now ill. Sergey Gitman from the Moscow group put me off until tomorrow. And of course the man from the USSR Foreign Ministry, who was to give me a final answer today, was completely inaccessible by phone.

  I put together materials and a letter and trekked up to Krasnopresnensky again. Olga Lavrova was out of the office and the other official, Tikhanovsky, was not receiving people. I sat for a while in quite a crowded waiting room while a mad woman walked backwards and forwards in front of us all, telling a story and gesticulating wildly. Eventually I left the things for Olga Lavrova and went to John just for company and conversation. John very nicely gave me lunch and invited me to their dacha at the weekend, possibly sensing that I have reached my limit.