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  I then went to the Foreign Ministry Press Centre and, together with an irate Irish journalist, stormed Sokolenko as he was entering the building at 3.00pm. He said he would extend my visa and give me a letter for the local police passport office. But he did not like this, and there were no smiles or “ty”. But what can I do when I am always being given the run around?

  I had called Sergey Gitman and said I would drop off the photos for the Amnesty exhibition today anyway, and did. His street is fascinating. The house looks right out over a seventeenth-century church, very dilapidated, which until recently was a communal flat. In the distance above the rooftops are a sign for Coca Cola on the right and McDonald’s on the left. I enjoyed the quiet talk with Sergey, and looking at his books of photos. There was a wonderful sequence by someone called Vladimir Kuprianov, I think, showing the faces of factory women above subtitles from Pushkin, like: “Pound beneath me, silent ocean” and “I hurried with anguish and desire in my heart”. The faces were inappropriate at one level, but very appropriate at another.

  Sokolenko got his revenge and did not leave the papers he had promised.

  As soon as I got in two ex-prisoners, Ruslan and Vitaly, came round, partly to chat and drink tea. I think Yelena’s mother had sent them because I’m not having very many visitors and they brought me a sieve from her. As they were leaving Nikolay arrived and I was glad to see him for a long leisurely chat. There was the usual distrust of Russians meeting each other for the first time.

  Tuesday 12 March

  I slept late and had a lazy and restful day. In the morning I called Vladimir Chernyega, the Pro-Rector of the USSR Academy of Diplomacy. He’s a member of Shevardnadze’s new Foreign Policy Association and I thought we might exchange materials. His secretary answered in a small shocked voice, “He was sacked last night.” Yipes.

  I took my mail down to the Warsaw Highway and shopped on the way home. The mail has now gone up from 100 roubles to 115 roubles. I got cheese in the market! My first since I’ve been here, but it cost £2.50 for 1lb. Butter was the same and I didn’t buy it. There were wedding dresses on sale at the market. I saw in Kommersant that inflation in Moscow last month was 14%.

  Wednesday 13 March

  I realise my landlord gets a kind of erotic charge from talking about money. He’s never seen it in enormous quantity, but it excites him thinking what he’d like to do with it. He asked me how you open an account in a Western bank, but obviously couldn’t bear to be told by a woman, so kept interrupting and saying “nonsense”.

  I mailed more materials to journalists in Belorussia, Latvia and Lithuania, then went out for a breath of air. The local bookshop had a handwritten list of books for dog lovers, with the following titles: Canine Infections; Rabies; I Am So Beautiful; Time for Love; Tuberculosis; and Distemper.

  It is very hard to read what is going on here. Today I rang the Human Rights Division of the Foreign Ministry and was immediately put directly in touch with Deputy Head, Smirnov, who was all charm and wants to meet tomorrow. Last week I was left hanging. I also called the computer firm and was put through to a different man, who was actually helpful and gave me an idea of the next steps. I rang Vladimir Chernyega too, and our phones must have been double-bugged because we were virtually inaudible to each other. He sounded interested that Amnesty had called.

  Thursday 14 March

  A horse seemed to play a leading role in my dream. It was sensitive and powerful and was wearing make-up on its face. It seemed more vivid than the people around it.

  The World Service is running a series called As We Forgive, which describes each week how someone has come to terms with an experience that devastated them. It is almost too raw to listen to. This morning it was the woman who had been raped and buggered in her father’s vicarage in Ealing. She said it was actually harder to forgive the judge than the rapists. I wonder if he knows that? Or if he has any idea of the effect his remarks had? I hope so.

  It was hard to drag myself out of bed this morning. I finished typing up my translation of Professor Kelina’s speech, then went to the Foreign Ministry, Human Rights Division. Nikolay Smirnov, Deputy Head, saw me and was obviously anxious to be pleasant. We had tea and biscuits and I updated him on the office. He said quite plainly that in the UK the police and Home Office probably don’t like what we do, and it’s the same in Moscow. The Russian-language Amnesty material I had given him would help to “convert” them. He said too, as a “personal” opinion, that some government organisations didn’t like the way we came here under the Press Department of the Foreign Ministry, as though we were trying to worm in through the back door. I explained how that had happened through no engineering of our own.

  We then talked about the human rights conference that is due to take place in Moscow in September and also about materials Amnesty could provide on refugees etc. He said I will probably end up having contacts with the Foreign Policy Committee of the USSR Supreme Soviet, but for the time being they are “inevitably suspicious”. At least I don’t think I have been imagining a diplomatic cold shoulder these past weeks.

  Viktor Zarsky and I didn’t meet up, so ended up seeing The Seagull separately at the Moscow Arts Theatre. It’s a beautiful theatre and the show was good, but I found myself thinking, “When we’re all dead and gone they’ll still be worrying this to death.” It’s almost like family charades, going on and on. The feeling got stronger after the interval as I watched the theatre lights dim, then snuff out.

  There’s heavy advertising for a “yes” vote in Sunday’s referendum on the state of the union. I got two leaflets in my letterbox saying, “Vote yes – for life!” There were five adverts in the bus shelter: one in full colour, showing the historic city and saying “The collapse of the Union is Moscow’s sunset”; another mawkish one, with a little girl in tears, saying “Mama, save my future – go and vote yes for the Union!”

  I found it interesting watching people’s reactions as they passed. They definitely noticed but did not break their step. Derision passed across several faces, although I couldn’t pinpoint how, because scarcely a muscle moved. It is a characteristic Russian reaction. Meanwhile Yeltsin has been refused TV time before the referendum. I think the campaign could backfire on Gorbachev.

  Friday 15 March

  The five posters had been ripped down today and replaced by three small handbills: one calling for a demonstration against the referendum at Tula metro tomorrow and another in favour of the Union, but not on Gorbachev’s terms. Someone had scrawled on it, “May God save Yeltsin, dear Muscovites”, and someone else had added, “He’s worse than Gorbachev”. People were stopping to study these – but does it mean anything?

  I took the translation for Professor Kelina to see. She was looking very nice, fresh and slim, and we had a pleasant short chat. She made a great point of putting me in her address book under “M” for Marjorie, because “that is how she thinks of me”.

  When I collected my chitty from the Foreign Ministry Press Centre I found Sokolenko has not extended my visa, but simply allowed me to register retrospectively for the time I’ve been here. So they may want me to leave next Saturday and go through the whole stupid rigmarole of reapplying from London.

  I went to the Visa Department to register. I was third in the queue for over an hour while close on twenty people jumped the line. At one point a fight broke out among Brits and Russians behind us, shortly before a French woman in front of me began absolutely howling. When I got into the office it turned out I was in the wrong line and had to queue again at a different window. While I was there an old lady came in and began hitting the policeman on duty, who bundled her out. What a madhouse.

  In the evening I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening at Kate Moore and Todd Weinberg’s. Two doctoral students were there and the rest of us were all trying to “set things up” in Moscow. I liked them all. Everyone could be having an easier and wealthier life at hom
e but they are fascinated by the Soviet Union and prompted by some frontier spirit. Got a lift home from one of the men and his Russian girlfriend. I think he was rather in love with the Russian ethos his girlfriend brings, because he was constantly talking, more than he needed to, to show off his handle on domestic Russian. However, the spell was broken when he drove over a trench in the road and she hit her head on the roof and gave him a mouthful.

  Saturday 16 March

  The grey drizzly weather continues. A Party official came round canvassing in the morning and I noticed the opposition handbills have now been ripped off the bus stop.

  A domestic morning. When I came out of the laundrette there was a huge queue outside the “Emergency Repairs to Artistic Boots” shop. I can’t imagine why.

  I went up to John and Olya’s, who were going to take me out to their dacha in Peredelkino. Outside Barrikadnaya metro there was a terrific row going on about the referendum. A glamorous tall blonde with an extraordinarily deep voice was enjoining people to vote against the union. Two middle-aged women took her up on it and drew their own crowds. One was well dressed and articulate and kept saying she was for law and order, and hard work. The other was poorer and got herself near to tears, saying she’d lived through the war etc. Everyone was down her throat and saying, “You’re feeding the Communists, that’s all”; “Look at you, your clothes are old and tattered, what an advert for seventy-three years!” At that point I felt like crying and wished they would shut up.

  John and I flagged down a cab on Kutuzovsky Prospekt then drove out to Peredelkino, the official Writers’ Colony which, surprisingly enough, is just off the main road about twenty minutes west of Moscow. You can see the suburbs encroaching. There was a woman in the cab too, and it suddenly emerged that she and the driver are married and emigrating to Israel in the autumn. Other members of their family have gone to the US. They have no strong religious affiliation and no illusions about how easy it will be, but are learning Hebrew, want to live in a small town, and are prepared to do anything to earn a living. Both are grandparents at forty and to my surprise kept saying they were still young enough to learn. Soviet women in particular tend to say they’re past it at thirty. They said they were leaving not because of food shortages, but because they had no opportunities to develop their talents. I liked all that.

  The dacha is very big, shabby but comfortable, and apparently where the writer Fadeyev shot himself. The Pasternak museum is next door. We took the four-year-old Petya for a long walk through the woods and round the lake, he clutching two spades and a bottle of shampoo. After Moscow it was wonderfully quiet, and there was snow on the ground and a great sunset. We had a beautiful dinner then watched the thriller Sea of Love in Russian. Whenever one of the family moved or coughed, someone else would jump and say “Stop it!” because it gave them such a fright. It’s very easy to be a guest with Russians because people just act normally all round you.

  Sunday 17 March

  The weather was fantastic. I came home early via the polling station. Some old women were collecting signatures at the door, against a local road-widening scheme. There was a brisk turnout, I would say, of old folk, all filling out their ballot papers in full view of the tellers and not in the booths. There were posies of red flowers on each table, but I didn’t see the famed buffet which everyone told me there would be.

  Ludmilla rang me out of the blue from Leningrad. I told her I had been waiting to get official accreditation here before I contacted her, but there were a lot of difficulties. She said, “I thought it would be very difficult – but are you enjoying life?” I said I was enjoying everyday life, was she? “No,” she said, and she’d just voted “no” in the referendum. I said she was breaking the confidentiality of the ballot box. She said she was breaking the confidentiality of two ballot boxes because her husband had done the same. We tried ringing each other back three times, but each time we were barely audible to each other and got cut off.

  I was immensely stirred by her call – as though she was “coming out” and had called me straightaway. It seems to mean a lot for our friendship. Also, if someone as loyal and cautious as her has voted “no”, what is happening to this country?

  A UK friend came round to borrow my vacuum cleaner and brought me a nice sultana biscuit from his polling station booth. I took Nikolay to the Quakes and, as I expected, he took to the silence straightaway. Vitaly Yerenkov was there in skin-tight leather trousers. We had a very good talk afterwards about spirituality here and abroad. This time it was Russians speaking to show off how much English they know. On the tube home I seemed to be surrounded by people saying “fit as a fiddle” and “honesty is the best policy”. Exhausting.

  Discovered I left my earrings at the house where Fadeyev shot himself.

  Monday 18 March

  I worked at home till 2.00pm. I’m beginning to go back to my student style, reading something but always thinking what I’m going to eat next. I felt mildly poisoned and squeamish all day. Decided I must exercise every day, and walked down to the Tretyakov Gallery, but found it was closed on Mondays. The militiaman on the door said, “Do you really want to go in?” and gave me a ticket from his pocket. So I walked round the Serov exhibition, virtually alone. The new gallery extension is beautiful by any standards and the paintings were luminous and wonderful.

  This morning, to my surprise, I found Sokolenko at his desk at the Foreign Ministry at 9.00am. He said his bosses had vetoed a re-entry visa for me and I will have to reapply from London. Poor guy, always having to break the bad news. He was “ty”-ing me again for all his worth. I also called Mr Zhukov to ask what is the next step on the premises. He said Krasnopresnensky Soviet had worked all day Sunday as a protest against the referendum and that I should get my answer on Wednesday.

  The landlord came round and very demonstratively counted out 144 roubles to pay half the TV repairs. I have since donated it to Amnesty on his behalf. He then began totting up how much money I had spent on the things I brought him as rent, with many a flourish on his pocket calculator. However, I noticed the flourishes got smaller as it turned out I had overpaid by £100, i.e. at least another month’s rent. He had obviously thought I was owing him something.

  Tuesday 19 March

  Professor Kelina said she would leave updates on her death penalty speech for me in her office. Three years ago, I wonder if she ever thought she would be giving someone from Amnesty free run of her office? When I dropped by I bumped into Svetlana Polubinskaya, just back from the USSR Supreme Soviet.

  I worked flat out all morning revising the April newsletter and catching up with things, then spent four hours travelling the length and breadth of Moscow from post office to the Institute of State and Law and then the British Airways office to pick up my plane tickets. Pretty tiring.

  In the evening I went to see Liquid Sky at the Udarnik, which I liked very much. It was made by Russian émigrés in New York, which amused the audience. A bisexual Annie Lennox type is used by both the men and women she sleeps with, until a being from outer space gives her the power to kill them when they have an orgasm. The orgasm releases a chemical in their brain which the film shows with the same music and visual effects as an injection of drugs – beautiful sequences. Both are deadly. Rather pitifully, the heroine is safe because she has never had an orgasm.

  The film was 100% style, and about total alienation in 1980s New York. When I stepped outside the cinema, the scene could hardly have been different: a houseboat on the river, ice floes on the water, Art Nouveau railings on the bridge, old chimneys above the factory, people muffled in caps and scarves. It felt like a scene from Mayakovsky’s life in the 1920s.

  I’d been listening to Laurie Anderson in the morning and enjoying it, though also feeling it was light years removed from life here. It too is often about alienation; but like Liquid Sky, it is the alienation of people who live with a lot of things, and through their things. They a
re the subject of their world and they just have a lot of trouble getting another subject to come into contact with them.

  Here people are often alienated, and I feel alienated, in quite a different way. It’s because you are an object, and not able to control things. Nevertheless, you have no trouble coming into contact with other “objects”, because you are always fighting with them in shops, or sharing meals with them. The food you buy is real, not synthetic. It is less lonely. Also there’s more politics, less style.

  Wednesday 20 March

  What a day! Four hundred per cent price rises for meat, bread, tea and something else will be brought in on 2 April. That means meat will be 160 roubles, or over £10 a kilo. At the end of the day I learned the striking miners have dropped all their economic demands because they believe the current political system is incapable of providing them. They are pressing only for their political demands to be met, i.e. for Gorbachev and Pavlov to hand over power to the Council of the Federation. The Deputy Minister of Health of Russia has joined five miners in an open-ended hunger strike for Gorbachev’s removal! There’s very little official coverage of the strikes.

  Had visits all morning, then was out of the house working from 2.00 to 11.30pm. Lydia Zapevalova was anxious to talk to me about her son’s death sentence. I decided to take her to Kolomenskoye Park, and feared I was late, but we both got off the same train, carrying identical bunches of yellow flowers for each other. We did not find the park but by chance found ourselves at the Kolomenskoye monastery, a rather bleak but beautiful place on a high bluff overlooking a bend in the Moscow River. Above the blue cupolas and gold stars of one church there were crows circling nests in the tall trees. Their noise was everywhere. We went through an arch at the top of a slope and came onto a very elegant but stark church – all white pillars and towers, lined and roofed in black. The river lay behind it.