I feel things are moving in the wider world too. People keep emphasising the extreme tension in Moscow. I missed two weeks and so may not be in touch with the real mood, but to me it seems there is a slight relaxation. I have just watched a good documentary on the former prisoner of conscience, Vladimir Osipov, and the Russian nationalism he represents – and this was on the Moscow channel, not the more adventurous Leningrad one. Gorbachev has brought Aleksandr Yakovlev back in to the Presidential Council again as “senior advisor”, and yesterday I read a good piece in Izvestiya, larded with references to Lenin and Marx, but also citing the Eighth UN Congress on Crime and arguing against simplistic approaches to stamping out crime. It said humane punishments are more effective than harsh ones.
My day began at 8.00am with a visit from the landlord, looking more tense and driven than ever. He’s trying to cut down on his sleep and is doubling his working hours. I ended up revising his translation until 11.00pm. It was very good.
I went back to the bleak monastery at Kolomenskoye today, this time to meet the ex-prisoner of conscience, Oleg Gorshenin. He was looking great, in a baseball cap, his hair growing back after prison, and relaxed and happy, the way people often are when they have been through a big test and come out the other side. Another conscientious objector was with him, who was very nervous and kept looking round behind us.
When I passed the church on Serpukhovskaya today various people were looking up at the window in the dome, where some man was working in his labouring togs. He was lowering a very large long radiator out of the window on a shaky pulley. As we watched he reminded me of the scene in Andrei Rublev where the peasants watch the church bell being levered into place and the cast being broken.
Wednesday 17 April
Valya woke me this morning, ringing to say Literaturnaya Gazeta has published a one-page piece on Amnesty. She was very excited and so was I. I tracked down a copy: it was a description of work in the office in London, 85% favourable, and then – more exciting I thought – the twelve recommendations we made to the Soviet government after our visit in 1989, with a commentary by a Soviet professor of law, also mostly favourable.
In the afternoon I managed to get through to London by electronic mail. A red letter day. I rang Leonid at the computer firm and he said with genuine pleasure and relief, “Wonderful!”
I then took mail down to the courier service on the Warsaw Highway. The post may be express but the service isn’t, but this time it wasn’t me who lost my temper. The assistant went for her lunch break when there were still ten people in the queue and only twenty minutes till the desk closed altogether. She began a grand soliloquy, saying, “Aren’t I human, can’t I have lunch?” A man and woman ahead of me went absolutely mad. “Of course you can, but if we’d known we wouldn’t have trekked all the way across Moscow to watch you!” Behind us a young man with one arm was trying to get a parcel of books ready for posting. The assistant just gave him a sheet of paper and told him to get wrapping. He asked me to put it on the floor then refused all further help.
In the evening I went down to the student residences at Yugo-Zapadnaya for dinner with Margaret. She made a great meal from very simple things. There was a rather finely worked cloth on the table which I assumed was some family heirloom from home. However, she said it was just an old rag she had picked up then tatted round the edges. So – tatting reviled and tatting redeemed all in one week.
The shower was like Psycho this morning – so much rust in the water.
Thursday 18 April
This was a very varied day. At 12.00 I went to meet Tatyana Sudakova of the Moscow Committee of Human Rights Fighters. She’s in her forties, handsome in a Mayakovsky-like way, and knows what she wants to do and why. They are a smallish group and, amazing to relate, have no hankering for money or technology. A friend was letting her use his flat. It was in a courtyard behind Gorky Street and remarkably quiet. The first room was bare but for three dog bowls and some pools of animal pee on the floor. We sat in a room with a bra hanging over the back of the chair and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Predator on the wall. ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?’ was on the radio. Our host was a very dapper man, trying to set up his own business, who nicely brought us tea. A young woman in a flimsy dressing gown flopped in and out, but we were never introduced.
Tatyana deals with local lawyers and I hoped to find the names of people who would help with civil liberties cases which are outside Amnesty’s mandate. She was quite useful in that respect. The subject of rape came up, and all of us betrayed our different cultures. Tatyana thought “attempted rape” should be made a less serious offence and requalified as “hooliganism”. I thought that would reinforce the habit of treating women like objects. We got talking about a specific case in Donetsk where a woman was raped by two men and left with her clothing and tights torn. Our dapper host overheard and suggested that not only might she have wanted it, but she might even have paid for it. We were all looking at each other in disbelief at one point or another.
Today is the first time I’ve been aware of being followed in Moscow. When we went into the flat a young guy was hanging about near the doorway watching us, and I could hear a walkie-talkie crackling under his coat. When we came out I looked behind, and an official-looking man with a raincoat came out behind us and got into a car. I think all this may have been for Tatyana’s benefit rather than mine, because she has been helping to organise Vladimir Bukovsky’s visit. He’s here for the first time since he was expelled as a prisoner in 1976.
I then went to see Tanya Ilina, bringing her our paper on Turkey to translate. Kutuzovsky Prospekt, where she lives, is the long, straight, broad highway out of town, lined with grand apartment blocks for the elite, designed to delight Stalin’s eye as he drove out of town. Her block had a plaque to Andropov on the wall. Inside there was a broad and light courtyard with a view through to the Moscow River. Tanya had invited Vladimir Chernyega round to meet me. He is the former Vice-Rector of the USSR Diplomatic Academy and now Senior Counsellor to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. In one year the ministry has expanded from twenty to 200 people. Chernyega’s perhaps forty, with a closed, tense face and charming manner. His attitude towards me was more complicated than Tanya’s, but he expressed an interest in receiving our material.
After tea there I went to meet Alexander Kalinin at the Timiryazev monument. He’s a Deputy of the Moscow Soviet and a Quaker sympathiser, and I took an immediate liking to him. He was freezing cold and nervous about a demonstration he was arranging for the demilitarisation of Soviet society. Because of a mix-up over permissions, he was afraid it would be broken up with truncheons. I lent him my gloves and followed him at a distance to watch the demonstration. Oleg Gorshenin and friend were there and came up to chat.