My liking for Ludmila grew greatly over the weekend. She took me to her mother’s birthday party and was ready to run the gauntlet of her highly placed establishment family. There were about ten people there, mostly in their sixties, and Lyuda’s younger brother who is in the army. They gave me Stalin’s favourite wine, which they’d laid down before perestroyka. When I said I was from Amnesty the table literally fell silent and I felt as though I was in a French film of bourgeois manners. Lyuda didn’t soften the blow and stuck by me, and did the same thing when her brother teased me about being a vegetarian. God knows who everyone was, but at one point one of the women asked in English, “Do you think you are in an ordinary Soviet household?” and I said no, I thought I was in rather an extraordinary household.
Lyuda’s husband had brought in beer, and when we got home we sat up watching late night TV and talking till 4.00am. A satirist on the box was talking about how everyone is arming themselves, and Viktor suddenly pulled a gun out of his pocket and slapped it on the table. To reassure me he said it wasn’t a real gun, it only fired CS gas (!). Apparently they are legal and people carry them to frighten off the thugs who follow them into booze shops etc.
Two scenes hit me in Leningrad. We passed three Cossacks singing in the metro, down at heel, caps pushed back on their heads. They looked like something from the days of War Communism. We also went to the flea market at Moskovsky Prospekt. The road was being dug up, which didn’t help, but the sight of very poor-looking people standing round watching a secondhand umbrella opening and shutting was quite depressing. Also for sale were pieces of wire nine inches long and mismatched shoes. I kept finding myself thinking, Ooh, that would be useful, because odd small things are so hard to find here.
I took the plusher Intourist train back to Moscow. As we drew in, music started up on the intercom. In 1975 I remember it was sentimental Russian folk songs. This time it was Grace Jones.
Monday was rather depressing because it rained heavily all day. Our office address is going to be 22 Herzen Street, flat 53. That at least came through today from the Fund for Non-Dwelling Premises. Last thing at night the new Portuguese Ambassador to the USSR rang up, wanting to meet. This is really a very unusual job.
Tuesday 30 April
Nikolay came early to collect the Moscow group’s mail from London. He’d walked all the way – about three miles – because he couldn’t afford the 15-kopeck bus fare. At the new exchange rate that is less than a ha’penny. He brought me a lovely and unusual May Day card from his mother, in which she’d copied out part of a W. H. Auden poem for me:
She and I met once for five minutes and have developed a great fondness for each other.
My landlord came to complete my registration at the passport desk. While I answered the phone he looked through all my things. He started on again about the authorities’ attitude to Amnesty and about whether the KGB has me under surveillance. I couldn’t resist saying, “Well, you know better than I do”, and he flushed, then said no. We walked to the police department together then, rather oddly I thought, he walked back with me. He’s usually in such a tearing hurry. I expected he was weighing up the next favour he was going to ask me, but no, he eventually left me and wished me all the best.
I stayed at home all day working. Drafted my opinion piece for Moscow News and read the press. Galina Starovoytova was on TV. She’s very smart: she speaks very much to the point and reuses Lenin and Marx to illustrate her own points.
Wednesday 1 May
Half of the bench outside my window got repainted at the beginning of April, but it was never finished. I notice the old women who sit on it can never decide which bit is new. They always sit on one side or the other, but never the whole thing.
I stayed in all day working. People who rang me today were pointedly saying, “Happy Spring Day” and not “May Day”, so I did it to other people. I notice Izvestiya has dropped its monthly “rags-to-riches” stories. At night I hit the smokes.
Thursday 2 May
I dreamed I was riding a very beautiful black horse and watching the back of its beautiful head. It moved so smoothly you wouldn’t think it had four feet. I was a bit nervous of it though and kept it on a short rein, riding it along the pavements. It turned out it had a kind of bag round its nose and was peacefully reading press clippings for me.
I went to change money and also looked up our new premises on Herzen Street. Once again it is a terrific location – just down from TASS, on a backstreet to Moscow Soviet, near Red Square and close to the Arbat metro. The entrance, however, is from the courtyard up a very dilapidated stone stairway, through which you can actually see daylight. The hidden access makes me uneasy about security and the repairs we need are daunting. But there’s a lot to be said for it too.
I popped to the Teplitskys’ in the evening. They were already two bottles of vodka down so Yasha was speaking English and Italian. Volodya, a consultant to Moscow Soviet, was there. He bemoaned the political scene and I asked him if he’d lost hope. He said no, and his whole demeanour changed. At the end of our talk he asked me what struck me about Moscow, and when I told him the things I liked, I could see he was suddenly moved. I think people would feel more relaxed if they knew more about other countries. Maybe Amnesty really can play a role there. The whole company got talking about Soviet/Russian poets from the thirties onwards. None of them were specialists in literature, but they really knew the verse and had their own views about it. I have never heard people in Britain discuss Auden, Owen etc. like that.
Friday 3 May
People do come out with some unexpected things. The Moscow Guardian rang me to find out when it would be best to send a photographer. I said, “Early morning” and the woman asked, “Why?” The other day the phones were up the spout again and I got the same wrong number twice. The woman at the other end told me to “dial the number properly!” as though I was seven years old and doing it on purpose.
The street trade is very interesting too. At Arbat metro you always get copies of the Bhagvad Gita next to a tray of disposable syringes. At Barrikadnaya metro they have a tray of Italian perfume and tins of fish. In Paveletsky metro a dour-looking man sells copies of the Erotic Digest in front of a dour-looking woman holding strings of dried mushrooms.
Spring here looks great. The new green trees are like plumes and make a lovely contrast with the dark green firs. It’s warm and people are sitting out talking till late. Tonight I went to hear Mikhail Pletnyov conduct the RSFSR National Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven. It’s a new orchestra which he put together from refugees of the old official symphony orchestras, and they are young and very motivated. I don’t like Beethoven, but this was great. Pletnyov really hears something new in the music and lets you hear it too – very dynamic, and very musical. The audience gave him flowers as usual, but he gave them to the orchestra and they divided them amongst themselves. If you were looking for signs of a cultural revival you could feel it here.
I had lunch and a five-hour (!) Russian lesson with Misha, then put my new printing machine together. This involved a total rearrangement of every piece of furniture in the room so that I could get the equipment close to the only available electrical socket and the phone socket. Pretty tiring.