Saturday 8 June
Woke feeling worse. I was very unfair to Nikolay. Today he rang to see how I am, concerned that diphtheria is going round Moscow and his neighbour has got it – symptoms: a sore throat and temperature. As he was going away for the day he then got someone else from Moscow Amnesty to call with details of my nearest polyclinic. Both very kind.
It was a lovely day which I spent mostly sleeping. Went to get my hair cut at Kropotkin Street again. Their hot water has been cut off for a month, so the women were working from a bucket, very quietly, without complaints. I wonder how many times they have to do that in a day.
Fluff from the poplar trees was swirling about all day like snow. Boys in the yard were setting it alight as it lay on the tarmac and it made a great effect. The fluff immediately vanished and small rings of flame ran along the yard, as though there was a fire underground.
Sunday 9 June
We get some very good people writing in to join Amnesty, apart from some obvious nutters. I spent the day answering twelve work letters.
The poplar fluff was streaming into the flat all day and when I lay down on the bed a great cloud of it rose around me. A weird creepy crawly has joined the flies that walk round the inside of my frying pan as I’m actually cooking, and the cockroaches that lurk under my toothbrush, amongst other places. It had a thick red neck and a black body, which it was dragging around with difficulty over my dried dishes. It didn’t look streamlined for survival somehow.
We were a small group at the Quakers, saying farewell to Margaret and John. Peter and Roswitha were visibly disturbed by their first experience of having their room gone through and someone they had trusted filching their papers. Margaret offered to get Oleg an invitation to Canada to do a Peace Studies course. When I rang later to tell him, he was audibly moved; it had always been his dream.
Monday 10 June
A hitch at the Privatisation Commission: Kotova, who promised to deal with our papers as a top priority, is on holiday and no one else knew anything about it.
I spent the day putting off writing a twenty-page article for the Journal of Humanitarian Sciences. Instead, I answered more letters, shopped twice, and went in to Stolitsa to pay for our advert. As usual Vitaly was late and as usual we ended up having a long, interesting chat – this time about single-sex education in Britain, which he found mind-blowing. I wanted to pay for the advert by cheque, which caused a stir. Two managers accompanied me to the accountants’ office, where none of them wanted to touch it. They reluctantly made calls to the bank, and at last, after an hour, I was able to lodge it with them. All this time the carpet was making a strange cracking sound every time someone walked on it. I commented on it to the woman at the desk and she said in a faraway voice, “Everything’s strange.”
Two human rights activists from the Crimea wanted to see me. They were both short, in short-sleeved shirts, and both were called Nikolay Ivanovich. They were obviously driving each other mad after a day in Moscow, and sat on either side of me, bickering. “Get to the point, Nikolay Ivanovich”; “Nikolay Ivanovich, that’s not nice.” The poplar fluff was meanwhile streaming down and getting in my throat every time I tried to speak.
The RSFSR presidential elections are provoking much less buzz than the referendum did. Yeltsin seems to have got it on the posters and I got a leaflet in the mail summoning me to the pro-Yeltsin rally. However, a Ryzhkov/Gromov poster appeared in the stairway today. I watched the regular roundtable of candidates on TV tonight. It’s a long and dreary format. Zhirinovsky, however, does know how to use TV, and quite dynamically. He was the only one who spoke directly to viewers, addressed interest groups – including the intelligentsia – and had answers ready in points. But his message is depressing and responds to the lowest nationalist instincts. He constantly uses that horrible word “ours”. Yeltsin did not take part.
Tuesday 11 June
Got to sleep after 3.00am because of the heat and mosquitoes, then wrote my twenty-page article all morning at the kitchen table.
I went to meet Oleg Vorobyov at 3.00pm to collect the report on the UK, which he had translated. He stood on my toe and made me stand on his, otherwise we would quarrel. Apparently it’s a Russian superstition. He offered good ideas for getting interpreters for our seminar in September and also asked to join Amnesty. He thinks Ryzhkov is ridiculous to be standing for President, when he’s already so unpopular.
The landlord also thinks Ryzhkov is ridiculous and will vote for Yeltsin. Unlike Oleg he doesn’t anticipate a Russian/USSR clash later in the year. I ventured to ask him for some ration cards for sugar and vodka, which he must be receiving for my flat. He said they needed all the sugar for jam-making and as they were doing repairs to the dacha they needed vodka to bribe the workmen. Why didn’t I buy a bottle of cognac? I explained, and so he said he would bring me an empty bottle. Largesse!
At six I went to meet Jim Birley, who’s heading the Review Committee of the World Psychiatric Association, here to assess whether the Soviets should remain in the World Psychiatric Association or leave. They’ve converted several rooms of the Cosmos Hotel into offices and are working frantically. I was surprised to be kissed by both him and Gary Low-Beer, but I think people are delighted to see a familiar face when they’re here.
Wednesday 12 June
More flags out and another public holiday – this time a new one to celebrate the first anniversary of Russian Sovereignty. Election day too and a policeman was outside in the morning, watching the trickle of people going across the schoolyard to the polling booth. Apparently the turnout was higher than for the referendum. Voters were asked on the TV news what they wanted and they openly said, “Freedom”; “Less cruelty – more culture”. I wonder if they’ll get it from any of these candidates.
Father Nikon came round in the afternoon to get me to translate an English letter. He sat in his cut-away T-shirt and cross, with a Beatles tattoo on his arm, laboriously filling out an Amnesty membership form and trying to put down his feelings for Amnesty. At the end of the form he put, “with love, Nikon”. He has a big scar on his left hand: the Rolling Stones tattoo which he removed when he became a priest.
I then went to meet another man who wants Amnesty’s help. I didn’t much like him, but I think he is a genuine case. He was full of tension and anger and talked non-stop. I had consciously to hold myself apart, otherwise I would have been swallowed by this black rage.
One of the local Amnesty group said he had an urgent letter to give me for tomorrow’s mailing to London. To lighten things up I suggested we meet in the pizzeria near him. It was quite a nice evening, but he hadn’t written the letter and suggested doing it at my place on the computer. I said no. It is this which exasperates and tires me. I would rather have gone to a film or a concert than do another twelve-hour working day. Hey ho. I need a break.
Thursday 13 June
So, St Petersburg it is. First results for the presidency show that the provincial places, where Ryzhkov was expected to do well, are going over to Yeltsin. Funny – on the news the other night Ryzhkov was sensing “a new moral atmosphere” on Channel One, while Channel Two was showing a steamy French video full of corruption, violence and debauchery. Viewers’ phone calls flooded in and the newsreader apologised for Gostelradio.