He’s thirty-three and has had no real life. He says things are beginning to get to him and if someone bumps into him in the metro he’s mentally unleashing a torrent of abuse. I said I was too. He’d been baptised a Catholic in camp. I asked if they’d let a priest in and he said no, they were already doing sentences in the camp. This was 1988.
From there I went with heavy heart to dinner with the representative of the Georgian National Congress in Moscow. We ate at the Russky Traktir, a strange place with neon lighting in the tables so you couldn’t actually see the food on your plate. The floor show included two naked women dancing with snakes and a young singer with a doleful repertoire. George paid 150 roubles in different tips to people (although we still didn’t get coffee) and was on “ty” terms with the waiter and on winking terms with just about everyone else. I had no say in what I ate; he’d ordered everything in advance, including two bottles of champagne. I watched like a hawk which direction his toasts were taking and didn’t enjoy the evening at all. One funny thing: he said his father was a physicist and mountain climber. For services to physics he was given permission to jump the queue to climb Everest. That amused me highly.
Today my phone was working but my toilet was not. The landlord was at his most acquisitive worst, and wants to take away the pans, chairs and fridge. I think I will ask for a reduction in rent.
Saturday 22 June
I spent nine hours working on my article about the death penalty, and I noticed I was really involved in it and mentally wanting to shake the reader by the lapels. It seems I’ve reached some sort of level of Soviet reality where I am intensely aware of the irrationality and cruelty of life here. Ordinary people are the victims of it and also a part of it. It is very hard to sort out your feelings about things here. But the death penalty is quite a good issue to try to do so.
Irina came round, bringing me the bad translation which she had reworked very well. She has immensely good brains and I admire the reasons why she dropped out. She brought me a coffee-maker.
Tolya rang and has managed to fit our security door.
Sunday 23 June
A guy on the World Service financial programme was blithely talking about introducing a credit card system into the USSR. Sounded great – but who’s going to put their money in the bank when their 50- and 100-rouble notes get cancelled overnight and they can only draw out hard currency if they’ve already got an exit visa in their hands (and then only $500)?
Tolya came round with roses and cake to discuss building plans while I’m away. I finished my article then took it round to Tanya Ilina’s on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. She gave me tea and we had a nice chat. She lived in Vietnam for five years and was there for the fall of Saigon. She said life was hell when she was there but she finds herself missing the atmosphere and people’s reactions. She said the Vietnamese would transport a whole family on a bike and the woman on the back would be sewing and swinging her foot. Perfect balance. She would like to interview Galina Starovoytova for the Journal of Humanitarian Sciences, but says she is so responsive to changing events and has such defined reactions that any interview would be out of date before the journal was published. Starovoytova does seem to be someone who is evolving all the time and has not yet reached her final level. Very interesting altogether.
From there I cabbed to the Quakes. Riding around Moscow in a beat-up car with music on the tape deck is really one of my pleasures in life. Tatyana said a Russian Orthodox prayer for travellers for me. She’d been looking through family relics and had just found for the first time a paper showing her father had died in a camp, building the Belomor canal. She was very moved and disturbed.
New joke today about the Baltics. “Fido!” (No reply). “Fido!” (No reply). “Fidos!” – “Woofs!”
Monday 24 June
I left Moscow in brilliant fresh sunshine. The airport runway was forcing back the summer forest, but barely. On the flight I proofed the Russian translation of Amnesty’s report on unfair trials in the UK. And so, home…
JULY–OCTOBER 1991
Saturday 20 July
I’ve just been watching the gymnastics competition from the Luzhniki Stadium. One girl was doing floor exercises with a ball, threw it up in the air, did three somersaults and caught it perfectly on the back of her neck. The commentator, though, was intensely critical throughout. Are these the same people who leave wires sticking out of every wall and pipes all over the road? It’s hard to believe.
I flew back four days ago with someone from the BBC, who introduced me to brandy and Drambuie cocktails. Arrived in high spirits and have stayed that way ever since. The weather is fantastic – hot and breezy – and the sultriness of June has gone. It’s also an immensely exciting time to be back. The Russian Parliament had gone to six rounds, trying to vote a new chair, now Yeltsin has gone, and unable to break a stalemate between Khasbulatov and Baburin, the “Communist Party’s candidate”. Eventually they threw up fourteen new candidates for the post, which didn’t help. On my first night I happened to switch on the TV to see Galina Starovoytova in full flood, talking six miles to the minute, withdrawing her candidacy in favour of Khasbulatov. The whole issue has been shelved until the next session of Parliament in September. Some people fear the parliamentary democrats are going to throw it all away the way they did in February/March 1917, but to me they seem smarter than that.
The different perceptions between home and abroad are very interesting though. I aired my theory that Shevardnadze’s departure from the Communist Party right before the Group of 7 meeting looked like a part of official Soviet foreign policy, and that Gorbachev will probably have to join him if he wants to be USSR President again after the next elections. Unlike the man from the BBC, no one thinks it terribly likely or at all interesting.
It has also been the Moscow Film Festival and for someone who likes watching films with a Soviet audience, it’s all been really enjoyable. The Teplitskys wangled me free tickets to Europa Europa, Dillinger is Dead, The Garden and, tomorrow, The Decameron. To my surprise The Garden, which has a gay theme, got an award and was well written up in Izvestiya. It seemed rather pretentious to me.
The real difference this time though has been coming back to friends which I didn’t have three months ago. I have to find a hall where Amnesty can hold a seminar in September, during the CSCE human rights conference. Natalya immediately agreed to contact the Moscow College of Advocates, Misha is contacting Moscow University, Viktor is contacting Moscow City Soviet, and Natasha and Galya are approaching the State Cinema organisation. I think something will work out.
My own situation is shakier than ever before, however, as I was given a visa only for a month this time, so should leave on 15 August. In my absence too, the Privatisation Commission refused to give us our “order” unless we are registered. I can’t judge if that’s serious; if it is, bang go our hopes of opening the office by autumn. Although these things drove me frantic earlier in the year I can’t get bothered about them now. That’s probably when they suddenly throw you out.