After that it was quite peaceful to spend the day discussing schizophrenia and anti-psychiatry – a very interesting seminar by any standards. Some psychotherapists spoke – all of them young and in jeans, and alluding to art rather than science. It was quite refreshing. I spoke with one over lunch, who is trying to do “social psychotherapy” in St Petersburg, i.e. trying to give people a sense of hope and calm. She said one newsreader ended his broadcast with: “See you tomorrow, if you’re alive!”, and this is the kind of thing she hopes to change. She also said people are now beginning to laugh in queues there, but it’s not a healthy sign. She thinks it shows they’re near the edge. Another speaker referred in his talk to a “Russian theory of psycho-analysis” and he and the audience stopped to laugh.
Dr Savenko is rather impressive. He sat on the platform, wiry and slightly theatrical, the stringy flowers in the vase next to him mirroring his long wispy hair. I sat with Natalya Ivanovna again and we had some nice talks. She said I have managed to get myself quite deeply into the scene. I hope so.
On the way home I had potato pie at Viktor’s place. They watch the news at 9.00, 11.00 and 12.00pm and 1.00am. So do I, and so does Natalya Ivanovna. Viktor arrived back with Dima, another politico from Syktyvkar, and they compared notes about the day’s events. From the point of view of the country’s political culture, Viktor thinks Yeltsin is behaving abominably to Gorbachev. Both are watching Zhirinovsky in the wings. Today the Minister of Internal Affairs confirmed there were tank movements round Moscow. Eleven republics have joined the “Commonwealth” today.
Sunday 22 December
Another good night’s sleep on the floor. Anna Bochko and I spent three hours with Professor Avetisyan, drafting a statute for Amnesty’s Information Office, which should help us register with the Russian government. Professor Avetisyan was just out of bed, unshaved and hair unbrushed. It was pretty boring but very useful and I think it’s a good statute.
Irina came for dinner. Apparently there are soldiers with machine guns on the outer ring road where they live. She seems to be caught in the wrong play somehow. One ghastly thing after another unfolds and the years pass.
I saw my first 200-rouble note today in the market. Apparently 1,000-rouble notes are being prepared.
Russian TV ended tonight with a valedictory interview with Gorbachev. Artyom Borovik said the whole film crew felt Gorbachev has been dealt with too harshly.
Monday 30 December
A US friend phoned, here for about two months and now beginning to feel the strain – one thing being the constant phone calls and demands. She was also complaining that she can’t get milk at the hard currency shop. Interesting: there’ll probably be a rash of pieces in the Western press now about the parlous state of the economy.
Sarah has been and gone back to the UK. We had Christmas dinner of salad and cabbage pie with Irina and her mother. Natalya Ivanovna said Irina had unpicked all her childhood clothes and reknitted them as jumpers for them both. As I translated this for Sarah, I thought Irina looked pained. For two immensely talkative people they seemed very embarrassed by our company and a silence descended as we listened to Billie Holiday. On the way back into my flat Sarah stood on a live mouse. When I looked out of the door five minutes later, it was half a corpse with the house cat lying next to it, and another dead mouse behind it. It keeps bringing me love offerings.
Somehow we missed Gorbachev’s resignation: Irina’s phone and TV had gone phut! at the same time on Christmas Day. Meanwhile the war in Georgia was raging all week. I carried on trying to do some skeletal work during Sarah’s visit, trying to catch all the bureaucrats before they go off on holiday in early January.
I discovered that property ground plan forms have now been changed, and so I had to revisit the Bureau of Technical Administration and get them to fill out the new form for our premises. These offices go on forever, but all the staff seem to change in the space of five months. This time I had to see a man who was about my age, looking dismal, reading Pravda under a picture of Lenin, and with eczema all over his hands too. I also took inscribed books to the Moscow City Justice Department to thank Nikita and Yury Kostanov for helping us to register with the Mayordom. Nikita flushed with embarrassment and all the secretaries looked proud and pleased for him.
Today a Tajik who had been at our death penalty seminar came round and offered to sell our death penalty reports at Moscow University. He is going to a placement in the Tajik Foreign Ministry next year, and was a very personable, intelligent type. He says he faces racist abuse almost every day in Moscow, but that Slavs in Tajikistan are mild and lovely people.
During the week I made the discovery that all my hard currency has been stolen from inside the flat – about £350. I have my suspicions but don’t know how to handle it. Pretty sickening.
Since Tatyana did a talk on local radio, a number of new people have been coming along to the Quakers, a few of them one plate short of a picnic set.
Tuesday 31 December: New Year’s Eve
After answering Amnesty letters all day, I went to Yelena’s in the evening. I had expected there would be a feast and many guests as usual, but it was just me. They’d obviously thought that I might be seeing in the New Year on my own. It was a very peaceful family evening, finishing with a meal at midnight. As we got the food ready we listened to a Russian Orthodox priest on the radio, who started criticising foreign religions imported from abroad. Yelena switched it off to her mother’s annoyance, but I think it was to avoid offending me. She later said she didn’t like him saying unpleasant things about Western influences.
They’re all devout Russian Orthodox and on their pre-Christmas fast. I asked what they thought about their new “Commonwealth”. Yelena and Stanislav laughed, and Yelena’s mother looked at me blankly then carried on with what she was doing. Yelena said, “It’s nonsense – but it was a terrific break-up.” We listened to the Kremlin bells bringing in the New Year, but there was no speech to the nation on the radio. Yelena’s mother reminisced about seeing Stalin, Kalinin and Beria on the Mausoleum on May Day in 1941, shortly before they went to war. She’d written all about it to her aunt who was then in exile. Same aunt now plays with the Israeli Philharmonic.
We ate exclusively food from Yelena’s hut in exile: mushrooms, potatoes and berries. In an odd way Yelena’s exile has kept the family going; it is where she met Stanislav too. They all said how strange it was that I have been there and know what they are talking about. Yelena’s mother had gone there in -45 degrees frost.
When I’m with them I feel like a child with three extremely nice adults. There’s something about the way they care for me in an unfussy way, and their relations with each other, that seems very mature. Stanislav is a very unusual man. He will spend a lot of time talking and telling you about his feelings. He also doesn’t present himself as the hero of his stories.
1992
Wednesday 1 January: New Year’s Day
Thick snow and a bright blue sky. I met Irina at 10.00am to go and visit Sakharov’s grave in Vostryakovo cemetery. It got colder and colder, and we froze on a bus with iced windows that trundled round and round the outskirts of Moscow. The cemetery is outside town near a forest, and although the bus stop was deserted, round the corner there were a lot of people in the cemetery. It looked beautiful in the snow: big wide alleys of trees stretching between the jumbles of graves, and black-coated figures in the distance, going to pay their respects. It was funny, we’d be walking along a deserted alley, when suddenly there’d be an old man with a walking stick tottering on ahead of us and we had no idea where he’d come from.