I took the birthday cake to Nikolay’s mum and we had tea with her childhood friend Alla, also a Communist and supporter of the coup. I decided to agree with everything I could. It was odd: they believe social morality has gone and look back to a time when there were principles and hope. I expect the people in the church earlier think at last there is a possibility for principles and hope. There’s actually no real reason why one group should exclude the other either, is there? There was a bizarre moment when Maya Nikolaevna and Alla started naming scientists who survived the purges and concluding triumphantly, “Well, they didn’t destroy him!” each time, as though somehow this was a big favour. That is the point at which you can’t agree.
A US Quaker has been getting Quaker literature translated here and trying to get it published. Tonight at the meeting she burst into tears and said the bureaucracy had broken her and she was going back to the US with nothing finished. I could sympathise with her, but I think her despair is actually a measure of her own willpower. The meeting was great and so was our talk afterwards. We’re getting to know each other better. There was a very nice electrician there from Dubna. The meeting seemed to have knocked him out.
Monday 6 January
A rather springlike blue sky like yesterday, a thaw, and a breeze rustling the branches. I’d heard the Dutch Embassy was offloading old furniture and thought it might suit our office. They were very nice, but the furniture has already gone.
I popped to the Desperate Donnegans to wish them Happy New Year and they gave me Christmas dinner as tomorrow is Orthodox Christmas. Alexei and Anya were just back from the UK, where they seem to have mixed with an extraordinary bunch of people who went to Westminster, wear cravats and are members of the Royal Automobile Club. I felt embarrassed to be British as we listened to their tales. Grandma came through – a very beautiful blonde forty-eight-year-old in black velvet dress, with a kind of smoke-ridden voice. They’re all very nice and natural with me.
Gamsakhurdia has fled his bunker and a racing driver in Spain is ready to become constitutional monarch of Georgia.
Another opera. Meanwhile the queues outside the milk shop here are like constant pickets.
Tuesday 7 January: Orthodox Christmas
A huge banner is hanging from the Lenin Museum, praying for “Christlike insight”. There was an amazing scene in the underpass at the foot of Tverskaya Street. A young man with wild hair and a loud checked suit was playing an accordion, stamping about and singing in a loud gravelly voice about the sufferings of Russia and “Lord, come down to earth”. The whole underpass filled, listening to him in silence, then streams of people came forward in their Sunday-best clothes to give him money. “What’s your name?” someone shouted. “Revolution,” he replied. It was extraordinary.
I had lunch with Peter Jarman and two people from “Memorial”, back from South Ossetia, and they discussed the possibility of sending conflict-resolution workers there from Northern Ireland. Apparently quite good. The “Memorial” woman invited me to do a weekly five-minute slot on their radio programme. Great!
In the afternoon I took a walk to see what’s coming on at the Conservatoire. I live in a very beautiful city, and calmly strolling through the snow past all these lovely buildings in the peace and quiet, I realised how lucky I am that this is “home”.
War and Peace was on TV tonight. Brilliant.
Wednesday 8 January
I felt awful by the end of the day. I think it’s because I was hungry, but there’s almost nothing I can bear to eat – something seems to have happened to my stomach. There are no potatoes and there was no bread again today. I saw some milk in a shop but it turned out to be reserved for children. I seem to be living on soup. The cold also makes me very tired.
It would be nice if something happened without complications. Six boxes from the London office are still waiting for me in customs, where they have been since October. The man who eventually agreed to clear and deliver them for me is off ill. The actor Peter Gale has authorised all his roubles to be transferred to Amnesty, but when I went to the bank today they wanted a notarised translation of his request from the USSR Consulate in London! When I offered to translate it myself they said I might make up anything. Since he’s giving me all his money, what is there to make up? Also all my computer payments to the Wells Fargo Bank in California have gone missing.
Today was my introduction to the Central Prefektura, who have to make a rent agreement with me about our premises. Valentina Olekhnovich is one of those people with a brisk, businesslike manner who’s totally chaotic. It turned out they’d lost all our papers during an office party at Christmas. We eventually found them and after a lot of shuffling and tapping of them, she said, “Well, I think that’s where we’ll stop today.” When I made mild noises of protest, she sent me to get a chitty from the District Office of Exploitation – good name – to prove the premises have not been promised to anyone else in the meantime.
I went across town to Tatyana Andreyevna Krasynova, a surprisingly young woman, sitting in the bleak little PREO office. She rang Olekhnovich about me and I listened to their New Year conversation. “We must be kinder, and support each other, or at a time like this we might all go under.” Dismal. They’re all a bit too good at supporting each other. Krasynova asked if it was I who had put the new door on the office, and with quailing heart I said yes. “Well done,” she said, unexpectedly. I took the chitty back to Olekhnovich and now our case has to go before a commission on 22 January. I asked if it could be decided any earlier and she turned blank and stony eyes on me.
The Prefektura is trying to charge us the normal rent for public organisations: 1,600 roubles per square metre. I said this did not seem fair as we’d been refused permission to register as a public organisation. The alternative is a 70-rouble rate as a charity. Great if we can get it.
Thursday 9 January
I meant to have a domestic day but got caught up in writing and really enjoyed it. Wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper in Estonia about the death penalty, another one to a paper in Kyrgyzstan and one to the head of a college of advocates in Kazakhstan. Is it my imagination, or did we have no contacts like this at the beginning of the year? I also did a running phone interview all day about imprisoned homosexuals for a reporter from The Advocate in the USA. He was very pugnacious and polemical about it all, and I think was struck that I wasn’t. I get a bit fed up with all the breast-beating on this issue.
Valery Rudnev rang from Sovetskaya Justitsiya, wanting me to do a round-table discussion on the death penalty next week with a professor of law who favours retention. He also wants to interview me for Izvestiya, which I suppose has been my ambition for Amnesty this year.