There were forty-one good letters waiting for me at the post office, most of them in response to my Sovetskaya Justitsiya interview. My new landlord came round for the rent, showing me articles from the Kommersant newspaper and spreading doom about the economic situation. Occupational pastime of landlords.
The bright spot was a phone call from Tolya. He’s installed the burglar alarm, found a fridge, and has started the palaver involved in getting us a phone. He’d also bought me an electric samovar which he knew I wanted. What a pal. He’s trying to repair his flat at the same time, before moving out and letting it, so is frantically busy.
Wednesday 19 February
Spent another day waiting in for Amnesty’s six boxes from Customs, which did not come.
I wrote about fifteen letters today. I was struck by the tone of the letters I get from prisoners. It’s like an anonymous choir of protective voices, with some very sober comments about the present situation. Their letters really stand out from the others I receive.
In the evening I ate with Irina and her mother. Natalya Ivanovna has started sewing napkins to supplement their income. She did six in one evening and they are beautiful.
Thursday 20 February
I was given a carrot in my change today. Back in 1975 it was balloons. The exchange rate for foreign currency is now falling, presumably because of some central intervention to cut down the number of roubles swimming round. Meanwhile the prices are still rising. I no longer know what is cheap and what is exorbitant, because the old scale of values has disappeared.
Huge quantities of goods are on sale on the pavement at each metro, like an oriental bazaar, if it wasn’t -16 degrees with snow on the ground. There are hunks of meat, huge cheeses, champagne, honey and mayonnaise. Tolya says some things in the market are now cheaper than in the state shops. I bought halva at the metro for 20 roubles and found it was stale. There was a news programme warning about diseased meat on the streets.
I took Amnesty material to Nikolay Vedernikov at the Russian Constitutional Court and he gave me tea and an hour’s conversation, to my surprise. He also wanted to order me a car from their pool, as it was so cold, but I refused. It was an interesting chat, about life behind the scenes at the court. He seems genuinely responsive to any comments Amnesty wishes to make about the constitution, and gave me a copy of the court’s judgements and also the draft Criminal Code. A nice young man carried my briefcase up and down the corridors, holding his jacket closed over a bulge at the waist. I asked him, “Is that a walkie-talkie?” – no reply – “Or a gun?” and he nodded.
Irina had managed to filch me a copy of the draft Russian Constitution from her library, so I photocopied it today, for 70 roubles. Then I did the rounds of the Kazakh and Kyrgyz embassies, delivering letters from London about Amnesty’s imminent mission to Soviet Central Asia. I struck lucky with the Kazakhs and was shown straight to a young man in the Political Department who knew all about it. He was a political scientist and so forthcoming and pleasant that I’m sure he was very smart.
I got home about 3.00pm, and as is the trouble here, immediately fell asleep. Why is it so exhausting? Later I listened to English-language tapes Irina had lent me. A cut-glass voice was saying, “Avoid stress altogether and you put off that coronary for a few years.” Odd tape. There was a section on relaxation but I never got to the end of it because I fell asleep again.
Thursday 21 February
Paid an early morning visit to Nina Petrovna, to take her relief money for some former prisoners of conscience. She was looking grey in the face and has to go away to a sanatorium for treatment for an irregular heartbeat. As usual I enjoyed my talk with her, and as usual she was funny and generous about everyone. She had been interrogated in 1979 after the arrest of Tatyana Velikanova, the woman who edited the underground human rights journal, A Chronicle of Current Events. However, Nina Petrovna had written a statement in advance, refusing to testify, because she considered Tatyana Velikanova “to be an ideal person, incapable of a criminal act”. Everyone says that about Tatyana Velikanova. She must be quite a person.
Nina Petrovna thinks that Soviet informers should be exposed, at least those who did it for money, as they actually got paid through their wage packets and are clearly traceable. However, the lists of their names should not be made widely public. She herself had been trying to change money, to provide relief for ex-prisoners, and was amused to see the window in the Savings Bank was called “Currency Operations”. That was the exact wording of the old law forbidding currency dealings. True to form though, underneath the window, it said, “We have no money”.
In the afternoon Natalya Ivanovna took me to her local furniture shop to buy a kitchen table and chairs for the office. Rather nice stuff, and not expensive. We had lunch together, and after Irina came back from work, tea. One of the Moscow Amnesty group had organised an exhibition of modernist photography, and so tonight I went along to the opening night. It was like stepping into Kensington, looking at the clothes and hairstyles on display.
In the few days I’ve been back, my jaw has dislocated again and the eczema has come back all over my thumb.
Saturday 22 February
One unpredictable effect of living here is that I now love Janis Joplin.
It’s hard to distinguish the real situation here from people’s reaction to it. Natalya Ivanovna and Irina were saying how they feel their sphere of freedom is gradually shrinking, which I found hard to believe – but today Tolya said, semi-joking, that before you had to have a pass to get to the Estonian coast, but now you need a visa just to get to Estonia. Viktor’s mother says for the first time that she wants to emigrate. One of the last straws for her is that tickets to Lithuania are now 100 roubles, so they can no longer afford to go.
Irina and her mother were also affronted by TV pictures of the Salvation Army giving relief to people dressed like them. Lia Davidovna had got a box of food from her relatives in Australia, but sent through a Soviet firm, so it contained “Soviet” things like flour, rice, salt etc. She had burst into tears, finding it awful to be treated as though she’s poor, and awful to be forced into poverty. She’s sick of being paid in beetroots and potatoes, and wants money to decide for herself what she’ll buy. This question of relief is an odd one. The place is like a big baby being fed by the rest of the world.
It was desperately cold today. Tolya and I met early to sort out Amnesty’s new PO box, then went over to the office and had a very productive five hours. He regulated the fridge, then waited with me for the kitchen furniture to arrive, and we assembled it together. Then we fixed all the lightshades, and finished with pancakes and cocoa at the local café. He’s very thorough and inventive, and I enjoyed our time together. It really feels as though we are making progress.
The rest of my day was spent on social calls. First to Viktor where we had one of our nice peaceful talks together. Thence to the Teplitskys’, for dinner, which we all ate with a lot of hilarity. Lena was agonising over her latest essay: “What does Tolstoy mean at the beginning of Anna Karenina, when he says, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord’?” Apparently they have a philosophical topic a week.
Sunday 23 February
My new flat is on one of Stalin’s main avenues out of town, lined with five-storey brick house blocks whose ground floors are given over to shops. It feels Central European. Although the avenue is straight and rather boring, you can get almost anywhere through courtyards and little paths leading off the beaten track. My way to the metro is a nice path through gardens and up steps. Although there’s thick snow, you always hear birds there.