Thursday 7 March
Off early to the USSR Ministry of Justice to collect their new statistics on the death penalty. It is a concrete bunker among the nice old houses of Obukha Street. I was taken up to a large reception room by a young man from the Foreign Relations Department, then met by Zoya Grigorievna Yakovleva, an ex-judge, who now heads their Statistics Department. She was animus writ large, but without Professor Kelina’s joie de vivre and warmth.
We had a very interesting meeting. She came armed with files and was relieved to know I’m not a lawyer. As she relaxed she warmed to her theme: how she personally knew the death penalty was a deterrent and that it is still needed because of the huge rise in serious crimes. After a while I ventured rather mildly: if the death penalty is a deterrent, to what does she attribute the rise in serious crimes? I felt a perceptible reaction from the young man from the Foreign Relations Department, and so for his benefit thought it was probably worth continuing the discussion.
Zoya Yakovleva, like other Soviets I’ve spoken to, thinks that the death penalty deters; that crime has risen because society has gone soft; and that anyway life imprisonment is harsher than the death penalty (?). I pointed out the contradiction in this but she didn’t see it. The editor of the Journal of Humanitarian Sciences told me that Russians have a taste for blood and I could see it in her. She said it was better to make a few mistakes than to leave people “unpunished”. Our whole conversation took place under Lenin’s head. Non-Party justice has not yet arrived.
The young man, who was called Yevgeny, showed me out and said, “I do believe that prisoners can have a life. They can read and do sports. I do not agree with Zoya Grigorievna.” He took me out into the street and kissed my hand.
From there I trekked back to the 40-sq-metre room at Krasnopresnensky War Commissariat to register our premises. This time a woman was speaking, with tears in her voice, about how four of them lived in a room 14 square metres small, and it was suffocating her. It was sad to listen to, but I must say the woman behind the desk was kind and polite. The woman who took my form thinks 20 Malaya Bronnaya may already have been given to a glass-recycling shop.
In the evening I had dinner at Pizza Hut with Karmit, a friend from Amnesty in the USA, and we were joined by Heather and Viktor from the Prague Amnesty group. Viktor compared the political situation to the physical reactions in a hot cup of coffee. He’s a molecular biologist.
Friday 8 March
Tonight we passed two respectable middle-aged women, drunk and singing loudly in the street. It’s International Women’s Day. I took flowers to Yelena’s mother in the morning and asked out of interest if she was observing the Lenten fast. I think she thought I was being sarcastic, because she said, “No, I’ll just put the kettle on in a minute.”
Enjoyed myself in the afternoon putting together forty sets of Amnesty material for Karmit to take with her to Moldavia, Minsk, Sumgait, the Ukraine and elsewhere. Then, when I’d had enough, I sat and darned my tights, listening to the radio.
Saturday 9 March
I went back to vitamin pills today because my mouth is sore. It’s been five days since I found a pint of milk, and I am sick of sleeping on a couch.
Had a long lie in, then prepared fifty sets of material for Ulla and Heather to take through the Ukraine with them. Also translated Professor Kelina’s speech on the death penalty at the Eighth UN Congress on Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. Took tapes, books and fruit to a UK friend who is recovering from a temperature of 105 degrees and bronchitis. On the tube it struck me that there was a lot of romance in the air – possibly because of the Women’s Day holiday yesterday. Perhaps all those flowers and shopping have a big pay-off. I watched one couple and you could see from her face that she was terribly in love with him. She looked as though she would do anything to protect him from the breezes that blow and, at the same time, as though she wanted to burst into tears with emotion.
I came home and watched Monsters of Soviet Rock on TV. Quite good music and interesting videos, but funny adverts kept beaming along the bottom, like: “The Red Banner shoe shop requires an electrician and a cloakroom attendant”. It was like glamorous films in St Andrews, which always carried an advert for the North Fife Co-op Society.
In the evening I went to the Amnesty meeting – a truly international gathering with visitors from Amnesty in Czechoslovakia, Ireland, USA, Sweden and the UK. Ulla Birgegaard gave a presentation on the Swedish Section in Russian and it was just right: her story of group member to Chair of the Board and back to group member. She has a lovely manner. Everyone oohed and aahed at the offer of 20 Malaya Bronnaya, and said it would be a miracle if we got it. At least that’s a sign it’s a desirable address and maybe it will be a miracle, who knows? I was glad to pool ideas with them about the Women’s Campaign and Amnesty’s thirtieth anniversary. Karmit came up with good ideas for Leningrad TV and video sessions with Moscow students.
Tomorrow is the big pre-referendum demonstration in favour of Yeltsin and “the democratic forces”. Yeltsin was booming out of Tatyana’s radio when I went to visit Chris on his sick bed. It actually reminded me of people crowding round the crystal set to listen to Hitler. Tatyana’s son had gone busking in the metro yesterday and got more money than she gets from the Academy of Sciences.
Sunday 10 March
I found a cockroach had suffocated in my muesli bag this morning.
The street was busy when I set out for the demonstration at 11.30am and it turned out most people were hurrying in the same direction. I felt mounting excitement as the crowd thickened at the Lenin Library Station and poured out onto the street. We were met by a row of police. Two old ladies giggled and said, “Are they not going to let us through?” But they did, and in fact, where I saw it, the policing was perfect. Low key, good-humoured and apparently well planned. No riot gear, no horses, no helicopters, just lorries parked in backstreets and some cars with their engines turning over on the Manezh Square.
When I arrived a huge crowd was pouring into the Manezh down Kalinin Prospekt, from the north, and another smaller one was filing in from Oktyabrskaya in the south. When they caught sight of each other their roars soared. “Down with the CPSU” was being chanted all the way down Kalinin Prospekt – amazing when you think about it. The two columns met and filled the Manezh. That apparently takes about 200,000 people. People were on the roof of the Moscow Students’ Theatre, hanging on railings and standing stock-still in the park listening to the loudspeakers. Afanasyev, Popov, Gdlyan and Stankevich all spoke, advising people to spoil their ballot papers in the referendum on the USSR and to vote for a republican presidency in the Russian referendum. Some Kuzbass miners also called for a general strike. With the current press restrictions it seemed everyone had turned out basically to find out what they should do. We were standing under the walls of the Kremlin and almost every time Gorbachev was mentioned the crowd shouted, “Gorbachev – out!” I noticed how well Popov and Stankevich were received by the crowd and how well both of them spoke.
Boris Yeltsin has another of his tactical illnesses, but there was a sinister moment when extracts of the speech he gave yesterday were relayed over the speakers. This disembodied, guttural voice shouting into the air reinforced the dislike I felt when I heard him on the radio yesterday. The crowd listened, rapt, and flags fluttered in front of the monolithic buildings.