I had dinner at Hella and Siffra’s and we watched a video of John Mortimer’s Summer’s Lease. They said I look exhausted, but they do too. They intend to cut short their three-year contract unless they begin to enjoy life here more. I find things are always interesting, but I am not enjoying myself either. Like me, Siffra has started smoking. She had been to Novokuznetsk, where not only has the hot water stopped, but public transport too, so people are walking everywhere. If that happens in Moscow I really will give up.
Sunday 16 June
There was a pool of blood where the drunk lay yesterday. At about 10.00am a troupe of people singing to an accordion went through the courtyard, the men in wigs and skirts and women in aprons. People were sitting out with their carpets draped over the children’s climbing frames. A man stripped to the waist was silently swinging over and over on the parallel bars outside my window.
I shopped in the Danilov Market and bought a chicken, cheese, cherries, strawberries and herbs.
I had the chance to do some thinking today and achieved some peace of mind. It is very enjoyable and therapeutic to sound off as I did last night with Hella and Siffra, but it is also easy to overwhelm yourself with the enormous odds. I think I will feel better if I only think about the things which present themselves each day, and include my own enjoyment in that. Things are basically moving in the right direction and each day tends to be very different and unpredictable. Unlike journalists here, I think, I do have a defined purpose and there is satisfaction in unravelling the whole complicated issue. I should also remember that the responsibility is not all mine, although that is harder to believe.
Life here is like an elaborate Outward Bound course, with half the participants asking me to help them. I’ve never liked Outward Bound courses, but for that reason I should try to relax more about it. For the people who live here, it is deadly serious.
Monday 17 June
I went back on the premises trail. Starovoytova had done her stuff and an “order” was waiting for me at the Privatisation Commission. I queued for ninety minutes to pick it up. We were all getting very tense as the lunch hour approached and the office would shut up shop. I just made it in, and a charming woman with a nice smile helped me fill in the form. It made an immense difference.
I thought this was basically the last step in our search, but discovered I have to get three official stamps on the paper from three different authorities in different parts of Moscow, all with their different opening hours. One is a police station near me that has to testify that 22 Herzen Street is not an official monument. Everyone knows it is not an official monument, but they have to certify it, probably at some cost to Amnesty. The next thing will be that I have to find a dragon’s tooth.
Off I set for the first stop: my favourite place – the Bureau of Technical Administration. I met a nice man who was trying to register his firm and we stood in the doorway for fifteen minutes until six women had finished discussing their office dinner. When I was finally seen, it turned out I had filled in one of the boxes meant for them – correctly, but in my writing, not theirs. Two of them discussed what to do and decided I would have to come back another day with a new form. I said I couldn’t do that, and so they told me to come back next week. I said it was urgent, and they began a shouted conversation between two rooms: “Oh, it’s urgent… everyone’s living at top speed.” (!!) Everyone might be trying to live at top speed… I reckon this is what’s happened to the milk supplies – someone filled the form out wrong.
My day had a very interesting end. I went to visit Nina Petrovna Lisovskaya, a woman I’ve spoken to on the phone for six months, but never met. She has been trying to rescue a computer from customs for an ex-prisoner, so far without success. She’s seventy-four, the first single woman I’ve met, and very dry. After I’d been there five minutes, she told me to say thank you at the end of the evening and not at every step. She was a biochemist until she retired, and has tried her hand at journalism, but said that as someone brought up in the Stalin era, she finds she does not have a personal opinion – an inner censor is always at work. I hope I see more of her.
With Natasha and Rachael I saw Kira Muratova’s film The Asthenic Syndrome, which was excellent. It’s in two parts. The first shows a woman in her late thirties whose husband is suddenly killed. Her grief totally alienates her from her surroundings. She rejects her friends, resigns from her job; when someone bumps into her in the street, she belts someone else; she picks someone up, then when she realises it’s not her husband, she throws him out. She can’t stand anyone and she’s desperate.
The second part switches to Soviet life and shows everyone zombified on the metro, then dashing and fighting their way out; the bizarre fights and rows in shops and on the street; the constant brimming over of talk, talk, talk and aggression. The main character is a teacher who is always falling asleep, because he can’t take his surroundings. By analogy, it is as though the whole of Soviet society is disorientated and feeling-less, because of some past grief. What was heartening and impressive was that a Soviet filmmaker and Soviet actors could see everyday life so vividly.
You would think they might be inured to it. What was disheartening was that the main character just can’t stand it anymore and is slumped asleep at the end.
An encouraging late-night call from Tolya. Off his own initiative he has got the firm in to measure our security door today, and it will be fixed by the end of the week. Just what I was wanting.
Tuesday 18 June
It has happened: the hot water went off this morning.
I met Tolya in the morning to give him money for the door, then had two interesting interviews. The first was with Valery Rudnev in the offices of Izvestiya, although he works for the RSFSR Supreme Court journal Soviet Justice. He was interested in the death penalty and wants to run a monthly Amnesty column on anything we want. Excellent.
From them I went to New Times, where Lev Yelin whipped out his tape recorder and our chat became an interview. What interested him more than anything was that I am living here on roubles, not hard currency. He was astonished and stopped the tape recorder. He said he could imagine going to live in the jungle in Colombia, but not living on roubles in the USSR. Apparently New Times now has a financial department which is selling iron ore and timber in order to finance the paper. He said the people in it look as though they wear guns under their jackets. The staff had been surprised to see a fax in which their financial department was selling a submarine, “whisky type” to the USA.
Wednesday 19 June
Had a lousy night’s sleep with the heat and the mosquitoes, and woke up in the depths of depression. Rachael came round with a hangover to take the mail for London. She was wondering how much bad temper and shouting went into Kira Muratova’s film about bad temper and shouting. That’s a point.
It was sweltering hot all day. I bought my first milk for ten days. The woman in the vest was sitting drinking juice out of a jam jar – there is a great shortage of glasses. On the bus there was a sign saying, “There are no bus tickets and there will be none!!!” so no one could pay for their ride. There is a great paper shortage. This really is a crappy, crappy system. You’d think the country had no resources or was at war – but it’s not. The No. 1 trolleys were doing lightning strikes all day, so everyone was fit to burst by the time they got on one. A woman wanted to open the skylight and another one said, “You need a man.” “Who needs men?” the first one asked, shoving the skylight open with her umbrella. “All they do is drink and smoke.” “And women don’t?” someone said, and a rumbling row broke out. Looking round at everyone I felt like screaming.
I spent the day collecting official stamps on my piece of paper. First to the Bureau of Technical Administration where a sweet, mousey woman gave it to me with a smile. Then I travelled to the Administration of Architectural Monuments. They were not open but I took a chance and had some luck. They are in an old
merchant’s house in a courtyard of Pyatnitsky Street, and have a lovely Art Nouveau staircase. I was admiring it to a young man and he spontaneously took me through all the three offices where I needed to go, each time to a barrage of cries and objections. He finally broke into a drawer, took out a stamp and stamped my paper there and then. I said that his work was very “operativno” – meaning efficient – but he heard me say “protivno” – revolting – and he said yes.
One of the rooms, I noticed, was full of flowers and even strewn with packets of roses that had not yet been put in their vases. Presumably they were bribes from people wanting their papers stamped quickly. At the Privatisation Commission earlier this week, the Aeroflot woman in front of me had been hurriedly handing out calendars. I went back there, but my luck didn’t hold. While I was standing waiting for the boss to appear, I met two funny men from the International Federation of Artists, who were planning to start a car-repair division under it (?). They were convinced I wanted to start a hairdresser’s. Well, stands to reason – I’m a woman.
Oleg and Father Nikon came round and Nikon cooked us dinner. I need company – it does me good. At night I found my telephone wasn’t working and my electronic mail link has been cut off.
Thursday 20 June
At the Privatisation Commission today we all seemed to be the “go-getters” who had made it to the last lap. There was a kind of post-Sahara rally atmosphere, with people reminiscing about difficult parts of the race. “Here they ask you to fill out the form from left to right, but the Bureau of Technical Administration asks you to do it from right to left” etc. There was an extraordinarily bossy woman queuing, who kept calling out, “Comrade in the glasses, who’s in front of you?” I got to see my nice woman again, and the final document will be ready next Thursday. So we’ve got by, without being registered, having no bank account, no tax certification and no office seal of our own. A miracle!
I spent one hour queuing there, twenty minutes queuing for a Pepsi in the street and another hour queuing at the post office to send a money transfer to the Privatisation Commission for our “order”. Came home and fell asleep, because last night had been another broken night with heat and mosquitoes. I had also been woken at 3.00am by a deafening grinding and roar, which I’ve only heard before when a tank went down the road in London. Here it lasted for about five minutes.
It was 33 degrees today and again there was a massive storm in the afternoon.
Friday 21 June
Another thundery, headachey day. I got my air tickets for home, but though I kept phoning the Foreign Ministry, I couldn’t get through to sort out my visa.
Otherwise it was a social day. I met the man with black rage again, who seems to have calmed down considerably, said some very touching words at the end and kissed my hand. I then met a young German student who is interested in Amnesty. She’s studying in Vilnius and says Lithuania is just as bureaucratic as Moscow and just as exhausting. Its nationalism, she says, is also very “Soviet”.
Lunch with Valya, which was nice as usual. She said she was enjoying life, going to tennis lessons and discussing ground strokes and the possibility of a military coup. This last because the USSR Supreme Soviet has voted to take away powers from Gorbachev and give them to Prime Minister Pavlov. However, by the end of the day Gorbachev appeared to have reasserted his position.
I met up with Ruslan, who had brought two bottles of beer and a round of cheese, so we sat on a bench and consumed them. He said this was Russian exotica: drinking from a dirty bottle, on a dirty bench, eating cheese with dirty fingers. He is just 10 roubles above the poverty line. He has no hot water, his gas has been cut off and he’s afraid his lighting will be next. Like many people who are really poor he is always immaculately turned out. While we were sitting there a dog jumped up and muddied his only pair of trousers.
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.
Moscow Diary Page 13