by Mark Colvin
I arrived wearing a rather expensive Italian red knitted-silk tie. Beetling his brow, Warner, a manager of the old school, asked me, ‘Does that tie represent your politics, boy?’ Throwing caution to the winds, I decided to be cheeky, rather than defensive, in response: ‘In the sense that it’s red, or that I bought it on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence?’ He had the grace to laugh, and ten minutes later offered me the job.
I started as senior reporter just in time for the dramatic events of February 1983, when Malcolm Fraser tried to steal a march on Labor by calling a surprise federal election. Unknown to him, the ALP had chosen the same day to axe their own leader, Bill Hayden, and replace him with Bob Hawke. I put together a quick and dirty special on Hawke, and helped with coverage of the election over the following month. Hayden, who said he felt ‘flensed’ after the coup (a term whalers used for stripping all the skin off the beasts they killed), has always said a ‘drover’s dog’ could have won that election. We’ll never know, but I think it’s fair to say that Hawke won a bigger majority than his predecessor, a decent and intelligent but uncharismatic man, ever could have.
There were certain frustrations in the job as Senior Reporter, Radio Current Affairs, notably the fact that some of my new bosses regarded me as a News interloper—an indication that the old enmity between News and Current Affairs was still alive. The place was also teeming with internal backbiting and resentment, caused partly by an outdated system of promotion by length of service, which engendered a massive and widely divisive conflict between two senior reporters. But I thought some of the factionalism and gossip was caused by a degree of overstaffing: too many people seeing their stories go unused because the two programs, AM and PM, were oversubscribed with content. Partly to soak up the overspill, I started agitating for an hour-long lunchtime current affairs program, which seemed rather obvious to me after three years in London: the BBC, after all, had had The World at One since the mid-1960s. After a certain amount of departmental infighting, it happened, and I became the first presenter of the brand-new The World Today. A year or so on, however, my good friend Malcolm Downing was finishing the last of many terms as Brussels correspondent, and he suggested I apply as his replacement.
The Moscow assignment was my first field experience after arriving in Brussels. I believe the director of ABC TV News, Jack Gulley, had been given indications that visas might be available for an ABC TV crew for what was then a fairly rare chance to travel in the Soviet Union—albeit under controlled conditions—and I was the one to go. Gulley, at any rate, knew an Australian woman called Daphne who was bilingual in English and Russian, and who, he very strongly suggested, should travel with us as our interpreter.
On paper, this was the year Konstantin Chernenko was the leader of the Soviet Union; his predecessor, Yuri Andropov, had died after just over a year in office, having achieved very little of any visibility. In reality, to all intents and purposes, we were there—had we known it—to chronicle the end of the Leonid Brezhnev years. Chernenko himself was wheelchair-bound and not long for this world, and the Soviet Union itself was still in the long slow decline it had been suffering at least since Brezhnev had ousted Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.
The Moscow where we landed would be almost unrecognisable to those who know it now by its oligarchs, limousines, expensive hotels, restaurants and nightclubs. Back then, at the National Hotel on Red Square, where we stayed, there was an elderly female ‘concierge’ on every floor—not to look after the guests’ every need but to note all their comings and goings, and (reputedly) search their belongings when they were out. In the restaurant at breakfast, it usually took up to a quarter of an hour to get the attention of a waiter, even for something as simple as a coffee and the little food available. At dinner, there were thick, leather-bound menus listing many delicacies, such as sturgeon and bear steak, which were somehow never actually available.
At a table next to us one night, an American went through the options with the surly waiter, eventually establishing that only two out of the dozens listed could be ordered: chicken or fish. ‘Which is better?’ he asked. ‘Chicken, fish, both good,’ came the reply. He persisted with the question but kept getting the same answer, until, suddenly inspired, he drew a Havana cigar in a silvery tube from his coat. ‘The chicken. Or the fish?’ he insisted. ‘Take the chicken,’ said the waiter, palming the cigar swiftly into his trouser pocket. Foreign goods and foreign money were the key to almost everything among ordinary people. Scarcity was the norm, and dollars or pounds, Western records, jeans and other consumer goods could open many doors.
Our first port of call was the media authorities, whose word would be crucial in allowing us to film. There it became clear that the Soviet Government was as greedy as its people for foreign currency. Even though we had a highly competent interpreter of our own, we would have to pay for Irina, a starched, judgemental young woman who would accompany us everywhere. She never did any actual interpreting for us, but her presence was necessary when filming because she carried the permits and the ministry credentials that would keep police and militia members at bay. The rates were exorbitant, as they were for the minivan with driver the authorities insisted we hire from them to get around.
That morning we also had to negotiate a filming schedule, including not only the subjects we’d be covering but the people we’d be talking to. With round-the-clock surveillance, and this being my first visit to the Soviet Union, there was no chance whatsoever of interviewing dissidents or doing any serious investigative journalism. On the other hand, Sydney had also given me to understand that this was on some level a reconnaissance mission, a chance to work in a country where we might ultimately try for what were then extremely rare permissions to set up a bureau. So we worked out a schedule whereby we would make a colour story on Moscow’s underground rail system, a piece about the Soviet nuclear power industry, a story on the trans-Siberian pipeline which was just about to bring Russian gas to Europe, a short film about Russian conservation and environmental measures, and a piece about the Baltic states, for which we would travel to Estonia.
It all started out auspiciously enough in the Moscow Metro, where we were making a ten-minute story for the Sunday night ABC News program Weekend Magazine. Built in the 1930s, the heart of the metro was a series of stations of unparalleled magnificence, a relic of a time when the Soviet Union was trying to persuade the West of the superiority of its system—an era when Lenin, then Stalin, wooed intellectuals like George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and Andre Gide with visits from which they would return with glowing reports of how nothing was too good for workers in the Soviet Union. The stations are of varying design, some almost baroque with chandeliers, others with marble walls and gilded neoclassical columns holding up their vaulted ceilings. There are mosaics and stained-glass panels and statues. Though millions of people used it every day, it could have more of the feeling of a museum than a public transport network.
We then went by railway to Voronezh, about eight hours south of Moscow, where we were taken out to film the nearly completed gas pipeline and interview the gas-exporting authorities. First, though, there was a dinner hosted by the local mayor, who insisted on toasting us with vodka shots which had to be downed in one. We were expected to toast in return—‘To the friendship between our peoples’, etc.—in a ritual which looked as though it could only end in mutual oblivion. Protestations that we had to work in the morning, weren’t used to drinking so much, and so forth, were brushed away. I lost count after about twelve shots. We staggered back up the street to our guesthouse, arm-in-arm with the mayor, singing drunkenly. Before we could sleep, our freelance sound-recordist, who I won’t name to spare his blushes, was violently sick over himself, cameraman Les Seymour, and me: we had to strip him and spend about half an hour hosing him down in the shower.
My piece to camera the next morning, which involved climbing a high ladder and standing on a gantry above the pipeline itself, was one of the most difficult I’ve
ever done. I was on the verge of retching throughout, and my head felt as if a steam hammer was repeatedly striking a big brass bell somewhere between my ears. I saw it years later, and was surprised to find that you couldn’t tell.
The next day involved a visit to the Novovoronezh nuclear power station, with interviews about the superiority of the Soviet scientific and technical system. They would have been more persuasive had the power station itself not had such a retro look: unwieldy dials and levers, with very little in the way of the sophisticated electronics that were already going into Western power technology, let alone any sign of computerisation. It was fascinating to find that so much of what the Soviet Union offered for filming as ‘modern’ at the time looked old and clunky to our eyes.
Our minder Irina had been difficult, moody and unhelpful from the start, but problems started to escalate with the next story, planned for convenience in the same region. The idea was to film a piece about Soviet attempts at conservation, centred on scientists working in the field to ensure the survival of beavers in the area’s forests, streams and lakes. I assumed that ‘in the field’ meant just that: we would have a day or two tramping around, David Attenborough-style, watching the creatures build their dams. Instead, on arrival at the ‘field station’, we were shown a sort of large, roughly built wooden dolls’ house, complete with little wooden ladders, intended to replicate the inside of a beaver dam. The Soviets would bring in semi-domesticated beavers and we could film to our hearts’ content. I told them we couldn’t possibly go along with this: we were trying to film reality, not a stage set. They told us that it was always good enough for Russian TV. We relented enough to film a couple of minutes for show, but it was equally clear that they knew we felt let down. There was no alternative offer, but much shrugging and resentment.
One of the people we were to interview for this story was an entomologist, a pleasant and helpful man with good English. At one point, while Irina was out of the room, we talked off-camera about his work, which, being about insects, meant crunching huge amounts of data. ‘Where’s your computer?’ I asked. ‘I don’t have one,’ he said. ‘I send all the data to Kiev and get the computer results a couple of months later.’ I knew that no similar science department in Britain or Australia lacked at least some basic computing power: the Soviet Union was lagging far behind. I pointed to his very large desk calculator and he grinned. ‘In the Soviet Union,’ he said, ‘we have a joke: our scientists are racing to build the world’s biggest computer chip.’
Back in Moscow, we filmed another equally unpleasant Soviet science story, about brain research, in which we were invited to film in a laboratory full of monkeys attached to the wall by electrodes in their skulls and given periodic stimulation and electric shocks. The terror in those animals’ eyes was palpable to me, but seemed so normal to the white-coated scientists and laboratory assistants.
In the Soviet capital, I felt ever more under surveillance. A correspondent from the Soviet newsagency TASS, formerly based in London and Washington, with perfect English and excellent manners (therefore obviously KGB), invited me to lunch and tried to quiz me gently. He got nothing because there was nothing to get. Things came to a head when we were called into the media ministry, and under Irina’s stern eye were told that we had been ‘breaching the terms of our agreement’. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, especially when they claimed we’d been going out at night interviewing dissidents. I protested absolute and unfeigned ignorance of this, but they were adamant: this was our final warning, and the trip would be over if this behaviour continued.
It was only that evening that Daphne, the translator imposed on us by Jack Gulley, admitted to me that she’d been leaving our hotel every night and visiting her many academic and intellectual friends, mostly in Moscow’s Arbat district. She’d been doing so for entirely personal reasons—she had no intention of writing about them or feeding information to us—but she had put the whole trip in jeopardy, and once again (because of the secrecy still surrounding my father’s role) I was left unable to explain why what she had done was so particularly dangerous for me.
The last leg of the trip involved another train ride, to Estonia, just across the water from Finland. The historic capital, Tallinn, was an eye-opener, far more northern European than Russian. The language spoken there is closely related to Finnish, and the town was full of Finns who mostly came over on big ferries to take advantage of more liberal drinking laws—having a beer in a bar one night, Les and I saw a tall Finn, stupefied with vodka, stand up and fall straight forward like a tree in a forest, smashing a glass table in the process. We filmed bucolic farm scenes, tickled trout in an aquaculture facility, spoke to local government officials who predictably extolled their semi-autonomous status within the Soviet Union. But there was an undercurrent of discontent everywhere: the differences of language and culture were far too great, and it felt like a Russian colony, not a province.
I was relieved when we arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport to leave for London and Brussels: the trip had become increasingly oppressive as it had gone on. But it wasn’t over. We went through passport and Customs control and waited in the departure lounge to board our British Airways flight. Almost there. But as the plane boarded, two plain-clothes officials took me aside and into a small room. They demanded to search my hand baggage. I objected quite strenuously, more on principle than because I had anything to hide. I said my colleagues were already on the plane and would be worrying about me. They were menacingly insistent, saying that they would actually ground the plane if necessary should I refuse. I demanded a call to the Australian embassy. They refused. Eventually, against my better judgement, I let them look inside my briefcase. They rummaged through it, finding nothing of interest except my Filofax—a leather ringbinder that served as a calendar, diary, notebook and contact book. They told me they were taking it away, and when they brought it back I could get on the plane. Forty minutes passed in silence. Long enough, I supposed, to photocopy the whole thing.
It was the 1984 equivalent of someone taking and copying everything on your smartphone: a gross invasion of privacy. I still don’t know what they were looking for. If it was my dad’s address and phone number, they could have got that from the London telephone directory. There was nothing else in my Filofax to interest them.
They returned and told me I was free to go. Shaken, angry and humiliated, I boarded the plane. I was leaving the Soviet Union and I never wanted to go back.
Chapter 25
The Edge for the Scoop
IN MAY 1985, forty years after the end of World War II in Europe, I found myself driving at insane speeds between Bitburg, a German war cemetery where Ronald Reagan had elected to lay a wreath, and the concentration camp at Belsen. It seemed obscene to many then—it still seems to me now—that Reagan should have so chosen to pair a visit to the graves of Wehrmacht soldiers with another to one of the worst sites of the Holocaust, the place where the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby gave one of his most famous broadcasts, just after liberation: ‘I passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of nightmare.’ He tells the story of a woman who begged a British soldier ‘to give her some milk for the tiny baby she held in her arms. When the soldier opened the bundle of rags to look at the child he found it had been dead for days.’ Dimbleby, in a masterpiece of broadcast writing that can still bring me to tears, leaves the worst till last: ‘In the frenzy of their starvation, the people of Belsen had taken the wasted bodies of their fellow prisoners and removed from them the only remaining flesh—the liver and kidney—to eat.’
There’s little to see at Belsen, because the extent of disease was so great that the liberating forces had to bulldoze and burn most of the buildings: there are none of the sights that give employment to tour guides at Dachau and Auschwitz. But something about its very emptiness, and the photographs and films that are on display of what the British forces saw at the time, may, for those with a sense of history and human suffe
ring, even increase the starkness of what happened.
Reagan had to be lobbied hard to go there, because, he initially said, ‘since the German people have very few alive that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way … they have a feeling and a guilt feeling that’s been imposed upon them’. This caused a justified furore, especially from American Jews. Being himself an adult during the war (he did not serve overseas but did make a number of army propaganda training films), Reagan must have known that this was simply factually incorrect, even if he couldn’t grasp its insensitivity.
At Belsen, he redeemed himself somewhat with a well-tuned speech:
Here lie people—Jews—whose death was inflicted for no reason other than their very existence. Their pain was borne only because of who they were and because of the God in their prayers. Alongside them lie many Christians—Catholics and Protestants. For year after year, until that man and his evil were destroyed, hell yawned forth its awful contents. People were brought here for no other purpose but to suffer and die. To go unfed when hungry, uncared for when sick, tortured when the whim struck, and left to have misery consume them when all there was around them was misery.
But for me the memory remains: screaming to a halt at the Bitburg German war cemetery as Reagan’s helicopter rattled overhead, trying but failing to get film as he and Chancellor Helmut Kohl laid wreaths in the deliberately far distance—wreaths to soldiers whose colleagues had committed the atrocities of the Belsen plague-pits.