After getting another stamp from the Visa and Registration Department, I went up to the Leningrad Station and, after standing in several wrong queues, got myself a ticket for the weekend. Three stations stand facing each other up there: the Leningrad was built in the mid-nineteenth century and is graceful and classical; the Kazan station opposite is red and grey, like a rather rococo Kremlin; then there is the wonderful Yaroslavsky station in Art Nouveau style. Quite fabulous and pleasing on the eye.
I met Oleg Gorshenin at 5.00pm and he took me to meet his friend, Father Nikon, who turns out to be a young man and a priest of the hitherto banned True Orthodox Church. The flat where he lives with his sister is his church. There were icons on the wall and a long poster crowded with a picture of the Kremlin, Christ on the cross, the saints and members of the Tsar’s family. At first sight it reminded me of the people who crowd the cover of the Sergeant Pepper LP, and oddly enough it turned out Father Nikon is a mad-keen Beatles fan and sees them in quite transcendental terms. He put on his long black vestments and a black velvet hat with silver cross, and I thought maybe we were going to have a service, but this was simply to talk with me and then to make the sign of the cross over the vodka, before we began our meal.
I wondered if there was some element of showmanship in all this. There was something quite diabolic about this athletic and expressive figure in black, entertaining us all with real charm. His poor sister worked away in the kitchen and did not eat or drink with us. Every time she began to speak Nikon would interrupt and say we really should listen to her because she is a clever woman. It was as though he feared we would be bored unless he was pepping up the atmosphere. One of the guests was a True Orthodox taxi driver and they all drove me home at 1.00am, Father Nikon in a black Homburg and all of us listening to Pink Floyd.
To complete the weird and wonderful, Jimmy Swaggart now broadcasts on Leningrad TV. Nikolay thinks it’s because they get the programmes cheap.
Wednesday 24 April
I have my first volunteer. She’s Brigitte, a German from the Canadian Section of Amnesty, who came bang on 10.00am and took the mail down to the Warsaw Highway post office. It was a great help to me and I liked talking to her.
I worked away sending our advert to organisations and newspapers in Moscow, Ukraine and Estonia. At 3.00pm I was just about to go out for some fresh air when the bell rang and in walked a smart middle-aged woman, looking rather like a family doctor. I hadn’t the faintest idea who she was. It turned out to be my mistake though, because she was Natalya Ivanovna, a journalist who specialises in medical issues, and I was the one who’d set up the appointment. Not a very impressive start, but I think it turned out to be a very good conversation and she stayed three hours. She had worked with Meditsinskaya Gazeta for over twenty years and now works as a freelance, pushing on psychiatry issues. She was very intelligent and politically savvy, and in that Russian way would fall silent when she thought something I said missed the point. I tried to interest her in the issue of medical involvement in the death penalty, and also to encourage Soviet doctors to join Amnesty. The phone rang and while I answered it, she went over and mended my television plug, sitting amid a pile of my cast-off clothes. Rather a homely scene and a very easy, Russian way of behaving. She invited me to meet her daughter, who incidentally studied with Oleg Vakulovsky, the journalist who wrote black propaganda about Amnesty in the 1980s.
In the evening I went to see Viktor, and found a very silent and saddened household. Viktor has been off work for a month, feeling ill. Their grandmother died, I was sorry to hear, on 8 April. Viktor and I sat in the kitchen listening to the taps dripping, he silent and looking troubled. Later, when he was discussing the price rises, he said some friend had brought them some potatoes for a present. His salary as a research chemist is now $10 a month. For some reason a horse was standing on its own at the metro when I left to go home.
Thursday 25 April
My phone has been driving me absolutely bloody mad. It’s been working for about twenty minutes a day this week, then going dead or giving a continuous bleep. Today I banged it on the couch so hard I gave myself a headache. Later I saw sparks coming out of the wire, so insulated it with sellotape, and suddenly the phone began to work again.
Dom, a correspondent for the Moscow Guardian, came round with very beautiful red freesias to do an interview on Amnesty for his paper, which is a sort of ex-pat gossip sheet. I was invited to the Norwegian Embassy at midday to meet two people from their Immigration Department in Oslo who handle refugee cases. They are trying to assess the risk would-be refugees would face if they returned to the USSR. One of the embassy staff had good views on the USSR, I thought. He said the Western press was committed to the cohesion of the USSR and to Gorbachev’s role in this process – an ahistorical approach he said, and I must say I agree with him. Shevardnadze, he said, was still very active. Some reckon he has made “a brilliant move” and has a long political life ahead of him.
I took materials on North Korea to the Deputy Editor of Moscow News and he immediately offered me an opinion piece in the 7 May issue. He’s a bit like editors in films: “When do you need it for?” “Yesterday!” he cried. Quite an offer anyway.
After other rounds, I was knackered when I got home, but it was a beautiful evening. Nikolay came round from the Moscow Amnesty group, to collect his mail from London and bring me a nice loaf of bread from his mum. I think she has told him he should leave after an hour, because he always does. I then did my Russian homework.
Friday 26 April
I must work out some way of handling all the material which is coming to me from London by post and electronic mail.
Had a great Russian lesson. I recited the Pushkin poem I’d learned – “If life disappoints…” – then Misha asked, “Has life ever disappointed you?” and we were off on one of those Russian conversations. I was struck by some of his grammatical examples, which were a great exercise in free association, e.g. “I’m afraid of Prime Minister Pavlov.”
Afterwards I spent a fruitless hour at the women’s art gallery with our campaign material, then at night I left for a weekend in Leningrad by train. There must have been about sixty people in my open carriage, but when I woke up in the morning they were all dressed and packed with their bedding all neatly rolled up. I hadn’t heard a thing, even though I slept badly because of the draughts. Everyone behaves a bit as though they’re on an Outward Bound course: disciplined, ready to forego sleep and comfort, and ready to press on regardless.
Saturday 27 April – Monday 29 April
This was a lovely weekend. Ludmila took me for a seven-hour walk on Sunday, looking at the Art Nouveau buildings I wanted to see. Leningrad is so beautiful, but looks wrecked, as though the circus has just passed through. When I arrived early on Saturday I walked down the length of Nevsky Prospekt in the cold sunshine. There were signs of life – renovation and new shop signs – but also bricks had been through three shop fronts, including the Regional College of Advocates. I haven’t seen that kind of hooliganism here before.