After hours on the computer I had a maddening afternoon. I went to the Foreign Ministry Information Department to collect the visa extension they had promised, but there was no sign of it, and Rumyantsev was uncontactable. I then roamed around Komsomolskaya station in hot, thundery weather, trying to find where I could buy a ticket for Riga and the Amnesty meeting next week. There are seven main buildings there and every desk I went to said, “It’s in the other building across the square.” Which other building? Nothing was signposted, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the ticket distribution. Eventually got a ticket after queuing two hours.
I then went to Viktor’s birthday party. His mother loves me somehow – I feel she hangs on me when we meet or say goodbye. Viktor’s the only Russian I know who smiles broadly and for no immediate reason. It’s nice, and not totally in character, because he often looks quite tortured. Viktor is in charge of organising the first Knesset visit to the USSR/Russia this autumn. He says he’s been drafting Yeltsin’s letters to the Israelis, then drafting the replies from the Israeli Consulate to Yeltsin. A very Soviet scenario: presidential assistant in his impoverished flat, wringing with damp and pigeons.
Shevardnadze wrote today, inviting concrete proposals for cooperation from Amnesty.
Thursday 8 August
The men with newspaper hats came and mended the toilet, silently. Tolya sat in and even cleaned the bathroom floor afterwards. We have written our application form to get a phone reinstalled in the Herzen Street office. I’ve also sent out invitations to our September seminar to people in the provinces who are interested in abolishing the death penalty.
At lunch I went for a steam bath with Irina and, dripping with sweat, we discussed the finer points of Justice Bhagwati’s speech. The bathhouse is in an old factory district and you can buy bunches of oak twigs outside to beat yourself with, though we didn’t. Inside it was like stepping into limbo, with all these women sitting silently on steps and benches in the semi-gloom, apparently waiting for something. It was even more like limbo when they started beating each other with these twigs. Eventually we became part of a chummy, chubby team that kept going in together. Everyone was wearing shoes and a hat, and some people were carrying handbags, so it looked as though they were going for the bus but had forgotten to put their clothes on. Irina was great fun to be with. I asked her afterwards if she felt purified and she said in English, “I’m fully clear” – George Fox’s last words, which she must have picked up from the Quaker article I lent her.
My landlord came round to ask me again about cheques and credit cards. I sympathise with him. He’s totally able to work the complex system here, but is literally an innocent abroad. At six had two big gin and tonics at the Metropol hotel with the Portuguese Ambassador – gorgeous. His hot water has been cut off too, but he has a reserve supply and so invited me to come and wash my hair there. Nice man. He’s heading the Portuguese delegation to the CSCE conference. I gave him our background paper and the annual report.
Friday 9 August
I was unable to get the BBC this morning, but learned from Radio Moscow that John McCarthy must have been released.
I had my last Russian lesson with Misha today. His wife is coming back from Yugoslavia tomorrow. I brought him flowers and he opened the door in his apron, as is our wont, and we had another good lesson. I felt prematurely nostalgic about finishing our classes; he really is the most accomplished teacher I’ve had and, as is not always the case with conversation teachers, we both like talking to each other. He has great tact about what is right and what is wrong behaviour and is very kind. Today he told me about all his troubles in getting a job as a Jew. Although he is not at all militant about it, he says at some point it broke his spirit. He thinks de-Partyising the workplace will be a great step forward. In Leningrad Lyuda told me about all the pressure she is under to accept bribes for exam results and how the system works. The employment system sounds designed for waste, but in a different way ours seems to be too.
In the afternoon I delivered Amnesty’s visa applications for the September seminar to the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies, then connected up with Natalya, who had found out all the legal niceties involved in registering as a commercial company. Apparently it is not for us. Oleg Gorshenin came round looking thin and exhausted. After dealing with prisoners so much I used to regard emigrating as a bit of a soft optional extra, but my views have changed since I’ve been here. I worry about the office, but that’s nothing to what faces him and others. Their whole life here slips down the tubes as they try to surmount endless, incalculable obstacles to leave, and they have no idea what faces them next. I really felt for him. Fed him – his first meal in over two days.
The courier I sent to London on Monday still has not arrived. I wonder if they get intercepted too.
Saturday 10 August
I’ve enjoyed today very much. I went to get Viktor’s advice about registering Amnesty with the Russian government. His mother answered the door. Viktor was asleep, so I had a plate of potatoes and a glass of champagne they’d saved for me from last night. There were seven people in the flat, including one woman who was just standing in the hall and two who continually carried boxes out of a room to a car outside. I’ve no idea who anyone was, but their life carried on regardless. I went to read the paper, but also fell asleep, and so Viktor and I woke up two hours later on divans at opposite ends of the room and discussed Amnesty’s registration. As usual his advice was good and to the point. Apparently he had accidentally taken one of his mother’s tablets and was feeling comatose. He said someone had brought him sugar as a birthday present and wondered if next year he’d get bread.
Then I met Ruslan and we drank a beer in the Kremlin Gardens. His foreign passport expires at the end of August and he is pitting all his wits to use the human rights conference in September as a lever to get permission finally to leave. He seems in better nick than Oleg, but is also not eating anything.
A journalist friend called to say he’s cutting short his stay in Moscow because of threats he is receiving. Interesting. When I got home tonight a woman in the courtyard, whom I’d never seen before, told me the DHL van had called with a box, but “I told them you always get back late.”
Sunday 11 August
The weather has suddenly become much cooler and we’ve had some thunderstorms. People here look on August as the start of autumn, unfortunately. However, it doesn’t seem to dampen down the wildlife. I’m sitting here at the kitchen table with an ant on my arm, flies copulating on the table, mosquitoes in the air and a cockroach crawling over the cooker.
It was my birthday and I had nice calls from home and from a trickle of ex-prisoners here. Irina came round to bring the Bhagwati translation and also to have lunch. My efforts to make a nice meal were pretty dismal, for lack of plates, an oven and half the ingredients.
A very nice birthday call from Misha. Here’s a big difference from the UK: I had assumed when his wife came back they would rather shut out the world, but they were ringing to invite me round next week. Lovely.
Monday 12 August
Had a very productive day, going to the post and mailing more invitations to our death penalty seminar. At 4.00pm I went to see Valery Rudnev at Sovetskaya Justitsiya, the journal of the RSFSR Supreme Court. I complimented him on his recent articles in Izvestiya, which were good. He said he thought the de-Partyisation of the RSFSR Supreme Court was a historic step. Not only had they disbanded the Party cell, but the judges had left the Communist Party – something Yeltsin’s decree had been careful not to ask. I wondered how he knew they had and he must have read my mind, because he said he was at the Party meeting, he was a Party member and had no intention of leaving it in the foreseeable future.