Tanya came round and gave me a fantastic massage. She’s part gypsy and was brought up in an orphanage. Her Russian is too difficult and colloquial for me most of the time, but it’s quite nice to be reduced to a state of almost mute incomprehension with this extremely earthy and vigorous person. She told me how she had nearly drowned at the age of seven, and had inwardly said goodbye “to the Motherland and to Stalin”.
Saturday 7 September
Irina and I went to the Henry Moore Exhibition at the Pushkin Museum. Everyone was poring over the pictures then giving a quick look at the labels, except Irina, who was poring over the labels and giving a quick look at the pictures. A true philologist. She also wanted to see a visiting US Baptist choir, but as she had felt too inhibited to cheer with the crowd in the Square of Free Russia after the coup, I wondered how she would take to it. It was quite a chilling experience, we both found. I thought one song was about using the Bible as a doorstop, but it was about using it as a roadmap. There are no detours on the road to heaven.
Monday 9 September
Thus began an immensely busy week. I walked from one side of Moscow virtually to the other, delivering an invitation to our death penalty seminar to the USSR Ministry of Justice; paying the Baptists for the toilet; dropping into Stolitsa with ideas for an article; lunching with a British actor who wants to do a benefit for Amnesty; going to the Moscow College of Advocates; seeing the Russian Foreign Ministry about our registration; and seeing the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs about my visa.
I was met at the USSR Foreign Ministry by Rumyantsev and Aleksandr Khlopyanov and taken for coffee. Khlopyanov is now a political analyst for Churkin, the press spokesman of the ministry, but has still kept our brief, apparently. To his great credit he does not pretend to have been a closet democrat all along, and when I gave him our report about women, he quoted Lenin about the importance of women in society. He’s rather subtle and in the twilight of the Press Centre café, dropped enigmatic hints for half an hour about how Amnesty is perceived in the USSR. Basically positively, I thought was the message.
They extended my visa only until 4 October and I said that wasn’t totally satisfactory. They then very nicely said, “We don’t know if we’ll be here after then – this is best, trust the experience of old bureaucrats.” They said that Communists now face the risk of persecution and asked if Amnesty would take up their cases. I said we defend imprisoned Communists in many countries and would in the USSR too. They then asked if we would protest a death sentence against the coup plotters, and when I said yes, we all smiled and savoured the irony a moment in silence. I felt I was witnessing the twilight of the gods.
Khlopyanov has always been unfailingly courteous and efficient with me and I quite like him. His impression is that no one is yet prepared to take responsibility for Amnesty.
From there I headed to the Russian Council of Ministers, which yesterday moved to the old headquarters of the Communist Party on Staraya Ploshchad, newly “unsealed”. Vladimir Chernyega was busy with the Russian Foreign Minister so I waited downstairs. A group of US visitors swept in, apparently to check security for James Baker’s visit. Affirmative action was obviously at play, because there was one black guy, whom everyone ignored, a forceful woman, and an absolute pillock. The Russian police guarding the building were the new generation: heavily armed, but totally approachable and nice. I went to the toilet and one of them carried my briefcase. I said it was the first time I’d been to the toilet at rifle point and he said, “Look on it as protection.” The corridors were strewn with old Communist Party furniture, which I fancied having for our office. Chernyega was very positive about our registration and said the man handling it would be Vyacheslav Bakhmin, the ex-prisoner of conscience. Light at the end of the tunnel!
During the day, and thanks to a friendly secretary, I delivered Amnesty’s complaints to the USSR Foreign Ministry about poor access to the September human rights conference. At night Vladimir Babenkov, the man responsible for the arrangements, called me at home, very angry, and asking what all the fuss was about. The upshot was we got the access we wanted.
Tuesday 10 September
This morning the USSR Ministry of Justice called, saying they were interested in helping us to register and suggesting a meeting tomorrow. All this attention is getting ridiculous.
I sorted out office repairs with Tolya and the printing of our document on the USA, then in the afternoon went to suss out the lecture hall for our seminar at the Faculty of Journalism with the sound engineers and Oleg. There was an interesting moment when the Dean asked them suspiciously, “Who are you? Are you with Amnesty?” Oleg said, “Yes, I’m with Amnesty”, and exchanged a nice look with me. I discovered he’s going to do all the interpretation himself, and free of charge. A real gift, because he’s good.
Wednesday 11 September
I had a maddening morning at the USSR Ministry of Justice with Natalya Vysotskaya. We met Nikolay Zubkov, who smiled and smiled as he fiddled with his glasses nervously, and whose sole concern seemed to be how to put off writing an official reply to the letter we sent him about registering. You would have thought we were discussing disarmament in Europe, not some simple bureaucratic task. Little wonder the USSR has fallen apart.
Had a better afternoon, meeting a young psychiatrist who works in the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, oddly enough, but who staffed the medical unit at the barricades during the coup and wants to join Amnesty. He says lots of people come to him severely depressed by the situation. He feels a fraud, because he persuades them they’ll feel better in two months, then two months later there’s a coup. Since the coup I’ve noticed lots more drunks in the street, and lots more children playing with plastic guns.
I looked over the finished interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist. He’d made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and it was very good indeed. From there I dashed to see the British actor Peter Gale starring in The Unpardonable Sin of Maud Allen. I went backstage to congratulate him and found him telling local reporters that all proceeds would go to our Amnesty office in Moscow. It was touching.
Thursday 12 September
We have managed to track down the materials that were sent to the Moscow Book Fair and then disappeared into limbo. Twenty-five boxes arrived at my flat this morning. In the afternoon Misha kindly came with me to persuade the kitchens at the Faculty of Journalism to prepare refreshments for our seminar. He is the most unpresumptuous of men, but I was amused to hear him introduce us as the Organising Committee of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Anyway, it worked. I bought plastic cups for hard currency.
In the evening I escaped for dinner with Irina and her mother. At some magic moment her mother instructed us to open their bottle of vermouth and after three tumblers-full each, she began to recite sonnets she had written herself.
Friday 13 September
People from the London office are over here for the conference, so I took them out for a good dinner. Had a good lunch too, at the Metropol hotel with someone from the Council of Europe Human Rights Division. He said Shevardnadze is far from euphoric after the coup, and is particularly worried about the Ukraine.
On Saturday afternoon I showed someone from London round the office, which looked great. They are levelling the floor, everything is replastered, the rooms are painted pale grey or pale beige, the windows are white and the toilet is in place and the room all cleanly tiled. Very satisfying.