Marjorie Farquharson - Moscow Diary

The TV “tube” turned out to be the 23” screen and all that goes on behind it. A really nice man at the shop arranged for it to be delivered to me for 60p.

Sunday 10 February

I am fascinated by Fyodor Burlatsky’s memoirs, Leaders and their Advisors . His mother used to carry a small pistol in her hair (?). They’re a bit like Dennis Healey’s in that they’re a tale with a moral. Healey’s moral was that you need planning and a social consensus. Burlatsky’s is that he was the rapscallion of the Kommunist collective, the one who bucked the system and always favoured democracy, trial by jury etc. His account of Khrushchev is chilling; it’s pure gangland murder. But you’re not quite sure which gang is doing the telling.

In Soviet style I hung my food out of the window then defrosted the fridge. Bill Millinship took me out shopping then, because we couldn’t find a left turn, drove me 13km north to The Observer for elevenses. He says he feels he’s doing well if he does four things in a morning. I feel I’m doing well if I do two in a day. He also thinks someone high up is protecting the press at the moment.

In the evening I went to the Quakes. I kept talking about food, and Margaret, who’s finishing four months here, told me to shut up. Tatyana was describing the seven-week fast the Russian Orthodox observe for Lent and we all suddenly laughed, including her. Only seven weeks? When I plugged in my fridge last thing, it wouldn’t work. Hey ho.

Monday 11 February

I dreamt I was cycling up a hill where hay carts and donkeys laden with straw kept stopping or breaking down. I also passed huddles of Soviets darting from market stalls, like a Breughel painting set in the snow in the southern ring road.

Bang on 9.00am my landlord rolled up, wanting to scan the commercial pages of Kommersant . He brought the newsletter, translated, and fixed my fridge. Whatever else, he’s the most efficient and reliable person I deal with, and that’s a relief. Still no courier from London. The Foreign Ministry says there has been some sort of “delay” concerning my status. I took my washing out for its third walk but found no laundry that would take it between here and the Danilov Market. The computer firm needs still more information, so back to square one.

I decided to send a Valentine’s telegram today. The bad-tempered woman at the desk couldn’t read Latin script and ground to a halt at “y”. She got out a transliteration chart which I had to point to, letter by letter, and then an African in the post office entered into the discussion and started saying, “ y grèque – write it down” etc. We both rounded on him at the same time. A funny little bad-tempered scene over something that wasn’t meant to be bad tempered at all.

Nikolay of the Moscow Amnesty group came round for tea. Both he and Lada are positive and have ideas. “Better an ignis fatuus than no illume at all.” I appreciate that more and more in people. I did before I came here.

Tuesday 12 February

I watched some labourers shifting heavy slabs in the snow. They were wearing padded jackets, heavy boots and balaclavas, and crouched down on their hunkers for a break. The foreman then kissed one of them and held her hand.

I called out a TV repair man today. The young woman at the desk had a permanent scowl and was sitting working with the phone off the hook. I queued for ten minutes, then she suddenly picked up the phone and shouted, “I told you to wait – there are people here!” We all had to say what was wrong with our sets. The woman in front of me said very nicely, “It gives off smoke and smells of burning.”

Today the USSR Prime Minister accused the West of preparing economic sabotage to overthrow the Gorbachev government. Why would the West want to overthrow the Gorbachev government? It doesn’t make sense even in their own terms.

Had a lovely visit from a UK friend.

Wednesday 13 February

Landlord very excited they’ve removed border restrictions from Sakhalin, as he thinks this means the Far East will become a Free Enterprise Zone.

I enjoyed my morning reading Izvestiya and making a stock list of all my UN materials. Then I went to the Arbat to drop off the Morocco translation at the Journal of Humanitarian Sciences . I immediately liked Tanya, the woman who is going to do it. She took me to meet Yevgeny Vladimirovich, the Deputy Editor, just so he could see a real live Amnesty person. He was putting food in his mouth when we came in and was pleasantly embarrassed. They were both charming, anxious to help, and wanted Amnesty to contribute a piece to the journal. However, everything he said was unintentionally offputting, e.g. “Since the war the Soviet state has invited lots of foreigners here, but it’s always ended badly, and they’ve been accused of espionage…”, or, “It’s like the Tarzan films and you are Jane…”

I was too late to meet John and go to a film about Chernobyl, but in the end I came across some of the real thing at Viktor’s house. A strapping man in his twenties came to stay and it turned out he had been off sick for eighteen months and was now on his way to Donetsk in Ukraine for medical treatment. He had spent two weeks in Belorussia during the Chernobyl disaster and now “something is not quite right with his blood”.

The evening at Viktor’s was like something from Dostoyevsky, and made me quite tense. They are fairly hard up, and a pigeon walks backwards and forwards from the kitchen to the main room. Their ninety-two-year-old grandmother, whom everyone ignored or shunted out of the way, sat in the corner talking to it. When I first arrived a pediatrician was there, who made some disparaging remarks about AI. Viktor’s mother went mad at him and tiraded on, while Viktor and I talked. Then the man with leukemia arrived and later, as he took me to the metro, we passed a woman in the dark on the landing whose face looked familiar to me. We went back in, and spent another hour with Lydia Zapevalova, whose son was sentenced to death in 1989. There were lots of rows and fights all evening, and Viktor kept going for a lie down because he felt so lousy. Anyway the good news is that thirty people have formed an anti-death penalty committee in Moscow. Viktor has ideas for getting Amnesty some premises.

Thursday 14 February

This morning the landlord took my breath away. I said how very nicely Soviet children are brought up compared with ours. He said that is because we have sold out to capitalism, but they are “building socialism and so have to be better”. I couldn’t believe this was coming from his lips. He then said he disapproved of pornography, but there was something flickering across his face which belied what he said.

I had a satisfying morning writing to a member of the Belorussian Clemency Commission who wants contact with other abolitionists. I then got some juice, bread and nice apples and, “Dizzy with Success”, took my laundry for its fourth outing. The dry cleaners took my jeans – 8p and ready in a week. The laundry, however, was just closing and I had to unpack all my things in a great hurry. Then it turned out I needed cloth number tags stitched onto every corner. She wouldn’t let me ink the number on myself. So I had to repack my laundry and run with it from door to door in what was now a small blizzard, trying to find out where to buy these bloody number tags. In the end I had to take my laundry with me into town to meet some of the Amnesty members. Several smiles on the train and Nikolay said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but you look very picturesque carrying that bag.”

Unexpectedly Semyon Gluzman phoned with Svetlana Polubinskaya, both back from Kiev and here to discuss the new draft law on psychiatry at the Supreme Soviet tomorrow. After years when nobody cared about psychiatry, they say everybody is getting a bend on to try to pre-empt the Review Committee, which the World Psychiatric Association is sending here for an inspection in March.