Moscow diary
Alastair Hulbert offers a timely reflection on the memories of a Friend in Moscow
The year 1991 was a momentous one in the Soviet Union. It led up to the resignation of president Mikhail Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state. Marjorie Farquharson was an Edinburgh Quaker who set up Amnesty International’s first office in Russia at this time.
Her Moscow Diary, which was published in 1991, covers a brief but intense period at the end of the cold war: January 24 1991 to March 31 1992. The daily entries about her life and work establishing an Information Office for Amnesty International in the Russian capital are detailed and fascinating.
These world-shaking events, and others further afield like the Gulf war, hover in the background of Marjorie Farquharson’s diary, but it deals primarily with the demands of living as an ordinary Muscovite in one room and a kitchen while setting up the Amnesty office in the face of huge bureaucracy. At the same time she was working in Russia on key Amnesty concerns such as the death penalty, preparing conferences on human rights and developing relations with diplomats like the Portuguese ambassador.
Then there is her social life and the many close friendships she made, her shared enjoyment of Moscow’s concerts, theatre and cinema, and excursions, sometimes lasting several days, to St Petersburg, Alma-Ata (Almaty) in Kazakhstan, Tomsk in Siberia, the ancient town of Uglich on the Volga and the monastery of Zagorsk.
Marjorie Farquharson was a Friend whose modesty concealed broad international experience, wisdom and humanity from many who knew her before her untimely death in 2016. There is no introduction to the book, but the following note sets her significant achievement for Amnesty International in Moscow in the context of her life’s work:
Marjorie Farquharson worked in the field of human rights and the USSR and post-Soviet States for over 30 years. She was the Amnesty researcher on the USSR at the International Secretariat from 1978-1992 and Amnesty International’s first representative in the Soviet bloc, worked as the Director of the EU TACIS project (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States and Georgia), worked in 44 of Russia’s federal regions as a Council of Europe Officer, and helped establish a regional ombudsman institution there. She has been a freelance researcher, writer and translator since 2001 and worked in all 5 Central Asian States.
Her writing flows with a rich choice of words and a delicious sense of humour, as these extracts from her diary illustrate:
Beauty and joie de vivre
‘I can’t explain why I find my surroundings so absolutely beautiful. I came home in the dark through the glade behind the church. The mixture of snow, shadows, and shapes in their winter clothing was lovely.’
Scenes from Russian life
‘I got paid for my article in the Journal of Humanitarian Sciences with two packets of macaroni, a tin of meat and some tea.’
‘I couldn’t get my laundry back because the factory had no hot water and it hadn’t been done. It was another day with precious little to eat. Inflation is over two per cent a week.’
‘In town I queued for a cake, and without any warning two men in the queue suddenly hit each other. It was horrible and immediately put everyone’s nerves on edge. The cake woman bawled me out for having the wrong change. I felt beaten.’
‘During the week I made the discovery that all my hard currency has been stolen from inside the flat – about £350. I have my suspicions but don’t know how to handle it. Pretty sickening. In the last few months I’ve had my phone tapped, my mail read, received a threatening letter, lived through a coup, been robbed, summoned to court twice in London and threatened with eviction. Things aren’t looking too bright.’
Bureaucracy
‘…It’s like tiptoeing through outbreaks of lunacy.’
‘I spent nine hours working on my article about the death penalty, and I noticed I was really involved in it and mentally wanting to shake the reader by the lapels. It seems I’ve reached some sort of level of Soviet reality where I am intensely aware of the irrationality and cruelty of life here. Ordinary people are the victims of it and also a part of it. It is very hard to sort out your feelings about things here. But the death penalty is quite a good issue to try to do so.’
A lucky escape
‘I had a very lucky escape tonight. On the way home I heard steps behind me in the snow, turned round and saw a man in a blue anorak gaining on me. I then changed my direction and realised he was aiming for me. We stopped and faced each other out and I screamed. No one came and he started saying, “Go on, louder. That’s better. No one will come. You’ll damage your throat.” I screamed five times and each time he looked round, then stepped closer. I had my eyes absolutely fixed on his and eventually said, “Leave me alone”. As I dreaded, he said, “Are you not Russian? Where are you from?” When I told him, he said, “Excuse me” and walked away. I thought he would have gone for my money too. My throat is sore as I write this.’
Politics
‘Both Latvia and Estonia voted for independence yesterday in their local referenda. I’m sure all these signals – the demonstrations last weekend, the end of the Gulf War, the referenda – are mutually reinforcing. Another wedge is knocked in, I think. My admiration for Muscovites grows. It is very undermining living in this uncertainty, but they are patient and astonishingly good humoured about it – then when they get a chance they go for change.’
‘It is a very curious thing, but in ten months I haven’t actually been homesick for the UK once. Britain seems from this distance a strangely closed society that has no sense of direction. When you hear about the last outburst of riots in Newcastle, you feel the different people involved and commenting on it actually have no experience in common at all. Here, although opinions are massively divided, people are facing the same things: how to cope with the break-up of the country, how to avert hunger; how to understand their history’.
People
‘Ed asked me if I’m meeting “plain people” and not just the intelligentsia. I’m having no trouble meeting “plain people”. It seems to me ‘intelligentsia’ is something other people should call you, but which some people here call themselves.’
‘In the evening I walked down to the hard currency shop to buy light bulbs for the office. In an underpass that was almost pitch black a small brass ensemble were playing Latin American numbers, and an appreciative crowd was listening. The band were in their cloth caps and working togs, with big chapped hands, but they had obviously practiced their routines and were extremely good. It was like a scene from the Weimar Republic. I felt that wrench of emotions: I love the place and it also frightens me.’
‘New Year’s Day, thick snow and a bright blue sky. I met Irena at 10.00am to go and visit Sakharov’s grave in Vostryakovo cemetery… It looked beautiful in the snow: big wide alleys of trees stretching between the jumble of graves, and black-coated figures in the distance, going to pay their respects… Back to Irena’s for dinner and to listen to the new jazz tapes I’d got from home. We were sitting by candlelight as their bulbs have gone.’
Moscow Diary by Marjorie Farquharson is published by Troubador at £10.99.
